Monday
Nov242008
Journalism 101: How to Create a Conflict with Iran
Monday, November 24, 2008 at 10:31
BRONZE MEDAL: FROM 9-11 TO TEHRAN
A good rule of thumb is that any purported reporting by Con Coughlin of the Daily Telegraph should be considered a press release from Britain's MI6 or a "friendly" intelligence service.
The latest of these was Sunday's "Iran receives al Qaeda praise for role in terrorist attacks". The Con-man intoned:
Fresh links between Iran's Revolutionary Guards and al-Qaeda have been uncovered following interception of a letter from the terrorist leadership that hails Tehran's support for a recent attack on the American embassy in Yemen, which killed 16 people.
I'm betting that Coughlin didn't venture to Northwest Pakistan to retrieve "the letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command". I'm pretty sure he hasn't been to Tehran or even Yemen. Instead, he strolled to a London club or other suitable hang-out to chat with "Western security officials, [who] said the missive thanked the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for providing assistance to al-Qaeda to set up its terrorist network in Yemen".
Since Coughlin didn't produce the letter or a single extract from it, we'll have to take his word and that this is really the smoking stationary proving an Iran-Al Qa'eda link. Coughlin's only contribution, beyond parroting his sources, is to repeat the tired story about the presence of Saad bin Laden, Osama's son, in Iran. (The Iranians have claimed for years that bin Laden is under house arrest.)
This was the same tale woven in spring 2003 to "prove" Iran's support of Wahhabi terrorism, which will lead us to our Gold Medal story. But first....
SILVER MEDAL: HERE COME THE (ISRAELI) BOMBS
Uzi Mahnaimi, who reports for The Times of London from Tel Aviv, is a favourite outlet for Israeli and American officials who want to give Tehran a scare.
So on Sunday Mahnaimi was primed, on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington, to report, "Israel is concerned that Bush will pass the Iranian hot potato to Barack Obama, the president-elect, while the last chance of destroying Tehran’s nuclear bomb-making programme may be passing."
Mahnaimi offers Tel Aviv's spin on the Iranian nuclear programme, “They are working on three programmes at once. They are speeding up their centrifuges to enrich uranium, calibrating a warhead to fit their ballistic missiles and improving the range and accuracy of their ballistic missiles," before getting to the drama of his piece:
In the baking heat of the Negev desert, the Israeli air force’s top guns are training for a secret mission. No one here knows if, or when, a raid will get the political go-ahead but the pilots say it could be their third attack in three decades on a nuclear plant and easily the most dangerous.
Perhaps, if Mahnaimi hadn't published this same narrative again and again in recent years, we might be sweating out the prospect of an Israeli attack. In this case, however, it's a rather limp shaking of the fist at Tehran.
GOLD MEDAL: AND THE NEXT IRANIAN LEADER IS....
The surprise winner is The Independent of London, which in the past has been a more considered voice against both irresponsible journalism and a drumbeat for war in the Persian Gulf. Last week, however, Anne Penketh couldn't resist the temptation of an exclusive chat with the son of the last Shah of Iran:
Reza Pahlavi (who answers to both "Your Majesty" and Mr Pahlavi), is plotting his return to the land he was forced to leave as a teenager when the 1979 revolution brought militant Shiism to power.
There are sceptical notes in the article --- "The wealthy US-based businessman seems remote from the concerns of the average Iranian" --- but Penketh's overall contribution is to the notion of a youthful Iranian population ready to topple the regime:
Mr Pahlavi, who concentrated in the past on rousing the Iranian diaspora, is now placing his hopes in the young generation which makes up 70 per cent of the Iranian population. "We need to discover the new generation, the children of the revolution," he argues.
Penketh's "exclusive" isn't so exclusive if you do a quick Internet search of newspapers from the spring of 2003. Indeed, The Times of London was going so far as to recommend a new Shah on its editorial pages. All of this was part and parcel of an American consideration that, after liberating Baghdad, Tehran was next.
There were student demonstrations in May/June 2003 in the capital, but these never developed into a serious threat to the Government. Five years later, despite Con Coughlin and Uzi Mahnaimi's efforts, I'm not sure the situation has changed. Indeed, as Penketh has to conclude after his visit to Reza Pahlavi's "London townhouse...a far cry from the sumptuous palaces of his father in Tehran":
While Mr Pahlavi might have had an open door to the White House under George Bush, it is less likely the Obama administration will have the same enthusiasm for the exiled Iranian leaders, having offered diplomatic overtures to Tehran.
A good rule of thumb is that any purported reporting by Con Coughlin of the Daily Telegraph should be considered a press release from Britain's MI6 or a "friendly" intelligence service.
The latest of these was Sunday's "Iran receives al Qaeda praise for role in terrorist attacks". The Con-man intoned:
Fresh links between Iran's Revolutionary Guards and al-Qaeda have been uncovered following interception of a letter from the terrorist leadership that hails Tehran's support for a recent attack on the American embassy in Yemen, which killed 16 people.
I'm betting that Coughlin didn't venture to Northwest Pakistan to retrieve "the letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command". I'm pretty sure he hasn't been to Tehran or even Yemen. Instead, he strolled to a London club or other suitable hang-out to chat with "Western security officials, [who] said the missive thanked the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for providing assistance to al-Qaeda to set up its terrorist network in Yemen".
Since Coughlin didn't produce the letter or a single extract from it, we'll have to take his word and that this is really the smoking stationary proving an Iran-Al Qa'eda link. Coughlin's only contribution, beyond parroting his sources, is to repeat the tired story about the presence of Saad bin Laden, Osama's son, in Iran. (The Iranians have claimed for years that bin Laden is under house arrest.)
This was the same tale woven in spring 2003 to "prove" Iran's support of Wahhabi terrorism, which will lead us to our Gold Medal story. But first....
SILVER MEDAL: HERE COME THE (ISRAELI) BOMBS
Uzi Mahnaimi, who reports for The Times of London from Tel Aviv, is a favourite outlet for Israeli and American officials who want to give Tehran a scare.
So on Sunday Mahnaimi was primed, on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington, to report, "Israel is concerned that Bush will pass the Iranian hot potato to Barack Obama, the president-elect, while the last chance of destroying Tehran’s nuclear bomb-making programme may be passing."
Mahnaimi offers Tel Aviv's spin on the Iranian nuclear programme, “They are working on three programmes at once. They are speeding up their centrifuges to enrich uranium, calibrating a warhead to fit their ballistic missiles and improving the range and accuracy of their ballistic missiles," before getting to the drama of his piece:
In the baking heat of the Negev desert, the Israeli air force’s top guns are training for a secret mission. No one here knows if, or when, a raid will get the political go-ahead but the pilots say it could be their third attack in three decades on a nuclear plant and easily the most dangerous.
Perhaps, if Mahnaimi hadn't published this same narrative again and again in recent years, we might be sweating out the prospect of an Israeli attack. In this case, however, it's a rather limp shaking of the fist at Tehran.
GOLD MEDAL: AND THE NEXT IRANIAN LEADER IS....
The surprise winner is The Independent of London, which in the past has been a more considered voice against both irresponsible journalism and a drumbeat for war in the Persian Gulf. Last week, however, Anne Penketh couldn't resist the temptation of an exclusive chat with the son of the last Shah of Iran:
Reza Pahlavi (who answers to both "Your Majesty" and Mr Pahlavi), is plotting his return to the land he was forced to leave as a teenager when the 1979 revolution brought militant Shiism to power.
There are sceptical notes in the article --- "The wealthy US-based businessman seems remote from the concerns of the average Iranian" --- but Penketh's overall contribution is to the notion of a youthful Iranian population ready to topple the regime:
Mr Pahlavi, who concentrated in the past on rousing the Iranian diaspora, is now placing his hopes in the young generation which makes up 70 per cent of the Iranian population. "We need to discover the new generation, the children of the revolution," he argues.
Penketh's "exclusive" isn't so exclusive if you do a quick Internet search of newspapers from the spring of 2003. Indeed, The Times of London was going so far as to recommend a new Shah on its editorial pages. All of this was part and parcel of an American consideration that, after liberating Baghdad, Tehran was next.
There were student demonstrations in May/June 2003 in the capital, but these never developed into a serious threat to the Government. Five years later, despite Con Coughlin and Uzi Mahnaimi's efforts, I'm not sure the situation has changed. Indeed, as Penketh has to conclude after his visit to Reza Pahlavi's "London townhouse...a far cry from the sumptuous palaces of his father in Tehran":
While Mr Pahlavi might have had an open door to the White House under George Bush, it is less likely the Obama administration will have the same enthusiasm for the exiled Iranian leaders, having offered diplomatic overtures to Tehran.