December 12, 2014
The widespread protests across the United States against police brutality have drawn widespread coverage in the Iranian media, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi personally leading a tirade against the US government.
Over two days late week, Khamenehi’s Twitter account carried nine messages in English about the protests.
The Foreign Ministry launched a major assault Sunday, criticizing widespread racial discrimination across the United States, which it said was US government policy.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said the ongoing tensions in US society point out a gap between the country’s political realities and its claims about democracy.
She inveighed again “racial discrimination and the institutionalized violent behavior toward the colored people.”
She slammed US police mistreatment of minorities and what she called the implicit support of the country’s judicial system for racial segregation and violence against minorities.
She also charged that the United States has allowed police officers who attack minorities to do so with impunity, avoiding the issue of the lack of punishment in Iran for security staff who torture people in prisons.
“US policymakers and rulers need a profoundly new approach to their country’s domestic situation,” she said.
Afkham said the United States has used human rights as a tool to constantly criticize other countries while ignoring its own domestic conditions.
The US administration and judicial system are expected to fulfill their responsibility and treat American citizens based on justice and law, Afkham said with a straight face. She also ignored the fact that when other countries make such criticisms of Iran, she says they are violating international law against interfering in another country.
Khamenehi also focused on the police issue. Khamenehi has never shied away from criticism of the United States. In three decades of following his speeches, the Iran Times has only found two in which he did not at least assail the United States in passing. Even in a speech to grammar school students on the beginning of the academic year, Khamenehi warned them of the nastiness of the Americans.
In English language tweets last week, Khamenehi accused the US government of the “subjugation” of the American people, white as well as black.
He tweeted, “We don’t trust you; your ppl [people] do not trust you either.”
He seemed ignorant of the fact that the police and courts involved in the current issues are state and local institutions and are not under the control of the federal government. Most countries have national police forces and few understand that there are more than 16,000 police forces in the United States under the control of counties, cities and towns.
In another tweet, Kha-menehi said, “The fact that I and Iranians take anti-US stance is because of US govt’s arrogance. We have no problems w US as a nation.”
The state media apparatus was equally vocal during the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011. In fact, it continued carrying stories about the movement even into 2013 when it had faded but when Iranian propaganda continued to say it was growing.
One reason for the regime’s focus on protests in the United States is assumed to be a desire to portray the US government as remote from the public and unpopular, in effect telling the Iranian people that the United States is no different than Iran and they shouldn’t expect change.
But it is also believed to reflect the view of many ideologues that the United States is weak and that a popular revolution will sweep it away.
