Forbes is on the warpath against the Turkish and Brazilian nuclear deal this week. Another contributor, Melik Kaylan, attacks the deal and Erdogan in particular for pursuing it. If Claudia Rosett showed that she doesn’t understand the meaning of the word quisling with her latest effort, Kaylan’s column proves that he doesn’t understand much about Turkish history or Turkey’s neighbors.

For example, Kaylan tells us that Iran is “an ancient rival with whom [Erdogan’s] people have fought incessant wars for a millenium.” It is true that there were several Ottoman-Safavid and Ottoman-Qajar wars, but I believe there were only eight wars total in three hundred years, all of which were between the early 1500s and 1823, and the last major war between Turks and Iranians was fought when James Monroe was President. So they haven’t fought each other for a millennium, and their fighting has been anything but incessant, and whatever rivalry once existed was a modern phenomenon and it no longer really exists. Other than that, Kaylan’s description is excellent.

Elsewhere, Kaylan informs us that Russia is “expansionist,” which is typical misinformation. Kaylan is hardly the first and won’t be the last to abuse this word to refer to Russian foreign policy, so while it is false it is less remarkable than his description of Iran. He doesn’t like that Erdogan has been improving relations with “an expansionist Iran with dreams of a transnational Shiite caliphate all around Turkey’s borders.” It would help his cause a bit if any of these things were true. Even if Iran were expansionist, which it isn’t by any reasonable definition of the word, it couldn’t have dreams of any kind of Shi’ite caliphate because Twelver Shi’ites don’t want a caliphate. Indeed, ever since the usurpation against Ali the institution of the caliphate has often been viewed as an instrument of oppression directed against Shi’ites, and this hostility was sealed with the murder of Husayn. Unlike Isma’ilis, Twelver Shi’ites have no history of establishing an alternative caliphate. For the duration of Ottoman-Iranian conflict in the modern period, the Ottoman Sultan held the title of caliph following the Ottoman occupation of Mecca and Medina. That means that ever since Iranian rulers have been identified with Shi’ism since the beginning of the Safavid dynasty they have been political rivals of the rulers who claimed to be caliphs. How the Iranians are going to surround Turkey with this imaginary caliphate that they don’t want is anyone’s guess. Perhaps there is an as-yet-undiscovered army of Greek Shi’ite caliphalists just waiting for the order to strike. Then again, perhaps not.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Kaylan has a very poor understanding of Iranian intentions, which hardly makes him the best guide in understanding the merits and flaws of the nuclear deal with Iran.