Iran's media at war

Täs bibisi podcast, eivät se poti by ads outside the UK. Täällä on tuntia. Koti maista tuote perheistä löydet maistuvaa jokaisen rookahetkeen. Koti maista, tästä maasta ja äsruimen rookakaupoista. On 28. februari. Uus- ja Israel on ottaa tako niran, kuten jälkeen ja käsisessä on tuntia. Nyt käsisessä on tuntia, se on tuntia, kuten jälkeen ja näistä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia, käsisessä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia. Käsisessä on tuntia, käsisessä on tuntia, käsisessä on tuntia. "Toijon rewarding gaaviomalla ja luittaa tuille Thanks" - ja on tande het镜ä hakkota osa terojittaa interchangeella. "I'm Krassi, even over twig, and this is the global jigsaw from BBC monitoring, where we look at the world through the lens of its media, exploring the narratives, the propaganda and the disinformation." "Radio Tehran, oi itargalis, ne teritori ukraini." "What some countries are not international community, that era has finished." "I'm just a young doja, toomjeterkiettana." "To fully immerse ourselves in the Iranian war narratives, it's useful to understand the propaganda playbook. Just weeks before the US-Israeli strikes, the authorities ordered a crackdown on mass protests. Tens of thousands were killed according to some human rights organizations. "Information, the authorities wanted to conceal, and they have formed in doing that." "Watching for exactly this kind of media behaviour, Barry Sedith from our Iran team spends his days glued to state TV." "After the January protests, we did have articles on reports around state raids on hospitals targeting protesters, the newspaper that published those articles, had my own. Our former outlet was almost immediately shut down, and the journalist responsible prosecuted as well. And that's the kind of the edge, if you like, that ensures the journalist that might be more likely to cross that line. We'll think twice because of the regime of prosecution, because of our very restrictive laws around what the Iranian government would describe as misinformation." "The prosecution is one form of information control, but there are other tools as well, including the rumored internet kill switch." "Probably the most egregious impact of these information restrictions, the internet blackout and particularly has been the difficulty of Iranians contacting one another, as in the most reliable source of any kind of local information around the war in the conflict would be actual other Iranians, and also of course the difficulty in some of contacting the outside world and getting any kind of information." "In the age of constant connectivity, Iranians found themselves once again cut off from each other and from the world. Nushin, another colleague from our Iran team, explains what that meant." "When the war started, it seemed that telephone and landlines were also cut off, and it got to the point where there is absolutely no way you can get in touch with your loved ones." "A few days after the war started, people could reach out to one another, but it was a bit intermittent." "What does that mean for the media diet? What sources of news are available?" "You would have the state broadcaster, TV channels on, you can access TV, radio, newspapers, limited access to internet, and good access to satellite TV as well." "Satellite TV carries material the authorities view as enemy propaganda, and it has been targeted through legislation." "It's illegal to have a foreign satellite dish, but it's a law that's essentially not enforced, so it's incredibly common. The majority of Iranians will have access normally to those foreign-based Iranian news channels." "If they work, that is." "The Islamic Republic is operating jammers, sometimes ineffectively, to block access to, for example, Iran, international, BBC Persian." "That means these information-starved Iranians would have to, perhaps, to stay in media, and what they've been giving is this version by the Islamic Republic, and that's one of a totally mobilized public swearing revenge." Iranians have always found ways around internet restrictions, often by using VPNs, but this time it seems the screws have been tightened. "Vpians have played a specifically interesting role in this war. I think there's been explicit warning sent around by text that people found using VPNs will be prosecuted and encouraging Iranians to inform one other Iranians using VPNs. Occasionally people are able to break through the VPNs, or by using styling terminals, which were actually jammed by the Islamic Republic during the January protest. And now have also been banned with the government warning that people will be prosecuted for owning the terminals." Let's pause for a moment on the idea that the state sends warnings directly to people's mobile phones. These are said to have increased both in frequency and in scope. "This is a new trend, I'd say, in the past few years. I remember a few years back, women who were not observing the hijab, they would get text messages saying that you were spotted in so-and-so location, not wearing your headscarf properly, or sometimes they said a message saying, "You've been summoned." Obviously it is very scary, but in terms of mass messaging to the entire nation, I'd say it is becoming more and more frequent. So those text messages could have provided that kind of information to avoid certain areas or way to get help and so on. But instead, what kind of messages do they send? They send threats, warnings about what? "Do not collaborate with the enemy, do not post social media messaging that is in support of the enemy, do not post videos of the areas that have been hit and struck by the enemy." It's not unusual for a country at war to not want to release details about damage to military targets, back to those mass messages. "This is the main line of communication between Iranians and the state, and it's less about public safety, shelter guarding themselves from the airstrikes and more so about threats of prosecution." For the avoidance of any doubt, the chief of the police issued an extra warning on state TV. "If someone acts as the enemy's behest, we will regard them as the enemy, and we will treat them as we treat the enemy. All our team have their fingers on the trigger, ready to defend the revolution." Meanwhile, information about safety is conspicuously absent from state media. At the time of war, there are no clear instructions for safety measures, for people to go to certain areas for sheltering, or there are no audible alarm systems to notify people that attack is imminent. "I have also seen social media footage and heard some audible sirens in them, but that is very limited, and it is unclear whether that kind of alarm system is actually functioning, or it's just in random places and areas." "Let's take you inside those dramatic opening days of the war and how they were framed." "It didn't take long for the bombing to be acknowledged on air." As the war came to dominate the day, what followed was a carefully curated narrative. They have a wall-to-wall coverage of this war. The state broadcaster, the TV and the radio, as well as a lot of news outlets, are downplaying or very often completely ignoring their attacks on military sites. And they are instead highlighting civilian casualties and damages to civilian infrastructures like hospitals, schools. On the first day, a girl school was hit in Minaab, set to be by an American missile. Although the U.S. defense secretary has denied it, more than 150 people were killed. It shocked the nation. On that very first day, rumors started spreading that the Supreme Leader had been killed. At first there was an official denial. Confirmation was delayed until the next day. We had the vision of this kind of shaking TV presenter in tears sobbing as he announced a death. In his words, the mountain of the revolution, the guardian of the Islamic Republic, our loving father, Ayatollah Ali Khaminay. Essentially from that point, the core of all-state media coverage has been the former Supreme Leader. And people rushed to the streets and started crying and sobbing. Yat Joah Yakhali. And there were a life footage of people beating their chests or their foreheads. And there were very angry and saying that they wanted revenge. Initially the TV switched into a morning mode, but I think after a day that changed into more combative tone of now is the time to take revenge. And the nation is ready to get martyred for the leader. What do you think are they achieving with this change of tone towards the martyred? Themes. Martyrdom is an ingrained concept for Shia Muslims. And this could mean that they want the country to be united and rally around the flag. At the time of war, they want people to sacrifice their lives for their motherland. This is something very specific to Shia Muslims, who are the majority of Iran and the minority in the world of Muslim world. And it's their specific tradition that draws on the energy of the martyred imams in history. And that's part of the energy that also drove the original Islamic revolution as well, where people mobilized. Every street, every square, we have constant marches and these marches center on morning. Whether it's the morning of local people who died in airstrikes, as they have in provinces across Iran, but more essentially morning of Ayatollah Hamine. And what we have seen is that every night, mostly pro-government and pro-establishment groups, they get together in Tehran in other big cities. And they kind of show that sense of unity, saying that we are ready for this war facing all these attacks. I don't know. In its worth, introducing the point here about the role of mourning and death, specific in Shia Islam culture. If someone dies in the service of a cause, their death means much, much more than their life. And it galvanizes as opposed to being caused for depression or even despair. So with Hamine's death, we had the building up of his own martyr legend. The Americans and Israel essentially gave the Supreme Leader perfect death. Hamine didn't die of a heart attack. He was killed by a foreign enemy while on duty leading the nation under attack. This is the narrative that secured his legend. Hamine wasn't really killed in a bunker 50 meters below the ground. He wasn't killed in a secret compound far away from the capital or preparing to flee to Russia. Some rogue reports suggested he was killed in his own compound, which is as known to Iranians as 10 Downing Street would be for British people. And he was killed alongside the majority of his family, several of his sons and daughters and his daughter and two of his grandchildren as well. How was this visualized on TV? What we had were state media even issuing pictures of his kitchen table, like a very ordinary dining room, but covered in dust debris from the air strike, and commentators saying that Hamine died the death that he wanted the death of a kind of a holy warrior fighting in his words for the enemy. That's exactly what has galvanized the social base of the Islamic Republic. When we see them mourning the Supreme Leader, they're not only mourning, but they're stating their anger, their desire for revenge. That's something common we've seen between the incessant boxpops broadcast by state media. Sins of just constant daily mobilization in Iran, for example, this kind of dominance of the street by vans and trucks of loudspeakers constantly blaring, nashid's, or time songs. Mourning songs led by processions of mourners, chanting out the Islamic Republic's lurgan. The central part of this war time state broadcasting has been music, but also right at the beginning of the war we had the signalling of the beginning of hostilities by Iranian state media constantly playing this jingle that dated back to the Iran-Iraq war. And on top of that we've had constant music videos, music accompanying almost hype videos of Iranian military hardware. That's the soundtrack basically of this war time media coverage. Hamini became the focal point of the discourse. He was eulogized by his followers who went through his back catalogue in search of nuggets of wisdom. There's also this incessant rehashing of his previous speeches and these cover subjects ranging from, of course, the Islamic Revolution, various organs of the Islamic Republic, Hamini just meeting and greeting children for example. Maybe a child will kind of gently ask Hamini for his ring and Hamini will give it to him. Another child will ask for his robe and Hamini will very generously again give that child his robe or he'll be discoursing on French literature, the differences between the French revolution and the Iranian and Russian revolutions for example. Hamini apparently loved to post his thoughts on X on everything from world literature to his brand of feminism. Hamini had a notorious Twitter account posted a lot about his love of treating women the right way. Woman is a flower as one of his famous tweets went. I think if it's during the Iran-Israel war that's several of the former Supreme leaders tweets went viral about his love of literature, Victor Hugo especially. What could you read into what happened shortly after the death was announced? What we saw on state media were reflected the new kind of shifting landscape of power that was happening behind the scenes. One figure in particular had been given a quite powerful and widespread portfolio by the Supreme Leader and there's someone who had a direct connection to him. This is the security chief or the head of the National Supreme Security Council. Ali Laurie Johnny, the Laurie Johnny it was given a broad role in the new clip portfolio. He had taken charge in terms of masterminding the repression that happened around the surge of protests on January 8th and 9th and he had also been tasked by the Supreme Leader with the preparation for the expected war of the U.S. and Israel. He's even engaged in a kind of war of words, a spout of Trump. I think one of his initial interviews he said they've burned our hearts, meaning the Supreme leader we will burn their hearts. Laurie Johnny's wartime role was short-lived. He was killed on the 17th of March. The figures like Ali Laurie Johnny, while their position can be replaced, they profile car. Someone of his wealth of experience, his kind of connections and also his authority in terms of commanding different people. areas like in the diplomatic fields, military field in terms of domestic repression. The more that these figures are being called, the more decentralized the war becomes, and the more it's effectively directed by these local IOTC commanders, armed of missiles and drones, and working according to instructions given to them before the outbreak of the war, which is what the Iranians had planned for, and the more decentralized the conflict is, the harder it is eventually to stop, there'll be no one left with the authority to actually negotiate with. You are listening to the Global Jigsaw from BBC Monitoring. The IRGC or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the pillar of Terran's enforcement apparatus. It's officially part of the Iranian armed forces charged with, and I quote, "the protection of the ideological integrity of the Islamic Revolution. It's a prescribed terrorist organization in the EU, the US, and some other countries." One of the main topics is Iran's and the IRGC's attacks on Israel and the US bases in the Persian Gulf region. They love to highlight the support they get from the Lebanese Hezbollah and the resistance groups in Iraq who have so far attacked US bases in Iraq. They often say that they have hit several US bases, and there's a large number of casualties among US forces. As much as Terran wants to emphasize the damage it inflicts on its enemy, the capital in Gulf-Tin black smoke one morning couldn't be ignored. Israeli air strikes brought about these really apocalyptic scenes of dark black clouds, blanketing Terran. After this enormous fire that broke out of the fuel refineries, but what many people may not know is that in Terran what you have are these things called "Jubes Streetside Gutters" essentially. You have them in much of the Persian-speaking world, actually. What happened is that after the destruction of these refineries, the oil that's spilled from them, filtered into these "Jubes Streetside Gutters" but also fired. We had images from Iran of these streets lined on both sides of Roosevelt and what followed was actually black rain. People reported this kind of "pardery black material" coming down as well. The foreign ministry spokesman described it as an "ecoside" and again this attack fed into the kind of Iranian state narrative that this is not just an attack on the regime but an attack on the Iranian state itself. You were listening to the Global Jigsaw from DDC Monitoring. Then came a surprising twist. Days after Iran launched strikes on neighboring Gulf countries, its own allies among them, President Masood Pesyshkyan issued an apology. "I must apologize on my own behalf and behalf of Iran to the neighboring countries that were attacked by Iran. No more attacks will be made and no missiles will be fired unless an attack on Iran originates from those countries." He suggested these attacks were carried out under the so-called "fire at will" as the death of senior Iranian officers disrupted central command structures. "I did not expect any of the officials to come out and apologize for the attacks but later he had to clarify he regretted that people were unsettled because of the attacks in the region." Pesyshkyan, although he always had the endorsement of the late Supreme Leader, he was still coming from the Reformist camp. He wasn't really close to the real power center, which is the Heartliners and the IRGC especially. He tried to have that softer tone, a diplomatic approach, at the time where the Heartliners want revenge, literally avenging for the blood of their own leader. When he comes out on the apologizes, it doesn't really sit well with them. What was the reaction to them? A lot of MPs and officials called out, one of them said that he better not talk at all and described his words as "very unwise, unprofessional and very weak." Immediately after that Donald Trump said, "Oh, so Iran has surrendered." And that was the moment where everything went mad. The Foreign Minister at Bosnara actually kind of came to the rescue and said, "Trump absolutely killed the de-escalation attempt by Pesyshkyan." That's probably the most interesting episode for this kind of disagreement amongst the Islamic Republics, newly adopted the Supreme Leader's death. This backlash from Heartliners made it very clear that Iran would strike whoever it willed within the region, that harbored US interests as they interpreted it. And I think actually Pesyshkyan's statement was one of the reasons that the appointment of the new Supreme Leader was fast-tracked because of the annoyance of Heartliners of this kind of rogue element within the state. I think Pesyshkyan has been genuinely hurt by the damage done to Iran's regional relations, by this war that Iran was engaging in in order to really create enough global economic chaos to force the US and Israel to back off. As Barry put it nicely, the election of the new Supreme Leader was fast-tracked with a sense of urgency. Large crowds were watching the announcement in town square. What's known about Mustafa Hamenay, who was apparently going to take on the mantle of his late father? Early on, people mentioned his name, impassing, but he always preferred to state behind the scene and pulled strings apparently behind everything. I think it's worth recalling that his someone who has held no public office has made no public appearances. His spent a lifetime as a cleric and reportedly also administering his father's office and controlling access to the Supreme Leader. Also, it's worth recalling that the Supreme Leader publicly would say, "Well, he was a like, that he didn't want a kind of a dynastic succession." And this was against the spirit of the Islamic Republic as opposed to the monarchy they overthrew. But what we had instead was state narrative made possible again by the death of Hamenay. Instant jubilation, again instant mobilization of people on the streets. The state organized these public ceremonies in which crowds of people could swear, oaths of allegiance to the new Supreme Leader. And the state narrative as we had it from the mouths of the people was that Hamenay has been made decades younger. We've not lost Hamenay, we have a rejuvenated Hamenay instead. But also Trump saying early in the war that the one candidate we do not want at all is Hamenay's son, that is a candidate that would be unacceptable to us. So could it be that Donald Trump inadvertently helped with that election? Maybe it was a brilliant reverse psychology ploy and this is exactly the candidate that Trump wanted all along. But there were reportedly divisions among Islamic Republic's elites about who they wanted to come to power. But really I think as much as anything it's about ascending a message of defiance, that the one that's closest to the former Supreme Leader who you assassinated is now the one that's in charge. With attention fixed on the new leader, the silence from him over the course of the next days was audible. Moshe the Bahamani is yet to release a much anticipated video address to the nation. A statement which could have been written by anybody came days after his succession. Everyone is expecting to see him to hear the first words from him because actually nobody has really heard how he speaks. Do you know for sure he is alive? Well that's a good question. There are rumors that he might be injured. There has been an indication. The state TV called him the veteran of the war, meaning that he has been injured. We don't know actually what happened to him. With the truth boxed in, Moshe the Bahamani could be dead and alive at the same time, in true Schrodinger style. In terms of his attitude, he's set to be close to the IRGC, everyone is expecting him to be very hard-line as his father. So immediately after the announcement, several people went to their rooftops and started saying that the Moshe the Bahamani was dead. You couldn't hear this on state media. Such acts of bravery are hard to fathom. Just weeks after the authorities crushed a mass protest with unprecedented brutality. On satellite TV, there were footage of opposition TV channels who tried to blur out the faces of those people. Now people have become so savvy, they don't really film faces. They ask people to cover their faces. Those who are opposing the Islamic Republic were celebrating the night that the announcement came that a harmony was killed. I read on social media that people would go out and look at that one and only. another and there was a wink, there was a smile and then they would just walk past each other because they cannot really display their happiness, especially during the day. Iran is a country under attack. In times of war, it's common practice for the state to impose certain reporting restrictions, as was the case with Ukraine's media at war and spice it up with a generous amount of defiance. The message that they want to communicate was that this is an existential struggle, not just a war against the regime or the Islamic public. This is really a war against the Iran itself. And I think that's probably a narrative that's in the sense has actually been helped by the statements that we've seen from the US and Israel, whether that's Trump saying that the shape of Iran might not be the same after the war or reports of the US and Israel engaging with Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan to perhaps engage in a proxy war on their behalf. Is this kind of messaging work to unify the nation? I don't think this messaging will work to heal a very, very polarized nation. I think there are some Iranians that are so aggravated by the Islamic Republic that they were willing to endure a war with Israel in the US if the result was somehow the removal of the state apparatus. I don't think any amount of messaging from the leadership of the Islamic Republic will somehow bring those people on side or the people mourning the protesters that died on January 8th and 9th. But I think the result of it is you have a much more kind of mobilized, galvanized base elements of which like members of the Bessigian militia who would be the instruments of repression as we saw in January. And I think many Iranians there may be indifferent or hostile to. And an American-Israelian invasion that's targeting civilian infrastructure. What they're seeing is the destruction of their country. Iranians have grown resilient. They have lived through many years of hardship and are prepared for the worst. People were anticipating the war. So I know that a lot of people bought staple food, candles, you know, anticipating power cuts. Older generation who've seen the war with Iraq. They suffered eight years of it. They actually used some of the techniques that we did during the war. They had tapes on their windows. Don't sleep close to their windows or they go to their basements to take shelter because there are no really functioning shelters around. While Iranians were bracing for more trouble, state TV boasted about gains. It feels like there's this underlying sense of achievement in their tone. As if disrupting parts of global economy has given them power. The message is like don't mess with us. We can shake the system if we choose to. There's the sense of praising the military for being able to kind of hit the targets around Gulf countries, stopping the movement of the ships in this rate of almost. They're very proud of that because they actually managed to have a big impact on global economy. We started this program with restrictions on connectivity and how access to the internet was denied to the majority of the population, but not to everyone. Iranian officials seem to love posting on X formally to its different people at different levels of the state are granted internet access through the so-called white SIM cards which are believed to run into the tens of thousands. Alongside the kind of state broadcasting efforts to show the specific image of the Iranian people, we've also been seeing the social media clips emerge. Again, a box pops with the Iranian people, some of which have even gone viral on Western social media sites. One that went viral, that was of a man on the street in Tehran, interviewing people and showing them videos of supposedly Iranian diaspora celebrating that's a way that he sold it to the people's interviewing on the street who reacted with predictable horrors. Why would these people celebrate the fact that we're being bombed? The interview has some kind of level of state access and I think it's that kind of sophisticated media operation that they've brought to the programme. You get the picture, this isn't business as usual. The already well-oiled narrative creating machine is now running at full throttle. Its audience, a polarized nation. What is it achieving? One reason they're restricting the internet is the fear of infiltration. In terms of tracking their movements, listening to their calls and hacking, and that's where they have been issuing all these warnings and threats. But, Iranians have become so savvy and they have always found a way to interact with the outside world. The entire country is under internet blackout, yet you know how they're living, you know what's happening, you know what areas have been hit, how people feel at difficult times. So information is trickling out, yes. I think now you have a sharper distinction between the so-called enemy and the traitors and the counter revolutionaries and the Iranian people as described in the state narrative. It's an incredibly polarized and harsh atmosphere and that's something that will again be the grounds for justifying even more violent repression should we see the return of protests either during the course of the war, which is unlikely or after the end of the war, whenever that may be. Thank you to our Iran experts, Nushin and Barisadid. This programme was produced by Chris the Shatteri, Barisadid and me, Chris, even over twig. It was mixed by Anthony Sutton. As always you can write to us. Our email address is the [email protected] and thank you for listening. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service, Jack Butcher explores the revival of Europe's night trains. A decade ago, sleeper trains in Europe were on the decline. We're on the point where this whole thing may die out. But with renewed interest, can night train services get back on track? The demand is still there. Listen now by searching for BBC The Documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. 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