Arash Bahmani
When protests erupted and evolved on the streets of Middle East countries, starting with Tunisia, officials of the Islamic republic of Iran welcomed and lauded them. Now that the protests are raging against the dictator ruling Syria, Iran’s long-standing ally, the picture has changed and government media have decided to remain silent on the demonstrations in Syria.
Following Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, people are now publicly protesting on the streets of Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. Despite wide-spread propaganda in support of the protests in the Arab world, no official media has reported on the demonstrations in Syria except for some brief news pieces in which the demonstrators were labeled by Syrian officials to have been “fooled by foreign forces”. Alef news site affiliated with Ahmad Tavakoli, the head of Majlis’ investigative arm, noted that, ” If protests in Syria are carried out by people and have not been provoked from abroad, our media should follow the news in Syria as they did in the protests in Yemen, Egypt, and Bahrain…but no patriotic Iranian would rejoice in seeing Syria marred by unrest because Syria is a strategic ally and its troubles are not in the interest of Iran.”
Asre Iran news site close to Mohammad Baagher Ghaalibaaf, the mayor of Tehran also noted the silence. “The closed political system in Syria is no different than those in other authoritative regimes such as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Jordan. On what basis does the national radio and TV network ignore the Syrian events while covering similar events in other countries?” it wrote. By noting that the Iranian Press TV and Al-Alam networks covered the events in Syria to some degree, this site asks, “What is the difference between foreign citizens and Iranian citizens so that the former could find out about the unrest in Syria through the Iranian media but the latter cannot? And this is so while the state media in Syria covered the events after the presidential election in 2009 and did not follow a policy of silence”.
Iranian officials had earlier embraced the events in the Arab world and had described them as extensions of the Islamic revolution inspired and led by the country’s supreme leader as well as the current president of Iran. Furthermore, ayatollah seyed Ali Khamenei referred to the events in the Middle East had in his Nowruz (Persian New Year) message and said, “These bitter events taking place against the people of some countries- in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen- have certainly prevented us from celebrating Nowruz festivities. May Almighty God send imminent help to these people and punish their enemies.”
The official media silence on events in Syria is compounded by Syrian opposition reports that elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) have been deployed in Syria to suppress public protests there.
A principlists website in Iran went as far as advocating that the Islamic republic make a stronger presence in countries such as Syria and Bahrain through the “Hezbollah warriors, Iranian or not.”
Such aggressive views are published while Arab leaders in Ian’s neighborhood are not only weary of Iran’s role but have openly criticized it. Officials in Bahrain recently told the Islamic republic not to interfere in its internal affairs, and in Kuwait an espionage network involving Iranians was uncovered and publicly announced, a court sentenced two Iranians to death on these charges. Saudi Arabia too issued a statement protesting Majlis’ resolution that criticized the deployment of Saudi forces in Bahrain, calling it interference in the domestic affairs of the region.
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نوبت به متحد قدیمی جمهوری اسلامی رسید
3 April 2011