In Iran, Post-truth News is Old Hat

The Oxford English Dictionary has just declared “post-truth” to be its word of the year.  Suddenly the miasma of lies that ushered in Brexit and Donald Trump’s election victory have introduced the West to the reality of life in a post-truth swamp.  

Welcome to my world. Iranians have been wading in it for decades.

For example, let’s look at the way Iranian state-run television has explained world affairs and upheaval in our region.

It goes without saying that all the problems are basically the fault of the United States of America – but the story of just how the Great Satan goes about its plots regularly shifts in the post-truth political wind.

Iran’s original official account of the 9/11 attacks stated that the Americans did it to themselves.  The Arab hijackers were simply Salafist stooges trained and directed by the CIA.  And why did the CIA fly jets into the World Trade Center?  In order to justify America’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.  

But after 2014, with the war in Syria raging, Iran needed to vilify its arch-enemy Saudi Arabia. So the post-truth account shifted. In the current version of 9/11, the dastardly Saudis have become the instigators of the plot to bring down the World Trade Center.  

When the US recently de-classified 28 pages of the official 9/11 report, it was a gift to the post-truth writers at Iranian state TV.  The pages, they said, proved conclusively that Saudi officials were directly involved in the September 11 attack (for their mysterious but nefarious purposes), and the duplicitous Americans were determined to ignore it.  

Note to Western readers still learning the post-truth ropes: Conspiracy theories are a common feature.

Post-truth and Iraq

The post-truth narrative on Iraq has shifted over time too. Before 2011, Iranian state television blamed all of Iraq’s many problems on the US military occupying force.

Then the Americans withdrew.  

But it was not a problem for the post-truth masters at Iranian state TV to find someone new to blame for the mess. Yes, those Saudi-inspired Salafists, Takfkiris and al Qaeda had infiltrated the government, subverted the economy and led an armed uprising.

Naturally, they were cast as protégés of the US administration committed to toppling the shining beacon of Iranian governance in the Middle East. In fact, said state TV, without wicked Salafist/US interference, Shiites and Sunnis would be peacefully unified under the wise leadership of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. 

The latest scapegoat for the violence and unrest convulsing the Middle East is a favorite bogeyman of Khamenei – Western values. The narrative on state TV goes like this:  if the USA hadn’t sown the toxic seeds of humanism in the region, then fundamentalist Sunnis (yes, those Salafists again, along with pro-Daesh clerics) would not have taken up arms to fight back. With the Salafists safely dormant, peace would have broken out all over and Iran’s religious authorities would be leading the way to a calm and prosperous future.

In Iran’s current post-truth universe, the chief villains – America and the Salafists – play leading roles in a revisionist historical narrative. There is no room for inconvenient details like, for example, Russia’s actions.

Right now Russia is Iran’s ally in backing (sort of) Shiite President Bashar al Assad. That means Iranian state television never mentions how the Kremlin savaged Chechnya and bombed its capital, Grozny, flat. It also ignores the fact that Russian policies in Chechnya drove thousands of fundamentalist Sunni fighters into the ranks of al Qaeda and other extremist groups.  Viewers of state TV never heard that those same men have become suicide bombers in Dagestan and Tajikistan just over Iran’s borders. Others are now fighting Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq. 

Similarly, Iranian state TV never covers conflicts that are too complex for a post-truth snapshot.  I’m thinking of the ongoing struggle of separatist Muslims in Indian Kashmir, or the Kurdish fighters who are prepared to do battle against Iranian-backed militias.

In our post-truth universe, once an official lie has been exposed it vanishes. Think back to 2013, shortly before President Rouhani 's election victory. State television denied there were secret nuclear talks going on between Iran and America in Oman. In fact, the Supreme Leader’s international affairs advisor Ali Akbar Velayati specifically said no such negotiations would take place. We now know that was simply untrue, and that’s why you will never hear it mentioned on state TV.

I see another dilemma coming up for our post-truth government.  Iran has recently endorsed a political settlement in Lebanon in which the Sunni Saad Hariri would be named Prime Minister.   Iran would like to take credit for helping to secure the deal but to do that it will have to admit negotiating with its current arch- enemy Saudi Arabia. The propagandists must be hard at work right now on an account that satisfies the main post-truth objective – keeping the current leadership firmly in power.