Persicus Maximus

It was through a simple email sent to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) officials that the Media Regulatory Office (MHA) based in Munich notified of the decision to remove the Iranian English-speaking channel Press TV from German airwaves. The authority has claimed that Iran’s English-speaking channel does not have a license for broadcast in Europe. This shutdown comes after Press TV was banned in Great Britain in January 2012 by Ofcom, the government-approved media regulatory authority. On its part, the channel believes the decision is part of a strategy by Westerners to silence an inconvenient voice. Press TV drew the attention of the UK public in particular for its coverage of the Occupy protest movement in the United States and Britain, as well as for offering viewers a different perspective on the offensive launched against Libya or Syria. One recalls that freedom of expression is a prerequisite for any democracy. It can only be restricted by law. Now...

By Ted Snider. When Hassan Rouhani recently announced at his first press conference as the new President of Iran that he is ready to enter "serious and substantive" negotiations with the United States "if the United States shows goodwill and mutual respect", the statement was heralded by the Western media as a hopeful new beginning for Iranian nuclear and foreign policy. But the election of Rouhani is not really a break from the past. Rouhani is a conservative cleric and a protégé of former President Rafsanjani. He was the secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator under former President Khatami, and he was kept on by Ayatollah Khamenei as his personal representative to the Supreme National Security Council during the Ahmadinejad administration. And his recent statement is no more a break from the past. It does not represent a new path in Iranian policy toward the United States. Each of the four Presidents w...

  Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 – Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup. The explicit reference to the CIA's role appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran , dating from the mid-1970s. The agency released a heavily excised version of the account in 1981 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blacked out all references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation. Those references appear in the latest release. Additional CIA materials posted today include working files from Kermit Roosevelt, the senior CIA offi...