The September 24th edition of the BBC Radio 5 live programme ‘Up All Night’ included an item (from 12:16 here) introduced by presenter Dotun Adebayo as follows:
“President Trump has accused Iran of working with North Korea hours after Iran said that it has successfully tested a new medium-range ballistic missile. Mr Trump tweeted that the missile was capable of reaching Israel and again condemned the 2015 nuclear deal signed by Iran and world powers including the United States.”
The ensuing item included two barely audible phone interviews with contributors in the US – Dr Stephen Noerper of the Korea Society and Dr Mohsen Milani of the University of South Florida. The second interview (from 22:07) began with Adebayo asking Dr Milani:
“What are your thoughts about these latest tweets from Donald Trump essentially tying Iran and its own nuclear capabilities – whether it be domestic or whether it be for military purposes – with that of North Korea?”
Milani pointed out that Iran’s “close collaboration with North Korea” in developing missile technology “is not anything new”, stating that Iranian missiles are copies of North Korean ones. He went on to say that he does not see similarities between North Korea and Iran because the former is a “declared nuclear power with the capability to deliver a nuclear bomb “, while the latter, according to him, does not have those capabilities.
Adebayo’s response to that statement was as follows:
“Yeah that’s a clear difference, isn’t it, in terms of their capabilities but also I imagine that Iran doesn’t want to be associated in the international community’s mind with being the same as a dictatorship where there is no freedom of political thought. To a certain extent Iran is what we would describe as a democracy, isn’t it?” [emphasis in bold added]
Given the very bad quality of the phone line, listeners would have had difficulty understanding Milani’s reply to that but may have made out the statement according to which the political system in Iran is “fundamentally different” from that in North Korea and that it is “significantly, substantially more open, as you correctly suggested”.
While the political system in Iran may indeed be different to that in North Korea, obviously that does not make Iran a democracy. Here is what Freedom House had to say in its latest report on Iran:
“The Islamic Republic of Iran holds elections regularly, but they fall short of democratic standards due to the role of the hard-line Guardian Council, which disqualifies all candidates deemed insufficiently loyal to the clerical establishment. Ultimate power rests in the hands of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the unelected institutions under his control. […]
Human rights abuses continued unabated in 2016, with the authorities carrying out Iran’s largest mass execution in years and launching a renewed crackdown on women’s rights activists. The regime maintained restrictions on freedom of expression, both offline and online, and made further arrests of journalists, bloggers, labor union activists, and dual nationals visiting the country, with some facing heavy prison sentences. […]
Elections in Iran are not free and fair, according to international standards. The Guardian Council, controlled by hard-line conservatives, vets all candidates for the parliament, presidency, and the Assembly of Experts—a body of 86 clerics who are elected to eight-year terms by popular vote. The council has in the past rejected candidates who are not considered insiders or deemed fully loyal to the clerical establishment, as well as women seeking to run in the presidential election. As a result, Iranian voters are given a limited choice of candidates. […]
Only political parties and factions loyal to the establishment and to the state ideology are permitted to operate. Reformist parties and politicians have come under increased state repression, especially since 2009.”
Clearly Dotun Adebayo misled Radio 5 live listeners with his inaccurate and uninformed claim that Iran is a ‘democracy’.
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