Iran’s media charm offensive following last month’s landmark nuclear deal has crossed a new frontier with a visa for a reporting trip and and high-level interview granted to a BBC correspondent for the first time in six years.
Kim Ghattas, the BBC’s Washington-based State Department correspondent, was allowed to spend a week in Iran and interviewed one of the country’s vice-presidents, Masumeh Ebtekar, despite the deep hostility of Tehran hardliners to the corporation.
Ebtekar, a reformist, said that Iran’s agreement to limit its nuclear activities in return for the end of sanctions represented a step forward. “It means a new era of working with the world in terms of different dimensions of trade, cultural exchanges,” she said. “It means that Iran is going to be a more prominent player in this part of the world.”
The BBC interview was the latest sign of a concerted effort by Tehran to ease access for international media and to improve the image of the Islamic Republic following the Vienna deal, the result of months of intensive negotiations with the US and five other world powers.
The BBC’s last Iran correspondent, the late Jon Leyne, was thrown out after the 2009 presidential election when hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned to power while his Green movement opponents claimed victory and cried foul. Efforts to appoint a replacement correspondent went nowhere slowly.
But arrangements for Ghattas’s trip reflected continuing Iranian sensitivities: she was apparently selected for the assignment because she is Dutch and not a UK national. It was also agreed that none of the material would be broadcast on the BBC Persian TV channel, which is extremely popular with ordinary Iranians but strongly disliked by the government.
The only BBC journalist to have visited Iran since 2009 was its chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, who travelled to Tehran with the party of the EU’s foreign policy chief after the nuclear agreement in Vienna.
The Guardian, along with other UK-based news organisations, has been granted Iranian visas – and high-level access – in recent months despite the closure of both countries’ respective embassies since 2011. European and US media have also benefited from the thaw. The recent reporting trip by the American Jewish newspaper the Forward marked an obvious attempt to reach out to an audience sceptical of the value of rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
Earlier this month, the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance had annulled the suspension of the BBC’s licence. Tasnim described the BBC as a “media organisation associated with the intelligence apparatus of England’s monarchical regime”.
The culture ministry denied the story, clarifying that permission had been granted to the BBC to report from Iran for one week and that its Tehran bureau would not reopen. The access excluded BBC Persian. Visas had been given to a group of independent Dutch journalists working for the BBC, it said.
According to the Fars news agency, 17 foreign media organisations have been granted press visas this month alone, including the Forward, France’s Arte channel, Science magazine, Le Monde and France Culture, as well as the BBC.
But hostility to BBC Persian shows no sign of abating. Fars accused Iranian film-makers of having links to it, while the hardline Vatan-e-Emrooz newspaper ran a front-page story showing a fox in front of No 10 Downing Street under the headline: “The sound of the fox’s prowling”, referring to the BBC’s return to Iran. Vatan-e-Emrooz also accused BBC Persian of recruiting talented Iranians and linking them to the British intelligence services.
Last month Iran’s state TV broadcast live the US secretary of state, John Kerry, being questioned on the nuclear deal during a congressional hearing. But the broadcaster stole the live feed and translation from BBC Persian. The BBC retaliated by relocating its logo to the centre of the screen, which brought an abrupt end to the broadcast on Iranian state TV.
The US and other western governments are watching closely for signs of substantive changes beyond media policy. The espionage trial of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter held in Iran for more than a year, ended last week and the verdict is expected to be announced later this month.
Rezaian has been accused of collaborating with “hostile governments” but the Post and his family vehemently deny the charges against him. Analysts believe he is the victim of an internal feud between the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, which favours improved relations with the west, and his conservative opponents, who are intent on demonstrating the limits of his power.
