Iran and the hidden truths

The outgoing Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has come up with a wonderful tautological definition of truth. He is reported to have said that during his eight years in office: "What we told people was not contrary to reality, but we did not tell part of the truth at times". By way of explanation he said he didn't think the whole truth would have been helpful and that it might have harmed national security. That old chestnut. Anything unhelpful or embarrassing or tricky can always be explained away as potentially a national security mattter. Well I guess if he was referring to Iran's nuclear research programme, his government wouldn't have wanted anyone to know about it, let alone the Iranian electorate. But Rouhani is leaving office knowing what he knows about what the US and Israel say is a clandestine, although not so clandestine nuclear weapons programme and is feeling a little guilty about it obviously because the Iranian people have been told what Tehran has been telling the rest of the world, that the nuclear programme is only about civilian nuclear power and nothing to do with bombs. There are all kinds of ways of not telling the truth or lying or at least not giving the full picture, the most popular of which is to "omit" the full truth and just give the basics. This is prettty well what Rouhani has admitted to. Then there was the exquisite phrase used by Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to Donald Trump. In giving a different perspective on what press secretary Sean Spicer had claimed about the size of the crowd who came to Trump's inauguration, she referred to the evidence of "alternative facts". Little has been said to improve on that phrase since then. But Rouhani had a go.