New Measure by the Cultural Command of the IRGC

Rooz Online

The deputy of the supreme command of the IRGC forces announced two days ago the creation of two “central” and “supreme” commands to combat what it calls “psychological operations of the enemy.” Masoud Jazaeri who is among the hardline military commanders supporting the coup administration that came to office in June 12 of 2009, did not present more details on the nature and organization of these two commands but said, “These two commands will be operational soon.” This officer of the supreme command of the armed forces and the head of the defense propaganda command of Iran who had been criticized in the past by supporters of the green movement for his remarks on what he called the “green coup” and his advocacy of confronting the “leaders of the conspiracy” (a reference to Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi) made this announcement just a month after the organization under his command held a seminar titled “Seminar on the psychological and media operations” in the auditoriums of the state-run national radio and television organization

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad participated in the inauguration of this seminar and spoke of the need to “confront the leaders of the soft war). This seminar was held on October 11 this year but because of the unusual political and social conditions in the country did not receive much domestic or international media coverage at the time but political experts have said that the presence of the key media personalities that support the coup administration, which included the head of Fars and IRNA news agencies, demonstrated the coordination that was being made during the seminar proceedings in this regard. During the seminar, Ahmadinejad spoke of the need for media readiness to deal with the “soft war” adding that “psychological operations focused exclusively on ears and eyes.” In his remarks two days ago, Jazaeri defined soft war as, “the cause for the enemy’s rise in soft operations is the planning for the big coup whose foundation has been laid years ago and which emerged during (the last) presidential elections, and the media are viewed as the key tools in the psychological operations of the enemy against the Islamic republic of Iran.”Jazaeri’s reference and remarks on “some media outlets” come at a time when the reformist news website “Jonbeshe Rah Sabz” (green movement) reported that the government planned to launch some 100 media outlets to confront the green movement. (Read more...)