What is wrong at VOA? Iranian Revolutionary Guard defends VOA against critic

For those who continue to doubt that a long-overdue personnel shakeup is due at the Voice of America's Persian News Network (PNN), here's a new development from inside Iran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has come out and defended VOA/PNN against criticism from one of the regime's leading opponents, student opposition leader Amir Abbas Fakhravar.

Fakhravar escaped from Iran and has been the leading figure in Washington behind the need to bring new management to PNN and to get rid of personnel who have shown a consistent bias toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as an antipathy toward the secular opposition. He is one of my colleagues as a visiting lecturer at the Institute of World Politics.

Several days ago, Fakhravar gave a presentation at the Heritage Foundation, in which he poured more criticism upon VOA/PNN.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard commented on Fakhravar's Heritage talk in articles posted in Farsi the Revolutionary Guard's "Young Journalists Club" website; and reprinted on Ammariyon, a website belonging to Ansar-e-Hezbollah, the special forces of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guard comment also appeared on the US-based Sar-e-khat website.

The translation into English is awkward and downright weird, but, I am told, is faithful to the Revolutionary Guard's original. The translators use the odd word "devilry" as a literal translation of fetne, a term that Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard figures have used to label the student protesters.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard comments certainly do more to validate the extensive credentials of Fakhravar as a true enemy of the regime (some wags in Washington are spreading nasty untruths about him). They should also energize the actions afoot at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to clean out PNN immediately and thoroughly.

Here's the translated article:

The Voice of Devilry in Voice of America

In a commentary during a recent interview with the Heritage Foundation, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, one of the leaders of "the devilry" in the United States, who fled the country after the defeat of his student devilry, has called for an increase in Voice of America and BBC's interference and swaying power for creating disorder and chaos in Iran's affairs.

Citing the Heritage Foundation website, the Journalists' Club reports that Fakhravar, who has friendly relations with George Bush and American senators and who has met with Vaclav Havel, the architect of colored coup d'etats, several times, has named imposing sanctions on Iran and an increase in VOA/PNN's swaying power in Iran as the two most effective ways to create and lead civil disorder.  In his opinion, VOA is the only media that can, alongside BBC Farsi, become a liaison between the protesters in Iran and the leaders of the devilry inside and outside Iran. 

After VOA's failure to guide the leaders of the devilry during the post presidential elections protests, some experts including a few senators have proposed reforming this media in order to increase its influence and Fakhravar agrees with them.

It is noteworthy to mention that Amir Abbas Fakhravar also known as Siavash was one of the founders of the Independent Student Movement in Iran and his anti-regime activities peaked in 1994 and in 2006 he fled to the United States. During his stay in the U.S., he has repeatedly called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. He has also spoken against the regime in the U.S. Senate and in the course of the post-election devilry, he has made tireless efforts to lead the protesters."

Comments

[an Iranian american]

have you even read your own translation of the article? Where in the article the IRG defends VOA again? Can you please point it out to me because I read the Persian version, then the English version several times and could not find such a line. You either don't understand Persian, or English, or in your case I would say both. In this article the IRG says VOA has failed to influence the Green movement, which means IRG is assuming VOA is trying to lead the movement, which in turn means VOA, in IRG's believe is anti Iranian government. This article says simply nothing about Mr. Fakharavar's capability as a leader. I know this comment is not going to make it to the public page, but you may want to do a bit more research about Mr. Fakhravar's claims of leadership and such.