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An Iranian news agency has apologised after being duped by a spoof story from a US satirical website.

Fars news agency reposted the story claiming that rural Americans preferred Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Barack Obama.

It later took down the article which had originally been published on The Onion website on Friday.

It quoted a West Virginia resident claiming that Ahmadinejad “takes national defence seriously, and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does”.

Fars’ editor-in-chief said he was still of the opinion that US politicians were deeply unpopular with their public.

“Although it does not justify our mistake, we do believe that if a free opinion poll is conducted in the US, a majority of Americans would prefer anyone outside the US political system to President Barack Obama and American statesmen,” the Fars story quoted the editor as saying.

“FNA makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of its reports, however very occasionally mistakes do happen.”

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