Obama stiffs President Rouhani with phony artifact

Remember the lovely iPod Obama gave Queen Elizabeth? If you thought that was cheesy it's nothing compared to the silver griffin he stiffed Iranian President Rouhani with. From the Jewish publication Tablet Magazine;

Sometimes an ancient artifact symbolizes more than its admirers necessarily imagine. Take for example the silver griffin that was returned by the United States to Iran as a gesture of respect and—at least according to tea-leaf readers—a sign of an emerging thaw between the two nations.
There’s only one problem: It’s a fake.
Not only is it a fake, it’s a bad fake.

Turns out its only slightly older than the Queen's iPod-circa 1999. Supposedly it was 2,700 years old but it has a remarkable history. When the griffin arrived in New York in 2003, one of the Iranian-Swiss dealers was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security on the charge of falsifying the object’s place of origin. The dealer got a one year of probation and a fine of $5,000 and the DHS stashed the griffin in a vault where it remained until the nation's foremost practitioner of Smart Diplomacy thought it the perfect gift with which to begin a trusting relationship.