Thanks to Michael for the nice introduction, and more importantly, for allowing me the opportunity to regularly share my thoughts and musings here at The Van Der Galiën Gazette. 

Kind of like Michael and Turkey, I have developed a mixed fascination with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  I’ve touched upon the current state of affairs there pretty frequently on my own blog, and have tried my darnedest to debunk arguments that reject the totalitarian tendencies of the regime. 

Well, I believe that Amir Taheri’s piece in today’s NY Post only confirms the worst of my reservations, while raising an important point about the coverage of the repression going on there.  Taheri argues that the foreign correspondents for the major media outlets have stood in silence, obfuscating the fact that this government has quietly downplayed civil unrest, while secretly arresting close to a million people in the last four months.  Union organizers, journalists, teachers and students have all been gobbled up by the government, and Taheri wonders why the media continues to carry the water for Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs:

In Tehran, hundreds gathered near the home of Mansour Osanloo, the imprisoned leader of the capital’s transit workers, with a simple message: We are not afraid! The authorities had organized a military operation to cordon off the streets leading to the house – but couldn’t prevent union members from assembling. The day ended with the arrest of at least 15 workers’ leaders.

Meanwhile, in factories and workshops in and around the capital, workers organized peaceful hour-long “solidarity pauses,” defying a ban imposed by the authorities. Several other major cities saw similar demonstrations, including Ahvaz, Arak, Sanandaj, Shiraz and Tabriz.

Everywhere, the protesters took care to keep their actions within the law. Yet the authorities kept any mention of Thursday’s events out of the official media.

That the mullahs should treat this as “not news” is no surprise. For years, they have pretended to be working on behalf of Iran’s poorest working masses – but now the mask is falling. It is precisely those poorest working masses that present the regime with its biggest challenge. What is surprising is that much of the global media should also regard this bad news for the mullahs as no news.

According to the Ministry of Islamic Orientation and Culture in Tehran, 117 registered foreign media correspondents work in Iran. Yet (except for a stringer for a Japanese news agency who appeared at a demonstration in a car factory near Tehran) none paid attention to the workers’ day of solidarity.

Osanloo’s lawyers phoned the offices of more than a dozen Western news agencies and radio and TV networks in Tehran in the hope of persuading them to cover the events – with no results.

Inside Iran, some see global conspiracy to keep international opinion in the dark about what is really happening in the Islamic Republic. They ask: Why is it that world media representatives in Iran never interview any of the thousands of trade unionists, teachers’ leaders, journalists, student activists, women’s-lib militants and dissident intellectuals? Why is the brutal repression in several provinces, which has already claimed scores of lives, never covered on the spot?

 I don’t believe Taheri is entirely fair on the media here, and as even he concedes, the Iranian government would ultimately blacklist any media outlet that gives them unfavorable coverage.  It’s sadly the Google/China argument-do you prefer filtered news, or no news at all?

However, Taheri has a point when it comes to the editorial boards of these news outlets.  While any private media agency’s goal may ultimately come down to as much access as possible, a more principled stance may in fact be somewhere in-between silence and insurrection.  When does covering the story you’ve been spoon-fed take a back seat to solidarity with your fellow journalists?  If all of the free press reporting from Iran banded together, and spoke openly about the wrongs being perpetrated there, would it not paint the government into a proverbial corner?   

Some have criticized supposedly “liberal hawks” such as myself of rattling the sabre on Iran, all for the sake of some semi-fanciful “war narrative” with the country.  But if Iranian critics such as me are merely carrying the water for Dick Cheney and the dreaded NeoCons, than whom exactly do these skeptics take their marching orders from?  Some bloggers, loosely regarded as progressive, have gone to great lengths to dismiss the “Iranian problem.”  Couple this with the MSM’s virtual silence, despite assaults upon their journalistic brethren, and one has to wonder if the isolationists are inadvertently covering for the mullahs and their maniacal president.