BBC Persian: a history of lies & plots

BBC Persian radio was launched on December 29, 1940 as the Public Relations and propaganda arm of the British Foreign Office in Iran. BBC has since remained one of the main media preaching discord and sedition in Iran.

BBC stayed on radio waves in the Middle Eastern country for 50 years before it started its BBC Persian TV broadcasts in 2008.

BBC Persian radio, known in Iran as Radio London, was one of the first foreign-language services of the British state broadcaster and began its work to counter Radio Berlin, which aired Persian broadcasts for Iranians, during the First World War.

The objective was clear: to blacken the name of Germans, who were fighting Allies (Britain, France and Russia), in Iran to occupy the country and gain access to its strategic resources as well as its railway and road transport during the war, through pretending that the Iranian government is inclined toward London’s enemy, i.e. Germany.

BBC did its part of the plot and Britons and Russians invaded Iran from the South and the North, respectively, occupying the country under the pretext of helping Germany.

BBC hatched a similar plot in the early 1950’s after the then Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iranian oil industry, which was formerly dominated by Britain.

Deprived of Iranian oil and outraged by Mosaddegh marginalizing the then Iranian despot Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and in turn the British who were his main backer, the British planned a coup d’état in Iran.

Once more, the broadcaster had a key role to play in the execution of the 1953 coup, dubbed Operation Ajax, which overthrew the democratically-elected government of Mosaddegh and brought back the now-deposed Iranian dictator to power.

In addition to broadcasts that pretended Mosaddegh was linked to communists in Iran, a BBC Radio 4 documentary in 2005 revealed that there is evidence showing a radio newsreader inserted the word “exactly” into a midnight time check one summer night in 1953, that was a code word to the toppled Iranian ruler to go ahead with his coup plan, executed by the CIA at the request of British spy agency MI6.

However, BBC’s damaging role did not stop at helping Allied Forces occupy Iran, nor at helping return a despot to office in the country. It continued to the very present day.

After the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, BBC Persian turned to unprecedentedly distorted news about the Iraqi-imposed war on Iran trying to persuade Iranians that the Islamic Republic was unable to tackle its problems.

The British state broadcaster’s enmity toward Iran once more took forms reminiscent of the 1953 coup in 2009 after the corporation turned to unconfirmed news sources to cover the presidential election in Iran in direct contravention of its own code of ethics.

The corporation had indeed made important preparations before sowing sedition in Iran that year.

The British Foreign Office proposed the creation of BBC Persian TV news channel three years earlier and it was launched less than six months before Iran’s 2009 presidential vote. The channel effectively replaced BBC Persian Radio as London’s propaganda apparatus against Iran.

The channel focused on the presidential election from the very onset and effectively waged a proxy war on Iran on behalf of the British Foreign Office, MI6 and Defense Ministry in the aftermath of the vote, better known as the 2008 sedition in Iran.

The BBC’s efforts are now well underway, though their impact is under serious doubt, thanks to vigilance in Iran.

BBC Persian is now focused on depicting Iran as miserable and undermine the Islamic system in the country, using what the corporation calls citizen-journalism.

However, Iranian officials say the BBC has swapped journalists with spies, partly via the BBC World Service’s “Your Story” section that trains ordinary citizens, offers them the needed equipments and pays them to prepare ‘reports’ from Iran.

BBC has always claimed objectivity and denied espionage. But evidence on the ground proves differently.

Iranian media announced on September 17, 2011 that several people who where members of a network serving BBC Persian interests in Iran have been arrested.

The reports, later confirmed by Iranian Intelligence Ministry, said the detainees produced footage, news and secret reports aimed at blackening the image of Iran for the British channel.

Following the arrests and the hearing into the detainees’ cases, director of the BBC World Service Peter Horrocks claimed earlier this month that Iran is following a security plot against the BBC staff, by which he meant the BBC Persian.

Now a question mark hangs over Horrocks comment, that is exactly who is hatching plots against whom, especially against the colorful background of BBC anti-Iranian conspiracies.