Iran Claims Currency Reserves Rise Amid Toothless US Sanctions

Fars news website affiliated with the IRGC quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying that “Normalization of relations by Saudi Arabia and some Arab countries with the regime occupying Quds was a malicious conspiracy that Americans pursued. They had prepared this conspiracy and were trying to implement it. They had worked on this for years and had reached a particular point.”

Many observers and analysts have commented that the brutal attack by Hamas on October 7 was aimed at derailing talks between the Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States to reach a normalization deal.

Fadavi stated that with the Hamas attack the normalization efforts totally failed and “those who intended to pursue the effort have now adopted positions against the Zionist regime.”

Top Iranian officials and government media celebrated the Hamas attack as it was unfolding on October 7 and immediately organized street celebrations by regime supporters in Tehran.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dismissed the killing of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians in a speech on Tuesday, saying they were armed and not considered civilians. He also said that many more Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The Islamic Republic had never before so openly demonstrated its ties with, and support for militant Arab organizations as it has done since the Hamas attack. Some of these groups in Iraq and Yemen have even threatened the United States if it continues it support for Israel.

The Israel Defence Forces have shared a barrage of intelligence to deny culpability but the regime vowed the incident "will definitely not go unanswered" in another opportunity to fuel the flames of unrest.

A statement on the state news agency said, "Islamic countries and freedom-seeking governments, in addition to severing ties with Israel, should expel its ambassadors and representatives from their countries and international organizations".

Iran also declared that it is necessary for all Muslim nations and Islamic governments to stand against “the illegitimate regime of Israel” and, using all necessary means, put an end to “the endless injustice and the massacre of innocent Muslims.”

An explosion occurred at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, a Christian-run medical facility in central Gaza City on Tuesday night, resulting in the deaths of at least 200 to 300 people, as reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry. However, other Palestinian sources cite numbers as high as 1,000.

The ministry's spokesperson, Ashraf Al Qudra, estimated that around 200 others were injured. There have been conflicting claims about responsibility, with officials in Gaza and Israel blaming each other for the tragedy.

Al Qudra alleged that the Israel Defense Forces had targeted the hospital for bombing, and Hamas also blamed Israel, while no evidence of a damaged hospital and hundreds of dead or injured has yet been seen. The damage largely remains contained to a car park and shattered windows.

The sanctions, imposed under a terrorism-related executive order, targeted nine individuals and one entity based in Gaza and elsewhere including Sudan, Turkey, Algeria, and Qatar, the US Department of Treasury said in a statement.

"The United States is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’s financiers and facilitators following its brutal and unconscionable massacre of Israeli civilians, including children," said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

"We will continue to take all steps necessary to deny Hamas terrorists the ability to raise and use funds to carry out atrocities and terrorize the people of Israel," Yellen added.

Treasury's actions come as US President Joe Biden visited Israel and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Hamas' October 7 attack.

Iran is believed to have been providing at least $100 million annually to Hamas and a few hundred millions to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

After the Hamas attack on Israel, top Iranian officials and government media celebrated the event and organized street celebrations, voicing their commitment to continue full support to "resistance front", which is a term referring to militant organization Tehran supports in the region.

The attacks saw regime security systematically target Iranian dissident intellectuals for over a decade. "The killing of Dariush and Vahideh, the artists, brings to mind the butchering of Daryush and Parvaneh Forouhar and the slaughter of intellectuals…and the suspicious deaths of artists and other protestors," she said in a message posted by their former advisor on X.

The former university professor and political activist, who has been under house arrest with her husband Mir Hossein Mousavi for 13 years, expressed hope that "this time, the murderer will not go unpunished for this crime."

Following the brutal murder of Mehrjui and his wife at their private residence on Saturday, activists are speculating about its potentially political nature.

The funeral service for Mehrjui and his wife took place in Tehran on a Wednesday morning. During the ceremony, Mona, Dariush Mehrjui's daughter, attended without the mandatory hijab. She stated, "I'm at a loss for words to express our grief. As my father used to say, the murderers are truly among us..."

Participants also chanted slogans, saying, "No to Gaza, No to Lebanon, I give my life only for Iran," and expressed, "Death to the perpetrators of the crime."

Overnight, two photographs from the crime scene at Mehrjui's residence were shared on social media with speculation following that only the regime could have had access to the crime scene, suggesting regime culpability. Speculation also suggested that sharing the photos was regime tactics to send a warning to other dissidents.

This transformation is expected to endure for an extended period before a new visual style and narrative takes its place. Nevertheless, while these changes are noticeable in television broadcasts emanating from the United States, the United Kingdom, and regional countries like Qatar and Turkey, Iran's state-owned television appears to remain unaltered, acting like an island isolated from live broadcasts.

Visually, one of the most striking aspects of TV news reporting is excessive use of aerial shots. These aerial views provide a broader perspective of events on the ground, akin to watching from a divine vantage point, observing the activities of smaller entities on another planet. Aerial shots, once costly and hazardous when captured from helicopters over conflict zones, have become more affordable and accessible through small quadcopters equipped with high-resolution 4K cameras. These videos, which now constitute most of the televised news coverage, tend to emphasize the destructive aspects of the conflict.

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We became accustomed to watching graphic and violent scenes on TV after 2011, during the period when ISIS was wreaking havoc in a significant part of the Middle East. However, the destruction witnessed in Gaza used to be filmed from a distance and presented days later.

In terms of content, there is now less control over airing gruesome videos. While user-generated footage of violence against men, women, and children is still shared on social media, broadcasters ensure that such graphic content is not aired on television. Instead, graphic violence is described using words rather than images.

For the first time in television history, we observed a US official, the National Security Agency's coordinator for strategic communication John Kirby, bursting into tears while talking with a CNN news anchor as he discussed the suffering of Israelis and other nationals held hostage by Hamas. This highlights the power of words to evoke emotions and resonate with people.

One of the notable changes in global TV news coverage after the October 7th attack is a shift in narrative that emphasizes the voices on both sides of the conflict and distinguishes between Hamas and ordinary Palestinians who may not endorse the group's actions. However, Iranian TV remains absent from this shift and echoes the regime's perspective, which neither recognizes Israel nor acknowledges Palestinians beyond Hamas members.

Many TV channels around the world, and most markedly the Iranian state-controlled television, have been airing prejudiced coverage of what happened in Israel and Gaza at the price of losing their viewers' trust. That is what prejudiced reporting without covering the views of the other side of the argument does. Prejudiced reporting creates dangerous bi-polar opinions in the society, and erodes trust in the media. 

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However, it is understandable that there are difficult situations which make impartiality meaningless for the media. Reporting the events during the 2022 protests in Iran, reporters learned that it is absolutely impossible to remain impartial when security forces blind or kill 16-year-old girls and boys by shooting them at point blank range. 

US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin pointed out this bitter fact for reporters when he said during an October 13 visit to Israel that "This is no time for neutrality and false equivalence." 

The issue of impartiality can be the subject of several hours of debates at any journalism and ethics course. In the United Kingdom where the media operates independent of the government and does not take orders from state officials, three cabinet ministers have reportedly been trying to convince the BBC to use the word "terrorist" to describe the atrocity committed by Hamas. Media figures such as the BBC's John Simpson were involved in heated debate with journalists, media outlets and members of the public over the matter. However, a final verdict might take several years.

In Iran, where state-owned television is utilized as a tool for promoting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's ideology, and with no independent radio or television, the state TV disseminates biased propaganda in favor of Hamas and fails to differentiate between the group's members and ordinary Palestinians. Iranian television conceals essential facts regarding the initiation of the most recent violence in the region.

Several polls have shown that Iranian state TV offers the least popular channel in the country and only 11 percent of viewers in Iran get their news from the state TV. The other 89 percent turn to stellate TV channels such as Iran International and the BBC for news in Persian. 

The Iranian TV never tells its viewers that not all Palestinians are Arab. Most Iranian viewers do not know that there are also Jewish and Christian Palestinians, and that the Muslims there are Sunnis. The Iranian TV does not tell its viewers that Palestinians generally supported Iraq's Saddam Hussain in his war against Iran and that Hamas was not Iran's ally when Iranian forces were active in Syria after 2011. 

Iranian TV lives in a parallel world and offers often fake and fabricated news to a tiny segment of the regime supporters. It keeps Iranians in the dark about where their real interests are and who controls them and why and how. It wants Iranian viewers to live in an imaginary world of illusions.