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[HCDX] IRAN: US GOVERNMENT PLANNING AZERI-LANGUAGE BROADCASTS TO IRAN
EURASIA INSIGHT
IRAN: US GOVERNMENT PLANNING AZERI-LANGUAGE BROADCASTS
TO IRAN
Joshua Kucera 3/10/08
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav031008a.shtml
The US government is planning to beam Azeri-language radio broadcasts
into Iran, in a bid to influence opinion among the significant ethnic Azeri
population there.
The new programming was proposed in the State Department budget that
begins in October 2008. It must first be approved by Congress. If approved,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty would begin broadcasting two hours a day
of Azerbaijani-language programming in shortwave into Iran, said Jeff
Trimble, director of programming for RFE/RL.
The United States already has 24 hours a day of programming, via Radio
Farda, in Farsi. Persians are a plurality in Iran and Farsi is the state
language. But "research indicates that people prefer to get news and
information in their native language," Trimble said. "Iran is an obvious case
because the Azerbaijani population is so large, about a quarter of the
population." Much of Iran´s Azeri population lives in northern areas of the
country.
RFE/RL already broadcasts Azeri-language content to listeners in
Azerbaijan proper. Even though these broadcasts deal with events mainly in
Azerbaijan, they have a significant following among Iranian Azeris, according
to Trimble. "This new programming will emphasize issues concerning Iran
and the ethnic Azeri, Azerbaijani-speaking population of Iran," he said.
According to surveys conducted by RFE/RL, about three-quarters of Azeris
in Iran have access to shortwave radio and 12 percent listen to shortwave
programming weekly - figures that are higher than for the population in Iran
as a whole, Trimble said. "That´s a pretty high percentage. The potential
target audience for this is pretty high."
Given the long-standing tension between the United States and Iran, some
experts believe that Tehran is likely to interpret the launch of Azeri-language
broadcasting as an American attempt to foment Azeri separatism. Azeri
discontent with the policies carried out by President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad´s administration has risen noticeably in recent years. In 2006,
thousands of ethnic Azeris protested after an Iranian newspaper printed a
cartoon featuring an Azerbaijani-speaking cockroach. (The cartoonist and
the editor of the newspaper were arrested after the cartoon was published.)
Trimble denied that the intent of the new broadcasts would be to stir up
ethnic strife. "The professional journalistic code of RFE/RL ... strictly
prohibits the airing of programming or any kind of advocacy for
secessionism," Trimble said. "So that is not in any way the design or intent
of this programming for Iran. ... All throughout the history of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, there has been a tradition of minority-language
broadcasting."
Mohsen Milani, a political scientist at the University of South Florida who
studies Iran, said that such explanations likely would not be enough to
assuage Tehran´s concerns. "Regardless of what the State Department
says, the Iranian government is going to view this as interference in Iranian
affairs," he said. "They believe this is part of the overall plan to destabilize
Iran by helping ethnic minorities against the Islamic republic."
Mahmudali Chehreganli, an émigré who heads the Southern Azerbaijan
Awakening Movement, applauded the decision to broadcast Azeri-language
programming into Iran. He added that, despite his persistent lobbying, US
policy makers are not entertaining ideas about fomenting an ethnic uprising
in Iran.
"After the Iraq war, from 2003 to 2006, I had hundreds of meetings - in the
White House, the State Department, the Pentagon," Chehreganli said. "I told
them that the United States could easily destroy the regime by helping the
ethnic groups. But they never gave us any help." Chehreganli said he has
not had a meeting with a US government official since 2006.
"Cooler heads prevailed," said S. Enders Wimbush, the former director of
Radio Liberty and a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. "There´s
nobody, even in this White House, which can get a little loopy at times, who
wants 15 more `berserkistans´ out there."
That idea "didn´t go anywhere, because there was no support for it inside
Iran," Milani said. "Iranian nationalism trumps the ethnicities. You are not
talking about Czechoslovakia here, a country that was formed after World
War I or by the Soviets. We are talking about 2,500 years of history and
these ethnic groups have been part of that for all these years. Especially
Azeris, there has been dynasty after dynasty that came from that part of
Iran. There was at one time this idea that ethnic separatism could really
undermine the Islamic republic, but over the course of the last three years
they have realized that is not going anywhere."
Nevertheless, the new Azerbaijani-language programming does have a
more subtle political purpose, Wimbush said. "Most of the critical elite in the
Soviet Union spoke Russian, but we broadcast in 14 languages because it
drew audiences toward us," he said. "The medium, in many respects, was
the message: `The Americans care enough to treat us, to address us as we
are. They don´t feel as if they have to go through this Russian filter.´ And I´m
sure that´s very much the same kind of thinking that´s going on here in Iran.
It´s a big population - if they were in the Balkans or Eastern Europe we
would have broadcast to them a long time ago."
Editor´s Note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based freelance writer
who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the
Middle East.
Please read my aricle on SINPO at (one line!)
http://zliangas.blogspot.com/2008/02/sinpfemo-better-signal-tech-analysis-
by.html
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Zacharias Liangas , Thessaloniki Greece
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