The Latest from Iran (25 October): No Gratitude for CNN
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 6:23See also Iran Video Interview: Ahmadinejad Puts Out His Standard Lines to CNN's Zakaria
The Latest from Iran (24 October): How To Instantly Become an Iranian Citizen
1845 GMT: All-Is-Well Alert. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper NZZ, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has said that everyone in Iran has access to the Internet, and there are daily papers from all political camps.
1835 GMT: No Gratitude for CNN. Back to where we began this morning, with Iran State TV's attack on CNN and Fareed Zakaria....
It appears the cause for the assault was not Zakaria's interview of the President but an accompanying piece he did about life in Tehran. Zakaria was positive about many aspects of life in a Tehran of "order" and "cleanliness" (somehow missing Tehran's extraordinary levels of air pollution and minimising the significance of its crowded roads), but State TV claimed he had spoken of a "dark and gloomy" city. Specifically, he "tried to prove U.S. claims that Iran is under pressure because of the sanctions. In order to do so he resorted to lies".
Indeed, Zakaria, while ignoring issues such as unemployment and inflation, did hone in on sanctions. He said Iranians blamed the regime in part for the situation and indicated that the Western measures had strengthened the grip of the Revolutionary Guards on the economy: