The West's effort to demonise Iran as the 'evil empire' has taken a severe beating after the release of all 15 British sailors

Western propaganda efforts to demonise Iran as the evil empire have taken a severe beating after the public relations fiasco over the recent capture and release by Tehran of British sailors charged with illegally straying into Iranian waters. 

Displaying impressive propaganda skills, Iranian authorities managed to be a step ahead of their British counterparts through the entire drama from the capture of the 15 member Royal Navy crew, their weeklong captivity and their dramatic unconditional release. The British Government has further dented its credibility by getting embroiled in an ugly controversy over brokering lucrative deals for some of the released sailors to tell their stories to the London tabloid press.
 
Much of the egg on British Prime Minister Tony Blair's face today is because of his Government's too-clever-by-half decision to use the detention of the British sailors from Iranian waters as a propaganda ploy to corner the Islamic regime in Iran. But much to London's surprise, instead of getting cornered and defensive, Tehran turned the tables by playing the propaganda game with as much enthusiasm and considerably more skill. 
 
Downing Street was clearly stunned when Iranian authorities released pictures and videos of the incarcerated sailors looking relaxed in captivity and to make matters worse admitting that they were guilty of breaking maritime rules.

British discomfiture at the losing propaganda battle turned to alarm after two of the captured sailors, including the lone female member of the crew, Faye Turney, went to the extent of condemning the presence of Western forces in Iraq. Although there were no palpable signs of physical coercion from the Iranian authorities, London denounced the move as deliberate public humiliation of the captive sailors violating their fundamental human rights. Not surprisingly, these claims sounded a bit hollow considering the recent examples of real gruesome humiliation and torture of Muslim prisoners in Western detention centres like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
 
Tehran scored another propaganda point when it decided to release all the captured sailors without any conditions. Once again it was the Iranians who scored a public relations coup. Television images of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad magnanimously ordering the release and the Royal Navy crew lining up to shake his hands and offer apologies for breaking the law emphasised how badly had the British propaganda bid to isolate Iran had boomeranged.
 
After getting the sailors safely back home, British authorities yet again sought to put a spin on the release by getting the released Navy crew to publicly deny all that they had said during captivity and put out a new version of what now was described as a 'nightmarish experience'. A couple of them also gave colourful interviews to the British tabloid press about their ordeal in Iran. 
 
Patriotic bias may well have lent credibility to these new versions of what happened to the British sailors in Iranian captivity at least in their homeland had their accounts not become mired in a fresh controversy over the huge sums of money they were paid to sell their stories to the media. It now turns out that the British Government was directly involved in facilitating these lucrative deals, which has sparked off a nationwide furore and caused further global embarrassment to the UK and allies like the US. 

Since only a few of the captured crew were chosen as the lucky ones to make their fortune by telling stories, the other sailors who had been held captive have openly rubbished their colleagues and lambasted the Government.

Mr Blair who is about to depart from his job has conveniently disowned all responsibility for the fiasco leaving the hapless Defence Secretary Des Browne to face the music. With big bucks emerging as a prime motive for the stories told by the sailors on their days in Iranian captivity, the little credibility left with Western propagandists about the 'nasty Iranians' have been shredded to bits. 

Meanwhile, Tehran is planning to make a film on the entire drama and release it to the international media.

Leaders and commentators in the West are fond of describing their war with Islamic zealots as a battle between the forces of civilised democracy and barbaric fundamentalism. The problem is that this claim has been repeatedly exposed as outright hypocrisy. It is the shrinking number of people across the world who genuinely believe that Western democracies are good guys that should be the real worry for the latter.

Source: DailyPioneer.com

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