The BBC recently published a report purporting to capture the supposedly diverse reactions of Iranians to U.S. President Donald Trump’s earlier threats of “infrastructure strikes,” which, as he described them, would amount to the death of a “whole civilization.”
Among those featured was a young “anti-establishment protester” from Tehran who expressed confidence in the leader’s terror campaign, stating that he would be “fine” with it "if attacking targets in the country brings down the Islamic Republic.”
The reader would not know, however, that the original version of the report included a significantly different quote, in which the same “protestor” was far more explicit and strikingly candid, that he would be absolutely fine if the offensive escalated to “hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or levelling Iran.” The reader would not know this because the BBC did not bother to include a note about the update until later, and only after it faced considerable backlash.
The fact that the BBC would, apparently purely by chance, come across a person of such rare persuasion out of millions of ordinary Iranians betrays a certain editorial bias, to begin with, but it also serves as a reminder of an uncomfortable reality, that such characters exist in every society. In other words, every nation has its Pahlavi supporters, and their adversaries will naturally embrace such dissidents, given the latter’s unbounded hatred of their very own, for reasons sometimes hard to fathom.
It is instructive, and perhaps even urgent by this point, to consider a thought experiment on this theme. Since Türkiye has been designated as “the next Iran” by the likes of former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the example may be drawn from there.
This month, Sinan Ciddi, director of the Türkiye program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank based in Washington, added another entry to his long list of anti-Türkiye reports, carefully tailored for a specific audience that may take an interest in the notion that Türkiye is the next “problem” to be dealt with.
The main purpose of the publication of this report was revealed when it appeared first on Fox News and then on the Jerusalem Post. It was presented to just the right audience – the same audience who not only enjoy but also recommend to others these same platforms, among them Trump himself, who not long ago encouraged his followers, for example, to pay close attention to what Fox News host Mark Levin, a fanatical Israel supporter, had to say on matters of life and death.
Of course, no minimally sane person would take such reports seriously. The intent is so transparent that it hardly invites serious scholarly scrutiny. Yet these reports are never really intended for sane people in any case. Laughing it off as “unserious” as one commentator did so comfortably, reassuring everyone (especially the U.S. and Israel, it seems) that “Türkiye won’t fight Israel,” may be a natural reaction, but it may also be a mistake if the report is indeed “commissioned” by the very same people who constantly demand such reassurances. If Levin is to be taken seriously, as Trump tells his followers, then the FDD must certainly be, at least to understand what the “masters of mankind” are up to.
And how about the author of the report? Ciddi is accused of having ties to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), which he denies, though he shares with the members of that bunch the same visceral hatred of Türkiye. They work in remarkably similar ways and within remarkably similar circles to advance the same destructive agenda. Both are, in a sense, the Pahlavi supporters of Türkiye. As self-styled “political exiles,” they have a personal stake in the destruction of their country. And seeing clearly through them, the vast majority of their compatriots, irrespective of their political views, despise them.
If the FDD’s report were to reach its intended destination and be accepted as the blueprint for a certain foreign policy move, it would not be hard to imagine Fox News bringing on someone like Enes Kanter, a former NBA player and a staunch follower of Fetullah Gülen, leader of FETÖ. Kanter, who once felt so blessed to have received the remainder of Gülen’s glass of tea as a personal gift and adopted a new surname, “Freedom,” would be the perfect choice, in the eyes of the commissioners of the report, to advocate for “bringing freedom” to Türkiye at last. No sane person would take Kanter seriously either, but that too would not matter, for, to repeat, such advocacy is never intended for the sane.
