Here’s an illuminating story out of Iran. It seems the country’s nuclear-bomb-building, terrorist-supporting, Holocaust denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is defending Iran’s interior minister, Ali Kordan, for faking a doctoral diploma from Oxford University. As a dispatch of the Associated Press put it, Mr. Ahmadinejad has been “dismissing degrees in general as ‘torn paper’ not necessary for serving the people.” On that point he could check with Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry Truman, none of whom are college graduates. But there’s a distinction to be made between forthrightly deciding to leave college or to never go in the first place, on the one hand, and falsely claiming an advanced degree one does not possess, on the other hand.

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In that respect, Mr. Kordan’s fake diploma is just one of the many ways in which Iran’s ruling regime is a fraud. What’s illuminating is the way in which even the most implacable enemies of the West seek the validation of a Western university degree. No American political candidate in his right mind would fake a degree from an Iranian theological seminary, yet in Iranian politics an Oxford degree is apparently considered an asset rather than a liability. The Iranians’ craving for Western-style prestige and approval is something to keep in mind in the struggle ahead over the future of Iran and its nuclear ambitions; there may yet be ways to leverage it to advance the interests of the Iranian people and of American national security.