The Product vs. The Truth
(Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)
So the western media want us to see Iranian protesters shouting “We want freedom” and “Death to the Dictator”. We are to believe in an uprising analogous to those seen in Central Europe during the late 80s and early 90s. The Islamic Republic is all but a corrupt and bankrupt façade for a dictatorship and the people are craving for western-style democracy and Dunkin’ Donuts.
On the other hand, Iranian media (called “propaganda” by the savvy westerners) want to sell the events as a US/UK-driven plot to overthrow the righteous Iranian government fully supported by its people. The offensive bolted this morning with detaining eight employees of the British embassy in Tehran.
And thus, an innocent truth seeker is faced with two products most information stores want to sell him. It takes reading between the lines and cross-checking different sources to find out that none of them is true. You can find it out if you read carefully and read to the end. As the expelled BBC’s journalist, John Simpson points out in a third sentence from the text’s end:
Both sides in this struggle are strong believers in the Islamic Republic.
This very fact is usually overlooked in the western blabber about spreading the democracy to Iran. Being no insider, I’d rather think that what is going on is a struggle for power within the existing system, while the demand for overthrowing the Islamic Republic remains marginal. What is difficult to understand though, is the hard line approach by the Guardian Council and Khamenei himself. Wouldn’t it win him numberless supporters if, instead of labelling them as mobs, he listened to the people’s voice?
