into an orgy of fury and anger at the Americans for interfering in Iran.
The “virtual embassy” is nothing but a website, but the Islamic Republic acted like it was much more.
The intelligence minister even went so far as to charge that the “virtual embassy” was illegal because no country may open an embassy in another country without that other country’s permission.
The volume of denunciatory rhetoric far exceeded anything that a simple website warranted and suggested to many outsiders that the Iranian establishment was losing touch with reality.
Others thought the Islamic Republic was simply taking hold of any issue it could find with which to flay the United States and demonstrate to the Iranian public that America is the real bugaboo. “As the regime sees its standing with the public slipping further, you can expect more and greater efforts to paint the United States as a veritable Martian invader that the Iranian people must resist by rallying around the government,” one analyst said.
That analyst argued that one can measure the self-confidence of the regime by the volume of raging rhetoric. “It’s an inverse ratio,” he said. “The more rhetoric, the less confidence.”
In this case, the regime was expending an unusual volume of critical rhetoric against a mere website, which is in both English and Farsi. It took less than 24 hours for the government to block access to the website. Iranians typing in the web address http://iran.usembassy.gov/ get a message in Farsi saying: “In accordance with computer crime laws, access to this website is not possible.”
The United States is trying to give Iranians (and others, especially the Chinese) technological workarounds that will allow them to bypass filters. The State Department said the website got 500,000 hits on its first day, an enormous volume. But it said only 9,771 of those hits came from within Iran.
State Department spokes-man Mark Toner responded to the denunciations from Tehran by inviting Tehran to set up its own “virtual embassy” aimed at Americans. Iran has ignored that suggestion.
The White House adopted new terminology, accusing Iran of raising an “electronic curtain” to lock its people away from the world at large, adapting the term “Iron Curtain” that was used to describe the Soviet Union’s self- imposed isolation.
The White House statement said that by blocking the “virtual embassy” website, “the Iranian government has once again demonstrated its commitment to build an electronic curtain of surveillance and censorship around its people. The Iranian government’s systematic efforts to deny information to its citizens—to control what the Iranian people see and hear—is doomed to fail in the 21st Century when technology is empowering citizens around the globe.”
The White House said it continues to seek dialogue with the Iranian people based on “mutual interests, mutual respect and admiration for a great and ancient civilization.”
It said, “The Iranian government should explain to its own people why it fears their ability to access the information that they choose.” The website offers information on US visas, explains opportunities for study in the United States, and carries the texts of speeches and statements by US officials. It also has a page entitled “The truth about US policy towards Iran” that addresses what it calls seven myths about US policy. For example, Myth #2 is: “The United States is against any Iranian scientific development— including nuclear—because it wants to keep Iran week.”
In Tehran, the “virtual embassy” was described as a plot, not a website. Fars news agency called the decision to block the site “a decisive reaction by the Iranian authorities to the latest plots hatched by Washington against the Iranian nation.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast denounced the website and called on the United Stats to stop meddling in Iran’s domestic matters.
IntelligenceMinister Heydar Moslehi said the “virtual embassy” was nothing but a trap to suck Iranians into espionage. “Those who might be deceived by the website of this ‘virtual embassy’ must be warned that this is a form of bait to entrap them into spying,” he said. He argued that the website was illegal because an embassy can only be established with the approval of both countries involved.
But the website doesn’t seek volunteers for anything. Its “Contact Us” page merely provides links to the State Department’s Twitter, YouTube and Facebook pages.
Majlis Deputy Heshmatollah Falahat-Pisheh took the term “virtual embassy” overly seriously, saying, “Based on in-ternational conventions on diplomatic relations, there is no such thing as a ‘virtual embassy.’”
The immense attention that the media in the Islamic Republic has given the website could backfire since it gave more publicity to the existence of the website than the United States could possibly generate.
Majlis Deputy Alaeddin Borujerdi said the purpose of the website was to support opponents of the regime in the elec-tions that are less than three months away.
Mahmud Dehqani, an official in the office of the president, said, the website “is another instance of the enemy’s psycho- logical and soft warfare against our country and is part of the US policy of hostility toward Iran in any possible form and by any possible means.”