The Freed British Sailors
And The Politics Of Storytelling

By Chandra Muzaffar
[www.tehrantimes.com]

The decision of the British Ministry of Defence to grant permission to the 15 naval personnel detained in Iran for 13 days recently to sell stories of their experience in captivity to the media has had far reaching implications for international politics.

A couple of the sailors had opined that the decision, which has since been rescinded, would have allowed them to ‘tell the truth’ to the world about what had happened to them during their captivity. Given the situation they were in, it is quite conceivable they felt ‘psychologically pressured’ to make statements that were favorably disposed to their captors. That captives are always under duress and respond to their circumstance in a certain manner is a fact that the Iranian government will have to accept.

Nonetheless, there is ample evidence to suggest that a lot of what some of the naval personnel are now saying borders on gross exaggeration and outright distortion. Television clips showing cheery, healthy-looking sailors admitting that they had intruded into Iranian waters and apologizing for their action cannot be dismissed as ‘fake’. Neither should one argue that the captured personnel were forced to play chess and table tennis for Iranian cameras. On her release, Faye Turney, for instance, who reportedly had sold the story of her ‘ordeal in Tehran’ to a British tabloid for an astronomical sum, told the Iranian people, “Just thank you for letting us go and apologies for our actions, but many thanks for having it in your hearts to let us go free… It was fantastic, we were treated well, we weren’t harmed in any way”. Another seaman, Lieutenant Felix Carman, who is now in the forefront of the campaign to expose the ‘mistreatment’ that he and his fellow military personnel suffered at the hands of the Iranian authorities, not only expressed gratitude to the Iranian government for his release but also added, “I can understand why you were insulted by our apparent intrusion into your waters.”

It is obvious that the huge royalties that await those sailors who have already gone to the media induced them to fabricate stories of their ordeal in Tehran. The more outlandish the spin, the greater the reward. This is why a number of British political leaders, social commentators and even retired military personnel criticized the original decision of the Ministry of Defence to commercialize the Tehran episode. They were right in emphasizing that it would undermine the credibility of the British armed forces.

But none of them have highlighted one of the other motives behind the crass move by the British government. Through the tales of the sailors, the government hopes to escalate the massive propaganda war against Iran. For some time now, a section of the British media, like a significant segment of the American media, has been on a rampage, denigrating the Iranian state and society as ‘backward’, ‘medieval’, ‘barbaric’ and ‘autocratic’. Indeed, a plethora of outrageous lies is being deliberately pedaled as part of a crafty plan to tarnish and isolate Iran in the eyes of world public opinion. The recent Hollywood film ‘300’, which distorts and disparages Persian history and culture, is integral to this campaign. It is a thinly veiled attempt to vilify contemporary Iran as it struggles to prevent the Washington-London-Tel Aviv Axis, abetted by its client rulers in the region, from establishing total hegemony over the Middle East.

Employing the media and the entertainment industry to target a nation while intensifying political pressure on it through the United Nations Security Council has become the Axis’s defined strategy in pursuit of global hegemony. It will be observed that in the last nine months, the UN Security Council has steadily expanded its sanctions against Iran in relation to the latter’s nuclear enrichment program. This will continue until Iran abandons its nuclear program for producing nuclear energy -- a right it enjoys under Article IV of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- or until it submits meekly to the Axis. In this regard, it should be remembered that the Axis manipulated that monstrous lie about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) through the media and the UN Security Council before it invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003.

This is why we maintain that the crude commercialization of the Tehran sailors’ episode was part of a larger agenda. It was yet another maneuver designed to create an atmosphere unfavorable for Iran. In facing this challenge, the Iranian leadership has to show that it is capable of holding on to certain principles while remaining strategically intelligent.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/15/2007&Cat=14&Num=001

Comment:

I have been consistently following the developments of the War On Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq since late 2001. I observed that there is one very distinct pattern about the war – it is always being preceded by propaganda through the print, electronic and digital media.

The basic theme of this propaganda is that the West (the US and its allies) has every rights to bombard, destroy and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq because they are allegedly harboring Muslim terrorists accused by the US as being the group responsible for the 911 tragedy in the US.

This propaganda was amended before the war was launched against Iraq in 2003. That was why the US accused Iraq of having a huge stock of WMD which could destroy the entire western world. This accusation failed to be proven until today. Iraq, however, has been destroyed and occupied by the US troops and its allies. Iraq is now plagued with civil war as a result of the occupation by the West.

And now, the western propaganda is being focused onto Iran. Day in and day out, the international community is being fed with news items, video clips, talks shows and interviews over the Zionist controlled media that Iran’s nuclear reactor is geared to producing nuclear arms to be targeted to the West. This propaganda, to borrow the words of Noam Chomsky, is aimed at manufacturing consent to legitimized the US intending war on Iran in the coming months, if not year.

My question here, therefore, is: what is the OIC, the Arab League or even NAM’s move to counter this ever mounting propaganda? In the context of the above story by the Chandra Muzaffar in Tehran Times, will the Iranian officially express its displeasure to what the British government is doing – allowing its naval officers who were being captured and later being released by the Iranian authority, to sell their version of the stories - fabricated with lies - to the British media? – Ruhanie Ahmad