The Prague Post
October 8th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Prague accomodation
Prague Real Estate

Home » Archives » Opinion

Postview

Iran: One step forward, two steps back
Postview | Search restaurants | Archives

May 30th, 2007 issue

Two months ago, Majid Nili, the head of the Iranian Embassy in Prague, was given considerable space in these pages to express his country’s positions and feelings. With saber-rattling between Iran and the United States escalating at the time, it seemed useful to offer an unadultered view from “the other side,” without the spinning and propaganda that characterized the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Nili made a persuasive case for his country’s peaceful intentions, in particular its need for nuclear energy. Unfortunately, almost everything his country has done since undercuts what he said.
Barely two weeks after The Prague Post interview, Iranian authorities seized 15 British Royal Navy personnel in waters off the Iran-Iraq coast and held them hostage. Twelve days later, after a great deal of political posturing, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced a “pardon” for the sailors and returned them to their homeland.
Whether the British crew had in fact violated international borders was never definitively determined. And one could make the argument that Western forces constantly patrolling the edges of Iran are looking for trouble, particularly with major U.S. and UK forces in the Persian Gulf poised for action.
But Iran’s handling of the situation brought to mind nothing so much as the hostage crisis of November 1979, when Iranians seized U.S. Embassy personnel in Tehran and held 52 of them hostage for 15 months. That was part of a revolution under way in the country at the time, but the protracted use of the hostages for blatant political purposes did not win Iran any friends in the global community.
Nor will its current posture regarding Radio Farda journalist Parnaz Azima, whose detention in Iran is recounted in our lead story this week. Iran has a long history of restricting press freedoms; its abysmal ranking on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom list puts it in the company of nations such as mainland China, Myanmar and North Korea. To hold Azima and threaten to prosecute her for what Iran characterizes as “propaganda” broadcast by Radio Farda violates not only the spirit and intent of a free press, but basic notions of decency and human rights.
If Iran were a patient that could be put on a psychiatrist’s couch, the diagnosis would be clear: overaggressive behavior to compensate for massive feelings of inferiority and insecurity. While Iran insists, as Nili did in his Prague Post interview, that it be treated as an upstanding member of the world community, it acts like a petulant child, constantly taking whatever outrageous action it can to get global attention.
It’s frustrating, particularly with concurrent events such as the meeting earlier this week between U.S. and Iranian diplomats to find common ground on Iraq. The schizophrenic posture is to some extent a reflection of the situation inside Iran, where progressives and hard-line militants are struggling for influence and control. But the net effect is that every time Iran takes one step in the right direction, it takes two steps back.
Azima’s detention is also a reminder — not that any was needed after the brutal murder last fall of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya — that being a reporter is still a dangerous job in many parts of the world. We at the Post are fortunate to practice our craft in a peaceful setting. But we stand with our colleagues in their work establishing the free flow of information that is vital to democracy.


Other articles in Opinion (30/05/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.