An Iranian story the BBC chose not to translate

Last week IranWire reported a story which opens as follows:

“Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has released details of a private meeting between Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and IRIB directors about the July 14 nuclear deal in Vienna. 

The meeting, which was off the record, took place at the end of July. On Saturday, August 1, the IRIB news site published the comments without the permission of Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s chief negotiator. 

Abbas responded immediately, saying the publication of the private conversation was “contrary to national interests and security” and “incompatible with professional ethics.” He also said that the published text contained numerous errors.

A few hours later, the IRIB site retracted the story, stating that the publication had been a mistake. Most of the other Persian-language sites that had republished the text also removed it following Araghchi’s objections.”

The IranWire article details some of the interesting points made by Araghchi in that meeting, including the following:

“Araghchi confirmed that Iran is arming Lebanese Hezbollah: “We said that we cannot stop giving arms to Hezbollah, and we’re not ready to sacrifice it to our nuclear program. So we will continue doing it.””

Likewise, the independent publishing platform Khodnevis notes that:

“He [Araghchi] also pointed out that the Islamic Republic has been sending arms to Hezbollah, something Iran has publicly denied for years.”BBC Persian Araghchi story

Khodnevis attributes the information in its article to a report published by the BBC Persian service (“Araghchi what was said at the meeting with managers of radio and television?“) and another article concerning the removal of the reports by Persian-language outlets was also produced by BBC Persian.

Curiously though, the BBC apparently did not consider that admission by an official of a UN member state that it is systematically breaching the terms of UN SC resolution 1701 (“no sales or supply of arms and related material to Lebanon except as authorized by its Government”) worthy of translation into English for the benefit of the majority of members of its audience who do not read Farsi.  

 

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