EU's public diplomacy disaster

Iran's public diplomacy's success in selling its dangerous nuclear plans to even moderates in Iran, I think, means that the EU has really failed.

The reason for this success lies in fact that the Iranian regime, by preventing and controlling the nuclear debate, managed to change two things: the issue and the narrative. (The EU never tried to create an alternative space ouitside Iran's control for a healthy debate.)

They changed the issue from something that was really about enrichment to something about the whole technology. They convinced the Iranians that Europe, with its terrible historical record in Iran, is fundamentally against Iran's technological advances, no matter what it is.

The EU failed to get their message to Iranian people that they are not against Iran's producing nuclear energy.

They also skillfully changed the narrative, disconnecting it from the present to the past; diverting it from their threatening, radical selves to the powerful, ideal image of the Great Persian Empire. As if, the nuclear technology–or even the bombs—would be in the hands of The Great Cyrus who thousands of years ago saved and sheltered Jews, not in the hands of Ahmadinejad who even doesn't believe that Holocaust happened.

The EU simply didn't provide an alternative narrative.

ّI don't talk about the US, because I think the confrontation is exactly what the Bush administration has wanted even before Ahmadinejad came to power.

Here is my article for the New Scientist:

Iran's nuclear fantasy

Even moderates Iranians appear to back a nuclear programme. Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan explains the success of the regime's propaganda coup

The New Scientist
April 8, 2006

“WE have the right to develop nuclear technology.” This is the surprising answer that many Iranians, secular or religious, give to western journalists asking about their country’s plan to expand their nuclear capabilities. But the west should not be too surprised by this.

The Iranian regime has been carefully and systematically shaping public opinion on this issue. Indeed, it has never before managed to sell its people an idea so successfully. It failed, for example, to rally public support for its campaign to cut ties with the US--in 2003 it imprisoned pollsters whose research showed that two-thirds of Iranians favoured a resumption of ties with the “Great Satan”, as Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of Islamic Revolution, called it.

How, then, has Tehran managed so effectively to control public opinion on the nuclear issue? First, it has forcefully prevented any debate around the question of whether Iran actually needs nuclear technology to produce energy (it’s a lot easier to raise support for something no one knows about). The Supreme Council of National Security regularly sends out explicit orders to the media detailing the regime’s official line, and how the media should discuss the nuclear programme or the negotiation process.

As a result, no article has yet been published in Iran discussing why a country with such rich oil and gas resources should need nuclear energy. There is also nothing being published about the environmental risks of nuclear technology. No one dares remind the public how a dysfunctional state in which tens of thousands of people die in road accidents and hundreds get killed in plane crashes every year can be trusted to keep its nuclear facilities safe and protected.

In the online world, things are even worse: Thousands of websites and blogs with political content have been blocked to users inside Iran. When Baztab, a popular news website edited from Tehran and run by Mohsen Rezaie, the former chief commander of the revolutionary guard and now an influential politician, criticised the negotiation processes, it was immediately banned and ordered to shut down by the judiciary. Last month the regime blocked the popular and trustworthy BBC Persian’s news website after the EU joined the US in demanding that Iran be referred to the UN Security Council.

Apart from censorship, Tehran has found another way of managing the way nuclear matters are discussed. It has cleverly changed the narrative of the debate, linking it to the ancient history of Iran rather than to the present political landscape. It has cast itself, not as the uncompromising regime that it is, but as guardian of the Persian Empire of old, turning the nuclear programme into a matter of national pride.

A good example of this is the way it manipulated the storyline of an extremely popular TV comedy series called Barareh Nights, set in a small fictional village called Barareh some 70 years ago. The series is a sarcastic take on social and economic issues in today’s Iran, and one of the sub-plots involves an Anglo-American asking villagers to let him enrich their peas, their most popular snack--a clear reference to the request from the US and Europe that Iran enrich its uranium abroad. In the show, the man fattens the peas by soaking them in water then tries to sell them back to the villagers at twice the price.

Another example is the soccer match between Persepolis of Tehran and Bayern Munich that took place in Iran in January, when Iranian TV relentlessly reminded viewers in English and Persian that “peaceful use of nuclear energy is our country’s unquestionable right”. The producers implied that since the Germans had agreed to come and play, they must also have agreed with the slogan.

The west has spectacularly failed to influence the nuclear debate in Iran, but it could. While traditional media and the internet are heavily censored, Tehran has not been able to control satellite TV. Millions of households in Iran have access to a wide range of Persian channels, mostly run by the large Iranian community in California. These channels are filled either with cheesy shows and music videos, or overtly political and poorly made talk-shows produced by a group of dissidents who haven’t been to Iran in two decades.

During the months leading up to the Iranian presidential elections last June, the US government used propaganda and political analysis on these satellite channels to try to persuade Iranians to boycott the election, hoping a low turn-out would destabilise the regime. It didn’t work, but it’s time the EU took a leaf out of its book. There are many educated and moderate Iranians, in Europe willing to launch TV channels with a small amount of funding that could then be used to give Iranians an alternative picture of why they’d be foolish to let their president get his hands on technology that could eventually give him a nuclear weapon. It’s not too late--but it soon will be.

Hossein Derakhshan writes the bilingual blog "Editor: Myself" (hoder.com)