Iran Propaganda Feature: Fars News Makes Up Interview with "Bahrain Opposition Leader"

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On Saturday, Fars News featured an interview with a "Sheikh Sadiq Kadhim Al-Jamri", a Bahraini who extolled the Islamic Republic as a model for Muslims in the Middle East. Al-Jamri said that it was the late Ayatollah Khomeini who had first inspired the "Arab Awakening" with the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which had "brought revolutions to Muslims from Tunisia to Egypt and Libya to Yemen and Bahrain ".

Al-Jamri explained that Bahraini political activists would "continue the Bahraini revolution until complete success": "We are ready to sacrifice our lives to bring down al Khalifa regime  and to have it replaced by a fair political system." 

The interviewee then pronounced, "The Bahraini people declared their solidarity to the Iranian people and will stand alongside our Iranians brothers against any conspiracy aimed to undermine their nation."

And who exactly was this Sheikh Sadiq Kadhim Al-Jamri? According to Fars, he is "one of the outstanding leaders of the February 14 Coalition".

Bahrain's pro-regime press were quick to pounce. Al-Watan headlined, "Aljamri: we are ready to sacrifices for [current Iranian Supreme Leader] Khamenei".

Now this development came as a surprise to us. In our coverage of the Bahrain uprising since February 2011, we have been sceptical of the efforts by the regime and their supporters to portray the opposition as the instrument of Iranian ambitions --- only this week, for example, Minister of State for Information Sameera Rajab had denounced the leading opposition society Al Wefaq for its  "slavish links to Iran and its agenda in the kingdom".

We had evaluated that almost all of Bahrain's opposition groups, from the "official" societies to the emerging groups like the February 14 Coalition, had been clear in declaring that their concerns were solely with rights and justice in the Kingdom with no connection to the Islamic Republic. We had also believed that the February 14 Coalition was distinctive in declaring that it had no leaders, with all public statements made in the name of the group.

Could we be wrong? 

We started by asking one of our correspondents in Bahrain, "Who is Sheikh Sadiq Kadhim Al-Jamri?" 

Initially, the reply was, "No one asked has a clue who he is. I have even asked a friend who is close to the Coalition." Further checks brought this revision:

Only one guy knew him. His only words about him were 'This is a guy who has been changing his opinion over time. One time you see him shaking hands with the Prime Minister, and at other times he is hard-line opposition.

After more digging, a photo of Aljamri emerged. And not only the picture --- there were copies of articles in which he appeared to praise the Prime Minister, published in 2009 in a pro-Government newspaper. The "reporting" was innovative: Al-Jamri allegedly took reports from Emirate newspapers praising  the UAE Prime Minister, Shaikh Mohamed bin Rashid Almaktum, and replaced the name:  with that of the Bahrain Prime Minister: ""Khalifa bin Salman --- You Loved Your People and They Loved You Back".

The tribute was not only in words --- a photograph from 2009 of Aljamri presented the Prime Minister with a gift:

So ""Sheikh Sadiq Kadhim Al-Jamri" is not a leader in the Bahraini opposition and, at least on past evidence, has been far from opposed to the regime.

But with propaganda it is not the truth that matters but the distortion. The exaggerations of an Iranian website will now serve the Bahraini regime --- whom Tehrann supposedly criticises for its violations of the rights of the people --- as it uses the Iranian spectre and the claim of "security" to suppress dissent and plays the sectarian card of an opposition seeking to turn the Kingdom into a Shia-dominated state in the image of the Islamic Republic.