With Amir.
Given the context of an intelligence officer knocking on an unfamiliar person's hotel room door unexpected and asking them to defect, I think "salaam habibi" would strike most Farsi speakers as a bizarre and malapropos greeting.
"Hola amigo. I’m from the CIA, and I want you to board a plane with me to the United States."
I see it as an indicator of careless journalism that the author is citing an unnamed source "familiar on the matter" about a 10-year-old conversation that he seems not to have transcribed into the right language. I put it into the same category of people who ask what part of Mexico the Puerto Ricans are from.
