KNOW YOUR ENEMY’S PROPAGANDA
HOW THE US CAN COUNTER THE FALSEHOODS OF HAMAS & OTHERS AMID THE FOG OF WAR
The Liberal Patriot
The fog of war isn’t just a pithy phrase—something many of us have relearned in the fighting that followed the October 7 terrorist atrocities against Israel committed by Hamas. Initial reports can turn out to be misleading or disastrously wrong. Uncertainty about unclear events gives dishonest actors the opportunity to inject their preferred narratives into the global media bloodstream while the rest of us sift through the available evidence—usually incomplete at best—to determine what, exactly, has happened. That’s what seems to have occurred with the recent Al Ahli hospital blast in Gaza, where too many reporters and political leaders ran with inflammatory assertions of Israeli responsibility for an explosion that, given the facts now at hand, appears to have resulted from an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket striking cars parked at the hospital.
This erroneous narrative has already had negative repercussions: Jordan called off a planned summit with President Biden and other Arab leaders intended to formulate a more coordinated international humanitarian response to the fighting in Gaza. Mobs across the region descended on American and Israeli embassies due in large part to faulty information spread via social media, whether by actors operating in good faith or bad.
As a media scholar, I teach my students about such campaigns and how to be a smart consumer of social media products. But the most important thing I teach however is a dark art that goes back centuries and remains a critical component of warfare today: propaganda.
WHY DID LAST YEAR’S PROTEST MOVEMENT IN IRAN FAIL?
THE SUPREME LEADER LEARNED WHAT NOT TO DO FROM THE SHAH
Foreign Policy
“This mullah is causing problems for you, and for me and for all of us. Do you want me to take care of the problem?” Saddam Hussein, military dictator of Iraq, Mohammad Reza Shah in August 1978. He was speaking about Ruhollah Khomeini, a senior cleric who had settled in Najaf and for months had been calling for regime change. The Shah declined Saddam’s offer to assassinate the Ayatollah. It was one of a number of critical decisions that would help turn a fledgling, fractured opposition movement into a revolution.
On the one-year anniversary of the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police, many are asking why the protest movement—the largest in nearly four decades—failed to bring about the changes it demanded and the revolution the diaspora called for. What we should be asking, instead, is why the regime succeeded. In this essay, we turn to the lessons of the fall of the Shah to better understand the actions of the supreme leader and the Islamic Republic regime (nezam).
MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE AMINI PROTESTS: A THREAT TO REGIME SECURITY?
IranWire
Over the last few months, there have been widespread efforts by the Iranian government to preempt and disarm the anticipated protests coinciding with the 1-year anniversary of the brutal murder of Mahsa Jina Amini for “bad hijab.” International newspapers run stories about authorities arresting journalists, activists, and artists, while police in riot gear roam the streets and the graves of martyrs.
After he returned from exile, Ayatollah Khomeini and his circle wasted no time creating the conditions that would ultimately force women into hijab. Reading the tea leaves, in March 1979, calling for freedom of dress. But to no avail. The new Islamic regime gradually and stealthily forced women to cover their hair and adhere to Islamic laws in their clothing, first in the government buildings, and later in all public areas. Mandatory veiling became one of the most prominent and visible anti-women's rights policies that the new theocratic governing regime enforced.
That is why last year's unprecedented protests led by women and featuring their removal of headscarves was so monumental for the opposition and dangerous for the ruling establishment.
The Media-Power Nexus
As I argue in my book, Media and Power in Modern Iran, a critical component in the regime’s strategy to project and protect its power is dependent on its ability to demonstrate mass public consent to its rule. On holidays and times of political crisis, government backed media outlets run footage of pro-government demonstrations. The evident belief is that such depictions, broadcast all over the country, will serve as evidence that people not only consent to the system of rule but embrace it.
PROPAGANDA AT A CAPITOL CHECKPOINT: A FAKED ANTISEMITIC TEXT RESURFACES
War on the Rocks, Texas National Security Review
It was 7 p.m. on a Sunday in mid-March, and Zach Fisch was ready to go home. He walked down the marble halls of the Longworth House Office Building, where he worked as chief of staff to New York Rep. Mondaire Jones. As he headed to the big double doors of the exit, he passed a pair of Capitol Police officers guarding the entrance, running the X-ray machine and metal detector, and scrutinizing visitors’ bags and bodies for weapons that could be used to harm members of Congress or their staff. Fisch happened to glance over to a table near the officers’ workspace and was alarmed by what he saw: a dog-eared print-out of the world’s most notorious antisemitic text, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
For more than a century, this text, created by the Russian secret police, has been used to advance a powerful and persistent antisemitic myth: that Jews are plotting to take over the world. From Adolf Hitler to Henry Ford, rabid antisemites have championed the fabricated text as a historical document and published it widely. So what is this nearly 120-year-old lie doing in the hands of a Capitol Police officer in 2021?
It was 7 p.m. on a Sunday in mid-March, and Zach Fisch was ready to go home. He walked down the marble halls of the Longworth House Office Building, where he worked as chief of staff to New York Rep. Mondaire Jones. As he headed to the big double doors of the exit, he passed a pair of Capitol Police officers guarding the entrance, running the X-ray machine and metal detector, and scrutinizing visitors’ bags and bodies for weapons that could be used to harm members of Congress or their staff. Fisch happened to glance over to a table near the officers’ workspace and was alarmed by what he saw: a dog-eared print-out of the world’s most notorious antisemitic text, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
For more than a century, this text, created by the Russian secret police, has been used to advance a powerful and persistent antisemitic myth: that Jews are plotting to take over the world. From Adolf Hitler to Henry Ford, rabid antisemites have championed the fabricated text as a historical document and published it widely. So what is this nearly 120-year-old lie doing in the hands of a Capitol Police officer in 2021?\
AYATOLLAH MIKE AND THE IRGC'S GROWING CREDIBILITY GAP
IranSource, The Atlantic Council
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) has a problem. It is less powerful than it would have us believe. In attempting to bridge the gap between its real power and the image of power it hopes to project, it makes mistakes. Big mistakes, like shooting down a civilian airliner, as happened when a member of the IRGC mistook a Ukraine International Airlines flight for an enemy missile, killing 176 passengers and crew.
The fact is that almost every time the IRGC tries to inflate its power or cover up its misdeeds, it makes such mistakes. The IRGC’s attempts to fudge the facts and manipulate the news is creating a credibility gap: a breach in trust between the people and the government. The IRGC’s constant struggle to maintain its image—for both domestic and international audiences—offers Western policymakers seeking to gain more leverage over Tehran an opportunity in our approach to Iran. But we must first try and understand events from their perspective. In fact, the effort to “save face” is perhaps the greatest variable driving IRGC decision-making, including their worst blunders.
The purported killing of CIA operative Mike D’Andrea—better known as “Ayatollah Mike” or the “Prince of Darkness”—can be seen, in part, as an attempt to repair that gap, and another opportunity for the West.
THE LIES THAT STOKED CHARLOTTESVILLE VIOLENCE ENDURE
The TImes of Israel
Five years ago, my city was the unwilling host of the largest gathering of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other white supremacist groups in America in nearly eight decades. Six hundred men with flags, shields, body armor and weapons descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally was ostensibly to protest the city council’s planned removal of a statue of Confederate army leader General Robert E. Lee. It was, in reality and intention, the violent coming-out party of the new “alt-right” white supremacist movement in America.
It has been five years since the attack on Charlottesville. I haven’t spoken publicly about my personal experience as wife of the mayor, witness to and participant in the events, historian and media scholar. I feel compelled to now because of the breadth of the problem and the need to act quickly and forcefully against the common denominator of almost all lethal acts of white supremacists in America today: antisemitic conspiracy.
TRUMP KILLED SOLEIMANI BECAUSE HE DOESN’T WANT TO END UP LIKE JIMMY CARTER
Responsible Statecraft, The Quincy Institute
Over the course of less than two weeks, the Trump administration has marched the United States to the precipice of war with Iran. According to news reports, military commanders briefed Trump on the situation at his resort in Mar-a-Lago and presented him with a menu of options for the U.S. response. What made Trump choose the most extreme, most volatile option of assassinating Soleimani? Perhaps he made the decision based on intelligence about an imminent attack on Americans and American interests, as the administration will have us believe. Administration officials delivered this story to members of Congress in a 45-minute briefing widely criticized for its lack of content and coherence.
More likely, however, is that the decision was an emotional, knee-jerk response to a situation that looked all too familiar for the media-conscious septuagenarian sitting in the White House: the storming of the American embassy in Baghdad. While there are many explanations for why Trump would make what a vast majority of foreign policy analysts consider to be a terrible decision to assassinate a top Iranian government official, we should not discount the power of memory. Like many of his generation, Trump’s conception of Iran is indelibly linked to the experience of the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis. Viewed through this lens, killing Iran’s top general was just the medicine for a president frightened by Iran hostage crisis redux and bent on exacting revenge
HOW DID THE REVOLUTION BECOME "ISLAMIC”?
IranWire
In what has been deemed the “most important conquest of the revolution,” on February 11, 1979, Iranian activists seized control of the headquarters of the National Iranian Radio and Television Service (NIRT), and, with it, command over all Tehran-based radio and television broadcasting. In the days and months prior, Tehran had waffled between martial law and a civilian caretaker government under Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. Then, 10 days after Khomeini’s triumphant, masterfully staged return to Iran after 15 years of exile, the Shah’s caretaker government fell, along with the Imperial Army’s justification for continued occupation of the headquarters of NIRT, the state broadcasting monopoly.
The Tehran headquarters had continued to operate during the last throes of the revolution, and some staff had remained on the job to oversee a limited schedule of programming. Still others chose to quit in protest. They organized several days of general strikes, one of many public-sector strikes that brought the economy under the Shah to a standstill.
Ali Hosseini was among the employees who refused to work under the military occupation. But on February 11, 1979, Hosseini, along with a band of armed revolutionaries, returned to NIRT and demanded the military relinquish control to the state. Tanks were filmed leaving the NIRT compound later that day. At 6 pm that evening, Hosseini took to the airwaves to proclaim their conquest: “This is the voice of Tehran, the voice of true Iran, the voice of revolution."
This was the voice of revolution, but was it an “Islamic” revolution?
As we look back at four decades of politics and change in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is worth remembering (or perhaps discovering for the first time) the truly popular nature of the revolution at its origination. It is equally worth remembering how the people's revolution was co-opted by Khomeini’s faction of religious nationalists — a process that Michael Fischer once dubbed “the second revolution” of 1979.
MEET EBRAHIM RAISI, THE CLERIC WHO CHALLENGED INCUMBENT ROUHANI FOR PRESIDENT OF IRAN
The Conversation
Iranian presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi is an important newcomer to electoral politics.
Last year, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Raisi custodian of the shrine of Imam Reza and chairman of the foundation that manages its extensive complex. This is no minor post. The foundation nets the regime billions of dollars.
Before this year, Raisi had never campaigned for public office or debated in the national political spotlight. His inexperience has shown. In the three live nationally televised debates, he lacked charisma, sticking closely to his talking points.
While highly visible with the ability to influence public opinion and steer some aspects of national and foreign policy, the Iranian president’s power is limited. The majority of power, including that over foreign policy, national security and media, rests with the supreme leader.
Given the little he has to gain from the uncertain venture, why would Raisi decide to join a crowded field to run against the relatively popular incumbent Hassan Rouhani?