Iran Protests and Inflated Death Tolls

https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/meet-the-former-fashion-blogger-and

The reporting surrounding the protests and death tolls in Iran have played a part in the media campaign justifying US action and in particular the assassination of Ali Khamenei.

While the regime has undoubtedly used considerable to violence to crush the waves of protest that seem to emerge every few years, this episode was painted as virtually unique and unprecedented - the kind of massacre that ends up in the history books. While figures of a few thousand are believable and match the research and reports from within the country, some Western outlets began to speak of tens of thousands with some suggesting a number close to 40,000 killed - numbers that don't even match the internal counts offered by human rights groups.

The Reed/Blumenthal article targets The Guardian which interestingly (though perceived as liberal) has also played a major role in the anti-Russia campaign and one of its reporters (Luke Harding) also became a leading voice in the Russia-Wikileaks disinformation campaign from a few years ago.

Deepa Parent (like Harding) seems to be someone who was 'tapped' for a specific role and she's certainly doing her part as her bogus reporting has been picked up and utilized by other major Western outlets.

The Omidyar connection is potentially interesting - all the more given his role in the creation of The Intercept, an online news magazine that (by my estimation) lost its way during the first Trump administration. In its zeal to oppose him, the website effectively became a tool to steer the dissident Left back into the pro-empire/pro-capitalist Democratic Party - a role very similar to the one played by the likes Ocasio-Cortez and the pseudo-socialist Bernie Sanders.

The documentation regarding Parent's role in the inflated numbers is worth looking at. Obviously the situation is complicated and more may be known in time - or it may never really be known. The outcome of the current war will also play a part in how this period of history is reported.

The salient issue for me is the fact that reporters like Parent are out there - something I've seen over and over again. Also, the role of outlets like The Guardian is something that needs to be weighed when considering the media landscape. On the one hand it played an important role in breaking the Snowden story - but then seemed to also play a part in whitewashing it. It's certainly a liberal and often libertine (and even degenerate) news outlet and yet at the same time can prove rather hawkish and slanted toward certain aspects of Western power. It's like the worst of all worlds - and yet for all that, the Guardian is often worth reading.

Obviously Reza Pahlavi has every reason to paint the Islamic regime in a negative light and he's been quite open in advocating for American-sponsored regime change. Why wouldn't he? That's how his father was re-established in 1953. The irony here is pretty thick. I have to believe the only reason his message is resonating with some Iranians is that most of the population is too young to remember the rule of the Shah and the brutality and corruption that led to the 1979 revolution.

A great deal more needs to be said and investigated regarding the role of foreign agents at work - provocateurs stirring the protests. In addition, the fact that dozens and perhaps hundreds of Iranian security forces were killed also reveals that the protests were not all peaceable. This is not to justify anyone involved on either side but rather a desire to understand what happened and to discern how the story is being manipulated. 

While I find myself at times disagreeing with Blumenthal and The Grayzone, overall the outlet continues to produce some solid adversarial reporting - with its primary strong point being the exposure and repudiation of mainstream narratives such as this one regarding the protester death tolls in Iran.