What does 'Iran-linked' even mean?

And speed? Second, he said. Though Reuters' bread and butter is to be first, the one to hurry breaking news onto the wire so it can be picked up by media organisations around the world, that speed would be nothing if what is reported is not pinpoint accurate. So, what does that mean? What does it mean to be accurate in journalism? To boil it down to its very essence, it means this: tell the audience only what you know, be clear about how you know it and, if something is not known, make that plain, too. How then, to explain the flurry of stories that have appeared in the last few weeks using vague terms such as Iran-linked, Iran-backed and Iran-aligned, without telling readers and viewers exactly what is meant by those fuzzy phrases? BBC editorialising There were three recent stories in which the terms were liberally applied. First, the arson attack on four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish community-run volunteer emergency response service in London. If Trump attacks Iran, western media will be cheering him on Barry Malone Read More » Just a few days later, the personal email of FBI Director Kash Patel was hacked. And the following day, a man attempted to set off an improvised explosive device outside the Bank of America’s headquarters in Paris. All three were deemed linked or aligned to Iran by some of the western world’s most venerable news organisations, including, as just one example, the BBC, which has not covered itself in glory with its reporting of Israel’s genocide in Gaza either. As a little-known group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand), which has claimed responsibility for similar incidents in Europe, said on Telegram that it carried out the ambulance attack, the BBC’s live blog coverage reported, in a blatant piece of editorialising, that it was an Iran-aligned group, without sourcing that claim to anyone. There was no use of quotation marks in either the headline or the post itself. What that means is that the BBC itself was stating that the group was aligned to Iran. Deliberate omission Over on the Sky News live blog, in a more bizarre example, a post headlined Analysis: What we know about group claiming responsibility for attack, written by the organisation’s OSINT editor Adam Parker, demonstrated that they knew, well, very little about Ashab al-Yamin, but that didn’t stop them, in the very same post, calling it Iran-aligned without either evidence or sourcing. Western media seem unbothered about telling us, unworried about investigating the veracity of the claims and instead happy to parrot the US-Israeli line Elsewhere in Sky’s live blog, a man named Joe Truzman was interviewed as an authoritative source who called the group an Iran-crafted front. Truzman was described as a security analyst who works for the US think tank Foundation for Defence of Democracies [FDD]. Sounds legitimate. Until you take a cursory look at the nature of FDD. It bills itself as a think tank focusing on national security and foreign policy but, above all else, it is obsessed with Iran and blatantly pro-Israel in its leanings. Among its senior fellows are Jonathan Conricus, the former international spokesperson for the Israeli military; Amir Eshel, a retired Israeli major general and a former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Defense; and Tal Kelman, another retired major general who was once chief of staff for the Israeli air force. In 2019, FDD executives formed FDD Action, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Did Sky News disclose any of this? Of course not. Britain’s Spectator magazine took an extra step by not just quoting Truzman, but inviting him to write an entire column on Ashab al-Yamin. To be clear, I’m not saying that I know the group is not linked to Iran. What I’m saying is that I do not know because, at this stage, I cannot know. Neither can the media. Speaking to MEE the day after the ambulances were burnt out, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on armed groups in Iraq and Syria, said he couldn’t say whether Iran is specifically directing attacks in Europe now but there are, no doubt, Iran and resistance axis supporters in Europe who think these kinds of attacks are legitimate. Tamimi can justify that, because he said what he knew and he said what he couldn’t. Israel's bidding When Kash Patel’s email was hacked by a group called the Handala Hack Team, which says it is a pro-Palestinian organisation carrying out attacks against US and Israeli interests, the BBC went further than Iran-aligned. This time it was Iran-backed. Trump has called Middle East wars 'crazy', but the US-Israel war on Iran may be the craziest yet Read More » There was a source now, though: the US Department of Justice. This was apparently considered so sacrosanct by the BBC that it didn’t consider it necessary to put Iran-backed in quotation marks in the headline. Again, it was the BBC itself telling us the group was backed by Iran. Reuters, too, used Iran-linked in a headline as a statement of fact. Would such claims by Iran about a US group be accepted as fact without proper attribution or scepticism? Would Palestinian claims about Israelis? Would Russian claims about Ukrainians? We know the answer. The terms, used without explanation, are also useless in their imprecision. Does it mean the groups are directed by Iran? Does it mean they are front names for Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)? Does it mean they are on the phone to the supreme leader every night? Western media seem unbothered about telling us, unworried about investigating the veracity of the claims and instead happy to parrot the US-Israeli line. That matters in a world in which the US can go to war on a pack of lies and in which Israel appears desperate to drag other western nations into a quagmire in Iran. The truth is, as I’ve written in these pages before, when it comes to covering western adversaries, the so-called international media do not apply the standards of accuracy that were drilled into me as a young reporter. And, until that happens, it will continue to do the bidding of Israel, the US and anyone else who wants to illegally attack Middle Eastern nations. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0