Monday, January 01, 2007

Psywar, play-execution, and Divine Justice

Continuing Iranian coverage of the Saddam Hussein execution merits a post of its own. The following is nicely paranoid:

Mehr News: "Saddam execution being used in psywar against Iran: analyst"
Certain Arab states seek to take advantage of the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to launch a psychological war against Iran, political analyst Sabah Zanganeh said here on Monday.

After 14 months on trial, Saddam was hanged on Saturday for crimes against humanity, specifically the murder of 148 people in Dujail, Iraq in 1982.

“Avoid engagement with Iranians,” Saddam supposedly said before being put to death, IRNA reported.

Through those words Saddam intended to reinforce the media’s psychological war against Iran and leave “hidden bombs of conflict” in Iraq, Zanganeh said . . .

International affairs analyst Ali Aqamohammadi said, “The U.S. has become more despicable than Saddam.”

The U.S. sought to cover up its own crimes through the execution of Saddam so that future trials investigating the dictator’s offenses would not cause any trouble for Washington, Aqamohammadi told the Mehr News Agency on Monday.

“With the execution of Saddam, the most important witness of the West’s unfair actions and double standards was wiped out, and through the swift execution of his half-brother (former intelligence chief Barzan) al-Tikriti, the trials will be dismissed,” he said.

Certain Middle Eastern and Western states are using their media outlets, including Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, to connect Saddam’s execution to Iran and expand their influence in Iraq, he observed.
Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are working with the World Arrogance. I knew it all along! The next item just happens to be something I came across at IRIB. I don't know if it illustrates anything about Iran, but it's bizarre anyway:

IRIB: "Pak child imitated Saddam's hanging":
A young boy who tried to copy hanging scenes from the execution video of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein died in central Pakistan, police said Monday.

Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Saddam's hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home in Rahim Yar Khan district Sunday, a local police official said.

The father of the deceased boy said that his children had been watching the video of Saddam's execution on television and attempted to imitate the hanging as other family members thought they were playing in another room.

Police said that the death was accidental and a case of parental negligence.
The following is a variation of a current theme:

Fars News: "Rafsanjani: Execution of Saddam a Sign of Divine Justice":
Execution of Saddam is a sign of divine justice which God has promised to man, Chairman of Iran's Expediency Council Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said while addressing a large congregation of worshippers here in Tehran on Sunday.

The Eid Qurban Prayers leader congratulated the world Muslims on the advent of Eid Qurban (The Feast of Sacrifice), and further touched on the most important issues of the world of Islam.

As regards Iran's nuclear issue, he said all Iran's nuclear activities and programs are transparent and peaceful, stressing that they comply with all the international rules and regulations.

"The quality of our nuclear program is clear to all as there is no ambiguity in these nuclear activities and the Islamic Republic of Iran has frequently announced that it is ready to remove dark points, if any, through negotiations," Rafsanjani said.

He further stressed the point that the controversial ambiguities in the country's nuclear activities are a product of the opponents' efforts to stop Iran's nuclear progress, and mentioned, "Those objecting our peaceful nuclear activities have caused the ambiguities and the anti-Iran UN Security Council resolution is the result of such attitudes."
"Ambiguities" is a nicely vague word. Whatever they are, they were caused by "those objecting."
Rafsanjani also underlined that Iran will never give up its nuclear program and unfair treatment of the country over its atomic work will have consequences for the West and the Middle East.

The official further described the UN Security Council resolution as a collection of threats, and pointed out, "The resolution shows that enemies of Iran's Islamic Revolution have devised some plans against our country."

He called on the parties involved to act wisely, and warned them against the adoption of such measures which would be hard to compensate.

Rafsanjani warned enemies against adoption of hostile measures, and said that problems would inflict damage on both sides, adding, "Any fire ignited would be harmful for many. Due to the same reason, they should act wisely and refrain from doing anything dangerous; our officials too should settle the ongoing problems with generosity. Any problem by any of the parties would be hard to compensate."

Iran's parliament passed a bill on Wednesday obliging the government to "revise" its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to accelerate its drive to master nuclear technology in a reaction to the U.N. resolution.

The bill gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government a free hand to adopt a tougher line against the IAEA, including ending its inspections of Iran's atomic facilities.

Iran in February ended voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that allowed for short notice IAEA inspections of its nuclear sites in reaction to having been referred to the UN Security Council.

Rafsanjani insisted Iran "wanted to resolve the issue peacefully."

Touching on the current situation in the region, he blamed deployment of foreign troops as the root cause of all problems, and stated, "A survey of the problems in any of the regional countries reveals that presence of foreigners is the cause of all such mishaps and the underlying reason is that they don't favor restoration of tranquility and peace there." [...]

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