Iran News Now Reporting When Facilities DON’T Explode

Instructions to FARS and smaller news operations included provisions outlining measures to avoid mentioning the same undamaged facilities too often.

Tehran, July 20 – The Islamic Republic’s official media agency changed tacks today as a result of the string of mishaps, suspected sabotage, and other disasters befalling the country in recent weeks, opting to save time, energy, and journalistic resources by noting in each story which strategic installations have NOT suffered irreversible damage.

Iran’s FARS news agency issued a new directive to its regional offices Monday, to the effect that they must find at least one facility per day – a power plant, military base, natural gas facility, oil refinery, port, or other strategic locale – that has yet to incur destruction, and to focus attention on that achievement. The morale-boosting shift in approach comes after numerous accidents, failures, or outright sabotage have damaged or rendered unusable a port serving a nuclear facility that Iran has closed to international inspectors; a missile assembly depot; a nuclear centrifuge center; and other important installations such as power plants and infrastructure.

“Editors and the journalists serving under them will strive to identify and highlight one (1) strategic facility per province per day that remains standing and operational,” the directive stated. “This new requirement will serve the dual purposes of reinforcing civic confidence in the government in the face of Zionist-led aggression, and conserve resources that otherwise will be spent on discussing the more numerous, and demoralizing, incidents involving our country’s strategic installations.”

Separate instructions to FARS and smaller news operations included provisions outlining measures to avoid mentioning the same undamaged facilities more than once in close succession, even if and when such repetition becomes necessary as the country’s civilian and military infrastructure crumbles under sabotage, neglect, and inability to conduct proper maintenance amid ongoing crippling sanctions – and amid the regime’s prioritization of its pursuit of regional hegemony and terrorism over the welfare and safety of its citizens.

FARS launched a similar editorial policy today covering Iran’s aviation and air defense arenas, to highlight how many flights have not been shot down by trigger-happy or misinformed surface-to-air missile battery operators, with a tally of such flights reaching the hundreds since the downing of a Russian civilian airliner last year after the American assassination of Qods Force commander and arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani. The same approach characterizes the regime’s approach to two other major issues: banning coverage of militiamen who return dead from fighting in Iraq or Syria; and finding one person per day whose family has not suffered from a burgeoning COVID outbreak that the Ayatollahs have mismanaged from day one.

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