( CNN ) -- Add Iran 's news agency to the long list of those hoodwinked by the satire of The Onion . Iran 's semi-official Fars News Agency published a story Friday claiming that a Gallup poll found that rural white Americans prefer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over President Barack Obama . Such a poll would indeed be big news in Iran ( and the United States ) -- if it were true . But the source was The Onion , the publication that presents the outlandish as real news . Its serious tone fools many who are new to the lampoons . Onion yarns have tricked news outlets in the U.S. and overseas . Ahmadinejad : I 'm quite popular . What sets Fars apart from others , however , is that the agency published the Onion story as if it were its own . Fars News Agency used the story verbatim , giving the same headline : `` Gallup Poll : Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad To Obama '' Fars also took all the credit at the get-go : . `` TEHRAN ( FNA ) -- According to the results of a Gallup poll released Monday , the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than US President Barack Obama . '' ( The Onion story used a Charleston , West Virginia , dateline . ) The article went on to quote a West Virginia resident as saying he would rather grab a ballgame or a drink with the Iranian leader than with Obama . The phony resident then lauded Ahmadinejad : `` He takes national defense seriously , and he 'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does . '' If that were n't enough , Fars continued , `` According to the same Gallup poll , 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad does n't try to hide the fact that he 's Muslim . '' A Fars news editor said Friday that the outlet took the item off its English-language website once editors realized that The Onion was n't a legitimate news organization . Without breaking from its farce , Onion Editor Will Tracy wrote in an e-mail that Fars is a subsidiary and has been `` our Middle Eastern bureau since the mid 1980s , when the Onion 's publisher , T. Herman Zweibel , founded Fars with the government approval of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini . `` The Onion freely shares content with Fars and commends the journalists at Iran 's Finest News Source on their superb reportage , '' Tracy wrote in his statement . There 's no word on whether either president is laughing . CNN 's Tricia Escobedo and Shirzad Bozorgmehr contributed to this report .
Iran 's semi-official Fars News Agency falls for an Onion story . Fars even steals the story , portraying it as its own . Satirical paper jokes that poll finds rural white Americans prefer Ahmadinejad . Once Fars discovered the farce , it removed the story from its English-language website .