Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

I generally don’t read FT so I had missed this. First there was the Michael Gordon report in the New York Times, then there was Simon Tisdall’s propaganda piece in Guardian, and it now appears the Financial Times is being used for neocon propaganda (Calling it ‘Pentagon propaganda’ is inaccurate. The pentagon is not keen on this war. The only remaining dogs of war hold trench at the Vice President’s office [David Wurmser] and the NSA’s office [Elliot Abrams]). The FT allegations are even less credible: we are told the Shia Iran is allowing Salafist Al-Qaidah to use its territory for launching attacks against its allies in the Vichy government of Iraq. (Many thanks to my friend H for bringing this to my notice)

This prompted the following response from UK based Iranian scholars, which FT chose not to publish.

In the context of the widely-reported ambitions of US neo- conservatives to mount a military attack on Iran, we, Iranian/British academics, are disappointed to note that your article (Al-Qaeda linked to operations from Iran by Stephen Fidler dated 8th July 2007) adds the Financial Times to the list of “reputable” newspapers prepared to engage in amplifying the drum beats of a new and bloody war in the Middle East…

Indeed, the FT is but the last of the British “quality” newspapers with the exception of the Independent to run recent front-page stories claiming that Iran is a major factor in the Iraqi insurgency.

However, any Middle-East expert would have told you that the likelihood that the Shia Iranian regime is backing Sunni extremists in Al-Qaeda is slim in the extreme. Of course Iran has its clients in Iraq, as everyone knows, they are members of the Iraqi government. Why should Iran back the mortal enemies of SCIRI and the Da’wa?

Only this weekend, the Associated Press reported that the leader of an al-Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shiites in Iraq. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the group Islamic State in Iraq, said on a website commonly used by insurgent groups that his Sunni fighters have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Shiite-dominated Iran, the agency reported.

In the run-up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq, Pentagon and MoD officials manipulated a credulous media to plant “news” stories bolstering the case for war. We are witnessing in the same process in the British press once more, this time pushing for military action against Iran. Briefings with unnamed officials are a classic means by which governments and the military place their propaganda in the media. It is the ABC of journalism to treat such sources with scepticism.

When the New York Times on February 10 splashed with “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made By Iran”, sourced from those same unnamed officials again, the newspaper was widely condemned for resurrecting the “Judith Miller school” of journalism. It is a sad day indeed if the Financial Times has also failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq WMD fiasco and is adding its voice and reputation, wittingly or unwittingly, to those of the Pentagon hawks.

Signatures:
Dr. Mehri Honarbin-Holliday, Canterbury Christ Church University
Dr. Elaheh Rostami-Povey, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London
Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, London Middle East Institute
Professor Haleh Afshar, OBE, University of York
Professor Abbas Edalat, Imperial College London