Updated below: At least half-true, but somewhat out-of-context.

Like other level-headed bloggers like John Hinderaker, I have some doubts. It's not impossible - the mainstream media would never have reported this story, and after Davos, many bloggers were wrapped up in the outrage over Eason Jordan's remarks. But the quoted comments would be unusually reckless from a former President who is usually careful with his words and supportive of the United States when he speaks to overseas audiences. In Arab News, the Saudi English-language daily, Amir Taheri reports that President Clinton "feels ideologically most at home" in Iran:

Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”

And here is what Clinton had to say in a recent television interview with Charlie Rose:

“Iran is [Majordomo's note: "Iran is" appears to paraphrase the words used in the transcript below] the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”

...

Not surprisingly, Clinton’s utterances have been seized upon by the state-controlled media in Tehran as a means of countering President George W. Bush’s claim that the Islamic Republic is a tyranny that oppresses the Iranians and threatens the stability of the region.

I hope this isn't true. Or is actually some clever cover story to provide Senator Clinton with the opportunity to finally kick him out of their marriage. But if it is, President Clinton has some explaining to do.

Update: The full Charlie Rose transcript, from Jan. 27, is available on Nexis. Here's the passage quoted above in context:

I think that President Bush has done, so far, the right thing by not taking the military option off the table, but not pushing it too much. I didn't like the story that looked like the military option had been elevated above a diplomatic option.

But Iran is the most perplexing problem, in a way, that we face today, for the following reasons.

It's the only country in the world with two governments, and the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami, the only one with elections — including the United States, including Israel, including you-name-it — it is the only country where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: two for president, two for the parliament, the Majiles, two for the mayoralities.

In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSE: But, are those guys that are in power, or is it power held by another party?

CLINTON: Here's the problem: under their constitution, the religious council, headed by the Ayatollah Khamenei, has the authority over intelligence funding, terrorism funding, and has the power to invalidate laws and scratch candidates from the candidate list.

So the people that represent the 30 percent to a third, can negate much of what this two-thirds or 70 percent want. And the president is in the middle getting whip-sawed, and the people underneath him, supporting him, get more and more disillusioned.

Now, they still kind of like the West, in general, and America, in particular, because we don't represent what they don't like about the governing of Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini.

What no one can answer is: Number one, how would those two- thirds react if some military action were taken?

ROSE: What's your guess?

CLINTON: It depends on what it is. But, I mean, there may not be — everybody talks about what the Israelis did at Osiraq, in 1981, which, I think, in retrospect, was a really good thing. You know, it kept Saddam from developing nuclear power.

But they had that available. It's not clear to me that that option is available in Iran.

And it's not clear to me that, if we did a lot more than that and a lot of civilians got killed, that you wouldn't lose the two-thirds you've got.

I haven't been able to find his other comments on Nexis, but this makes clear that, while President Clinton should have paid more attention to the potential for his comments to be misrepresented, what he was saying isn't as bad as it looks at first glance. I still agree with Mr. Taheri's discussion of the "apology" President Clinton makes much of — the context makes it appear that was a diplomatic strategem, but harping on it now can only provide fuel to the mullahs. His discussion of the apology in the transcript (immediately before the above-quoted remarks):

Iran's a whole different kettle of fish. It's a sad story that really began in the 1950s, when the United States deposed Mr. Mossadegh, who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought the Shah back in...

ROSE: The CIA.

CLINTON: And then he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein.

And most of the terrible things Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s he did with the full knowing support of the United States government, because he wasn't Iran. And Iran was what it was, because we got rid of their parliamentary democracy back in the '50s.

At least that's my belief. I know it's not popular for an American ever to say anything like this, but I think it's true.

(APPLAUSE)

And I apologized when President Khatami was elected. I publicly acknowledged that the United States had actively overthrown Mossadegh, and I apologized for it. And I hoped that we could have some rapprochement with Iran.

I think basically the Europeans' initiative to Iran to try to figure out a way to defuse the nuclear crisis is a good one.

Draw your own conclusions.