Just when one might have thought that reality was slowly sinking in regarding the Green movement’s lack of political traction in Iran, political and media elites in the United States have decided, in the wake of recent developments in Egypt, to dust off all of their factually ungrounded and intellectually irresponsible narratives. Still reeling from the loss of a longstanding U.S. ally to the new wave of “people power” in the Arab world, the American establishment seems determined to even the score, by having displays of mass discontent bring down a U.S. adversary in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Giddy at the prospect of renewed demonstrations in Iran, the U.S. State Department turned on its first Farsi-language Twitter feed yesterday. U.S. media coverage of today’s events in Tehran—whatever they were—was truly appalling. Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor—who, after the Islamic Republic’s 2009 presidential election, wrote some of the most journalistically irresponsible stories filed from Iran during that period—was back at it today, with a completely un-sourced report of “tens of thousands of protesters” on the streets of Tehran, see here. The New York Times acknowledged at least that “the size of the protests in Iran was unclear”, see here. But, unfortunately, its reporters could not resist writing that “witness accounts and news reports from inside the country suggested that perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 demonstrators in several cities defied strong warnings and took to the streets”—even though the only actual source cited in the story is “a former member of Parliament now living in exile in the United States”. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic has treated readers of his blog with several installments of a multi-part, “Iran Ignites” post.
Against this, we would call readers’ attention to the appearance of University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi on Russia Today, see here, citing no more than “a few hundred rioters” in downtown Tehran. This figure seems far more in keeping with the actual video evidence from Iran today. We would also highlight this piece of commentary from Daniel Larison at Eunomia, see here.
As Mohammad’s commentary suggests, the United States is in an increasingly “desperate” situation in the Middle East. President Obama and his administration are coming under increasing criticism from some quarters for having “abandoned” Mubarak while they do little to bring down the “real dictatorship” under the Islamic Republic.
Today, Obama’s National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon, issued an official, White House letterhead statement, declaring as a matter of U.S. policy that Iran must allow protests of whatever sort the Obama Administration wishes to encourage. In the coming days and weeks, the Obama Administration will try to “get something going” in Iran. The administration will fail, and the spectacle will not be edifying.
Thank you very much for shedding light on this subject. every time i turn on the news, I am socked at the lack of integrity. and as I tell myself that it can’t get any worst, guess what, it does. Again, thank you very much for your writing and you integrity.
The Green riots of 2009 were not a revolutionary situation like Egypt. It was Serbia 2000, Ukraine ’04, Lebanon ’05, Thailand ’08, and Moldova ’08 all over again – street gangs sponsored by CIA/NED paid to take to the streets and raise havoc to cast doubt on an election victory by The Bad Guys. You think people would learn what a totally fraudulent “colour revolution” looks like by now, we’ve had enough. I bet you someone on this rally will be raising the “Otpor!” clenched fist logo.
Of course the blogosphere is jumping on the bandwagon. The blogosphere is made up of middle-class liberals who are always, and in every country, utterly manipulated by the CIA/NED memetic-propaganda machine.
“U.S. media coverage of today’s events in Tehran—whatever they were—was truly appalling”
No, banning the media is truly appalling, as happened in Iran. So is hanging scores of people while calling for “restraint” in Egypt.
Why do you find it so hard to believe that Iranians might actually have a desire to revolt against a regime with a leader who is increasingly morphing into a cartoon villain who leads an evil empire? Khamenei uses Friday prayers to champion freedom for Arabs while he treats Iranians like his subserviant little children.
The Iranian parliament called for the execution of Iran’s opposition leaders while cheering on the opposition in Tunisia and Egypt…are you repulsed by that at all? Even if you don’t agree with the protesters in Iran you gotta admit that’s just a little hypocritical. The IRI’s leaders though, are obviously extremely angry after being humiliated in front of the world, their pleas for restraint and freedom to their neighbors smashed to pieces when their hatred of their own people was revealed yet again.
C.H. why the constant fixation on Iran? The overthrow of the U.S. allied dictatorships of Egypt and Tunisia should be the major headline stories in the US, that is if our media is truly free and independent….:)