In NY I’ll Have To Keep Reminding Myself I Can’t Just Jail Nosy Reporters

by Javad Zarif, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran

Tehran, July 16 – During my current visit to the Big Apple, I will need to keep in mind that I cannot react to challenging questions from journalists by signaling to my staff that those journalists must never breathe fresh air again. The rules in New York differ from those here are home, and I must prepare to adapt to those differences.

In Iran the ruling class need not concern itself with the possibility that a reporter will mention inconsistencies, problems, or crimes of regime personalities or organs, because for four decades now, the Islamic Revolution has maintained a firm policy of detaining, torturing, and executing anyone who points out such things. When I travel abroad, however, especially to Western countries that have no idea how to exert government control of the media, the safety of regime-approved reporting dissipates, and other tactics for maintaining control of the narrative come to the fore. I’ll have to refrain from ordering the detention and brutalizing of anyone while I’m stateside.

Not to imply that reporters will, in fact, challenge me while I’m there. The vast majority of big-name journalists in the US need no encouragement to parrot the Tehran line. As one American pundit put it, the impending restrictions on my movement while I’m there – allowed to move between the UN and the offices of Iran’s delegation to that august body – will simply mean that instead of meeting in hotels, restaurants, or other venues, Obama’s lackeys at CNN, NBC, the NY Times, and the Washington Post, among others, will have to come to me in one of those two locales to get their talking points. Inconvenient in some ways, and it works as the humiliation Trump intends, but it does simplify things.

But not all American reporters drank the JCPOA echo chamber Kool Aid, which means some are bound to ask embarrassing questions about our public executions of homosexuals; our constant threats to annihilate Israel; our financing and fomenting of terrorism around the globe; our continual violations of the very nuclear deal these reporters’ colleagues work so hard to promote; our brutal political repression; and our tactic of holding Western hostages as a negotiating tool, just to mention a few. I must prepare myself to deflect, evade, and sugar-coat with copious resort to euphemism, because the option of making pesky journalists disappear will remain unavailable.

That is, until our allies in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party gain power and really implement our agenda.

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