The first time I read this story I was baffled. The second time I was mad. It’s about an “undercover” investigation in Tanzania about what countries it exports monkeys to. It mentions that a company sells 4000 monkeys a year and then zeros in on 215 monkeys sold to *gasp* Iran. Here comes the smoking gun:
“Iran is very secretive,” said Manji, who has been exporting monkeys for 22 years. “They said it [the monkeys] was for ‘our country’, for vaccine. [They said] ‘We don’t buy vaccine from anywhere; we prepare our own vaccine’.
“But I think they use it for something else. You know why? Because they don’t go on kilos. Iran wants [monkeys weighing] 1.5kg to 2.5kg, [but] 1.5kg for vaccine is not possible.”
Rubibira indicated that finding out what the Iranians wanted the monkeys for would be difficult. “They cannot say, you know. They are secretive. They wouldn’t tell the truth.”
ANALYSIS: the problem with this article is not sensationalism or flimsy sourcing; the idea of an Iranian germ warfare is a red herring. For years, we’ve had credible exile reports of a secret Revolutionary Guards program to breed scores of aquatic monkey-shark warriors. In the event of attack, these would be deployed to swarm tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, through which 40% of the world’s daily oil shipments flow. In peacetime, they will harvest caviar in the Caspian Sea.