Iranian protesters “confess”: Er, yeah, the whole thing’s a foreign plot

Just a reminder for our studiously unmeddling president that he’s going to be accused of meddling anyway. And yes, hard to believe though it may be, there really are people in Iran who’ll believe it. Thirty years of nonstop propaganda will do that to you. To wit:

“That’s what comes from pouring into the streets,” was my mother’s casual reaction when I showed her the clip [of Neda's murder]. My mother is hardly a callous person. On Friday, when the supreme leader declared in his nationally broadcast sermon that he is willing to give his life for “upholding Islam,” my mother—like most people listening, including a prayer hall filled with grown men—wept.

She was not touched by the video of Neda because it was not compatible with her essential presumptions. She cannot believe, for instance, that a Basij member could kill an innocent girl. To my mother, Basij members are the embodiment of everything admirable: They are deeply religious and completely devoted to the supreme leader. Their demeanor resembles that of the “martyrs”—those killed during the Iran-Iraq war. My mother’s brother was a young Basij member who was killed during the war. She could not believe someone so much like her brother could have murdered an innocent girl…

Her offhand reaction, however, offended me. She was quick to detect my indignation. “Son, you and your brother have been brainwashed by the Western media…Why do you believe everything they say?” This is our parents’ typical line when they encounter the deep chasm that separates our way of thinking. It is completely futile to debate and determine who is actually being brainwashed. Like us, they have not suddenly formed their outlook in a day, as a result of open debating with someone.

My brother and I often forget that the state-run TV is almost the only way our parents, like many Iranians of their generation, get information. The state knows this very well. That’s why Jam-e-Jam, Islamic republic’s broadcasting building, is one of the most heavily fortified sections of Tehran.

If you missed Hitchens’s piece yesterday in Headlines about how crucial anti-western conspiracy theories are to modern Iranian culture, catch up now. It’s an essential gloss on what you’re about to see and a useful commentary on The One’s naivete in thinking that his (relative) silence will exempt him from this treatment. Below the NBC clip you’ll find one from a propaganda outlet called Russia Today, recycling the same anti-American crap for the benefit of its similarly deluded, similarly cloistered Russian audience. Nothing surprising to it, but it’s darkly amusing in the same way Baghdad Bob was. Exit question via Richard Engel: Iran’s banning use of the phrase … “Allahu Akbar”? Or does he mean just on rooftops?

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