The Fanonite

The BBC has replaced a story about the capture of the British servicemen which quotes a member of the Iraqi Vichy regime, Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim commander of Iraq’s territorial waters, as expressing “surprise that British forces were operating in the area”, with another, where claims of the British establishment are presented unchallenged. Elsewhere the BBC quotes the General saying “Usually there is no presence of British forces in that area, so we were surprised and we wondered whether the British forces were inside Iraqi waters or inside Iranian regional waters.” Now the Observer is reporting that “the Ministry of Defence hinted for the first time it may have made mistakes surrounding the incident. An inquiry has been commissioned to explore ‘navigational’ issues around the kidnapping and aspects of maritime law.” In other words, the sailors were in Iranian waters.

To me the whole debate sounds superfluous. Below is the map BBC published with its sanitized report that presumably proved the innocence of the soldiers. Maybe its just me, but that seems like an awful long way from where a British soldier ought to be.

Mujahedin-e-Khalq Offers Lifebuoy

In the same article, the Observer also reports, “Downing Street was passed evidence purporting to show that the arrest of the British sailors was planned days in advance. Hossein Abedini, spokesman for the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran [NCRI], said the arrests were a ‘meticulously concocted operation’ to divert attention from Iran’s nuclear programme.” What these astute journalists (including the terrorism ‘expert’, Jason Burke) don’t report, of course, is that NCRI is the political front for the neocon-connected Mujahideen-e-Khalq (People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or PMOI, in English), an organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and Iran. The group has close ties to the neocons and the Israel Lobby in the United States, with the AIPAC front organization, Iran Policy Committee (headed by WINEP fellow Raymond Tanter) campaigning for the past few years to get it off the State Department’s list of known terrorist organizations. According to Scott Ritter, MeK has been used since 2002 by the Israeli intelligence to publicize information on Iran’s nuclear program.

Sobhani [an Iranian con-artist] and CDI [Committee for a Democratic Iran, an AIPAC spinoff] provided an ideal solution, namely that the Israeli government use Reza Pahlavi as the mouthpiece for telling the world about what the Iranians were up to in the field of nuclear weapons, and in exchange Pahlavi would be given immedite credibility and with it front runner status in the race of those trying to rule Iran post-Mullah. Unfortunately for the Israelis and CDI, Reza Pahlavi balked…Undeterred, [Michael] Ledeen and the CI turned to the MEK, or more specifically, its political front in the Washingt, D.C., the NCRI, as the next best option to bring the Israeli intelligence to center stage. CDI reportedly lobbied the NCRI representative, Alireza Jaferzadeh, to serve as the mouthpiece for presenting the Israeli intelligence to the general public…Isareli intelligence had maintained a relationship with the MEK that dated back to the mid-1990s. (Ritter, Target Iran, p. xxv)

One of its vocal supporters in the US is the same Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of the Cuban and Israel Lobby fame. For a representative of a terrorist organization, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI’s representative in the US, receives remarkably generous access to US mainstream media. According to his own website:

Jafarzadeh has frequently appeared on major television and radio broadcasts including Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Evening News, NBC, ABC, BBC, Sky News, ITN, VOA, and NPR, to discuss Iran’s WMD program and terrorist activities around the world.

Jafarzadeh has published essays in, and been interviewed by, news outlets including New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Newsday, Austin-American Statesman, Time, Newsweek, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, United Press International, Space & Missile, Defense Week, and Arms Control Today.

Jafarzadeh has lectured in Georgetown University, University of Michigan, and National War College, and has been a frequent speaker at briefings, hearings and luncheons at the US Congress, the United Nations, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, American University, National Young Leaders Conference, and the Morning Newsmaker Program at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

In short, as long as your interests are aligned with the dominant elite of the reigning superpower, representing a terrorist organization is no impediment to success.

Good Old Shoe

In the film Wag the Dog, at one point the spindoctor, Robert De Niro, and a hollywood producer, Dustin Hoffman, come up with the idea of whipping up patriotic zeal among the citizens through the symbolism of old shoes thrown at trees, telegraph poles and so on, to represent the abandonment of Sgt. Shumacher — a deranged convict serving prisontime for raping a nun who is being elevated to the position of a hero to sell a phoney war orchestrated to help the president’s reelection amidst rumors of sexual impropriety – and soon they have all of America united in support of the president in his attempts to secure the release of ‘the good old shoe’.

Beyond hollywood, it is the “support our troops” yellow ribbons that play a similar role; they help the nation symbolically erase their own culpability in sending their fellow citizens off to probable death while professing support that entails nothing in the way of sacrifice. While the practice has its roots in the English Civil War, it has generally been in evidence more in the United States than in Britain. However, one consequence of the growing Americanisation of British culture is that many of the practices that Britain had bequeathed to the colonies, are now being recycled back, including yellow ribbons. So according to the Observer, “friends of one of the captives showed their concern by draping yellow ribbons over the Cornwall pub where he used to work”.