Mike, over at What Really Happened, in a breathless little bit of outrage, proclaims “The Iranian 81mm mortar page is a fake!”. His proof? Apparently incorrect WHOIS data, typographic errors (in English), and the IP address belonging to an Iranian college. Never mind it’s a government-run college with some very shady programs; that’s good enough for him to discount it as fake… and for Kurt Nimmo to retract his retraction.



Sorry, Mike, and Kurt; you’re wrong yet again.

Seen the picture of the Iranian 81mm mortars? Seen the URL in the picture? It’s not the one you looked up, it’s diomil.ir. Who are they? Well…

me:~# whois diomil.ir

% This is the IRNIC Whois server. % Note: this output has been filtered. % Information related to ‘diomil.ir’ domain: diomil.ir

remarks: (Domain Holder) Moavenat Tejarat &Omoor Beynolmelal (sanayee defae)

remarks: (Domain Holder Address) Pasdaran St,Chahar Rah Pasdaran ,Sanayee Defae tehran, IR 1957975713

admin-c: nic6814h97

tech-c: nic6814h97

zone-c: nic6814h97

nserver: ns.isiran.com

nserver: ns2.isiran.com

source: NICIR # Filtered person: Mehdi Taebi

remarks: —

address: Isiran Ins., shahid langari st., nobonyad sq., pasdaran st., tehran, Iran.

e-mail: web@isiran-net.com

phone: 22801834

fax-no: 22806725

nic-hdl: nic6814h97

source: NICIR # Filtered me:~#

Eight-digit phone number. Happy, Mike? No, of course not. Let’s dig deeper…

me:~# dig diomil.ir ; < <>> DiG 9.2.4 < <>> diomil.ir

;; global options: printcmd

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<

That good enough for you? IP space that belongs to a national ISP? No? Too bad.

Oh, and Mike? The seven-versus-eight digit phone-number thing? Doesn’t matter to Iranians, who are bright enough to figure out the change. (See under “20 July 2005, Tehran subscriber numbers to 8 digits”.) Nice try, though.