March 29, 2024

Iranian Media: How to Tell a Lie – A Big Lie?

StopFundamentalism.com
 
The presence of a crowd of thousands of Iranian exiles in front of the State Department in Washington, calling on the Secretary of State Clinton to remove the main Iranian opposition movement, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from the U.S. terror list, has certainly drawn considerable media attention during the past few days.  But one article, coming from a peculiar Iranian daily can be considered as a satire piece rather than a news article.

The Iranian daily, Keyhan reported on 29 August that only 25 showed up at the said demonstration siding with those in Washington who say MEK has no popular support!

Iranian media are known worldwide to not have any credibility for the news they blare out and this one seems to be just that. But it seems that the Iranian media, for their outrageous claims to be considered as at least to be partly true, resort to a Goebbels style, ‘Big Lie’ propaganda technique: “to tell a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Nevertheless, it is said that a picture speaks a thousand words, or may be a few thousand considering the picture above in this case.

According to reports, the Secretary of State Clinton will be making her decision soon whether to keep the main Iranian opposition group, MEK on the US terror list or remove it once and for all.

On the other hand MEK’s main home in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, has been the center of major international attention after it was raided by Iraqi forces last April leaving 36 MEK members who resided in Ashraf dead and over 350 wounded. 

The Ashraf residents are unarmed Iranian refugees considered as Protected Persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention who have lived in Ashraf, Iraq for the past 25 years but the Iraqi government refuses to recognize their status and threatens to extradite them back to Iran.

Since the reports of decision by Secretary Clinton surfaced, a media war began in the United States between on one side the supporters of the MEK in the US calling for the removal of the group from the US black list and on the other side, the Iranian well known lobby, National Iranian American Council – NIAC run by an Iranian established collaborator, Trita Parsi.

The rally in Washington on Friday was part of efforts by supporters of the MEK to show their solidarity and draw the attention of the State Secretary to another human catastrophe at hand if the group is not removed from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organization.  Iranian and Iraqi authorities have repeatedly referred to US blacklist as reason to justify crackdown on the Iranian opposition members in Ashraf.

http://www.stopfundamentalism.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1169:iranian-media-how-to-tell-a-lie–a-big-lie&catid=74:iranian-american&Itemid=93