By Elham Abedini, journalist and researcher in the field of international relations
It is rare to find a media outlet or a think tank that has not written articles about the last two months of unrest in Iran and has not covered it extensively. But this suspicious attention, or rather media aggression, is not just limited to this issue. Media outlets and think tanks have paid special attention to the issue of “Iran” from at least three angles.
First, all of the West’s hopes that they would be able to force Iran to sign an agreement for the revival of the JCPOA in order to receive maximum concessions while paying minimum costs were dashed as Iran refused to back down from its red lines, which included the economic benefits it was supposed to receive from the implementation of the JCPOA. As a result, Western analysts and politicians have been trying in recent months to raise the issue of Iran’s alleged desire to acquire nuclear weapons. They have been using their media outlets and the issue of human rights as levers. In the meantime, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), in response to a resolution passed by the IAEA Board of Governors, began to enrich uranium to 60% at the Fordow Enrichment Plant. Although Iranian officials have emphasized for years that nuclear weapons have no place in Iran’s defense strategies, it still seems that the West is attempting to use this issue as a lever. Even the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khamenei, has issued a decree forbidding the use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear and chemical weapons, based on Islamic principles.
With the passage of time, it has become clearer that the words of Barack Obama, the president of the United States at the time, were and are the definite policy of that country, “If we could create an option in which Iran eliminated every single nut and bolt of their nuclear program … I would take it.” The fact that Iran, a country that has been the target of all kinds of sanctions and pressures for years, is now able to attain such complex technology by relying on its own scientists and knowledge is unacceptable to them.
Another issue is their use of various tools, including economic and human rights sanctions against Iran, to advance the complex, hybrid riots in Iran. Meanwhile, politicians such as Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States, and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, officially meet with people who state that they are against the Iranian government and consider themselves to be an alternative to it. While the way Western authorities made errors in their calculations and quickly arranged these meetings requires another detailed article, it should be noted briefly that there were two main reasons for these actions by these authorities. The first reason was that these politicians, under the pressure of lobbies who are actively present in media outlets and think tanks, made an incorrect analysis about what is happening in Iran. The second reason is that according to many analysts, such as Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and according to the US National Security Strategy document, Iran is considered to be an in-between power in the international arena at least, and along with Russia and China, it has challenged the West. In such a situation, there is no doubt that a weak Iran would enable these countries to gain a foothold in the region to exploit regional countries.
Therefore, overwhelming Iran with domestic issues, increasing economic sanctions, raising human rights issues at the international level and even beyond that, as well as dragging Iran into a civil war and causing its breakdown, can help to secure the interests of the West in the region.
The performance of Western mainstream media in recent months and the manner in which all of them lined up to publish negative news against Iran without shying away from even publishing fake news has been deeply shocking and is also thought-provoking at the same time. The number of news stories produced to cover the unrest in Iran has exceeded the normal level, and it has become more like a widespread organized move.
One of the most obvious examples of this was a piece of fake news published by the New York Times claiming that the Leader of the Islamic Revolution was in dire health and that his public meetings were canceled. This was quickly exposed as a lie when he met with student delegations from throughout Iran the very next day. After that, other media outlets such as CNN joined this effort by publishing false news reports about the riots in Iran and by publishing unsubstantiated reports of prisoners being tortured. In fact, their media war against Iran has reached the point where they have even resorted to publishing fake news and giving access to well-known media outlets to people who are not generally accepted in Iran as even opposition figures or critics for them to talk.
In a meeting with the people of Esfahan, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution said, “The problem that the West and the Arrogant Powers have with the Islamic Republic is that the Islamic Republic is advancing. It is thriving. The whole world is seeing this progress and acknowledging it. The West cannot bear to see this. They are not prepared to tolerate it. That is where the problem lies. The problem is that Iran is advancing. If we hadn’t made any progress, if we had failed to demonstrate a strong presence in the region, if our voice was quivering before the US and the Arrogant Powers, if we were willing to accept their aggressive, coercive behavior, there would have been less pressure. Of course, they would have come and dominated us, but there would have been fewer sanctions and these sorts of pressures and challenges.”
It is clear from these statements as well that the issue is more than just about their claims about Iran’s alleged attempts to acquire nuclear weapons or destabilize the region as well as concerns about human rights in Iran. The West’s double standards can be seen in their approach toward Al Saud and Al Khalifa in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the Zionist regime’s racial cleansing of Palestinians, and that regime’s nuclear warheads which go unsupervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Since the new administration assumed office in Iran, it has placed the policies of “active, dynamic diplomacy” and “neighbors-first diplomacy” on its agenda. In these few months, several commercial, strategic agreements have been signed between Iran and neighboring countries, Iran has become an official member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and diplomatic visits between Iran and these countries have increased. While the West’s policy was to “isolate” Iran, the country is now looking for new strategic partners among its neighboring countries. At the same time, Iran has not left the negotiating table with the West, and it has proved that all the propaganda saying the new administration is a hard-line administration that is unwilling to enter into dialogue is false.
Iran’s actions in the fields of foreign policy and trade have been in the opposite direction of all the theoretical and practical efforts of the West. Thus, their full support for stimulating chaos in Iran and creating a “weak Iran” can be understood in this framework. Now, more than ever, the world is experiencing a transition to a new order and the transfer of power from the West to the East. In this process, Iran has played an influential role many times. Examples of this can be seen in the changing equations in Syria, Iraq, and even Venezuela, which is in the Americans’ backyard. Therefore, confronting Iran is one of the main tactics of the West to attempt to at least slow down the process of the changing geometry of international power.
(The views expressed in this article are author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)