IRAN: Minister's Oxford degree a fake

An embarrassed Iranian minister has admitted a degree he said he received from Oxford University was a fake, reports BBC News. Interior Minister Ali Kordan said he believed he was granted an honorary degree by a representative of the university in Tehran in 2000.

But enquiries he had made since doubts were raised during his confirmation hearings in parliament had shown it was not genuine, he said. The minister, who previously worked as a university teacher, made the admission in a letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The degree had ostensibly been given for "managerial and executive experience and for submitting a thesis to Oxford University via a person who had opened an affiliate office in Tehran," the minister wrote, according to BBC News.
Full report on the BBC News site