Israel Matzav

Iranian minister: 'Israeli journalist sneaked into country'

The Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance complained on Friday that an Israeli journalist had sneaked into Iran.

The Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance claims that an Israeli journalist entered the country during the post-election unrest to report on developments.

"In the course of post-election incidents, we witnessed an Israeli journalist posing as a correspondent for another media outlet. This individual reported on developments in our country," said Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini.

Speaking at the Basij and Media summit in Mashhad, Hosseinian said that people were being flooded with so much information to cripple their ability to think.

"When they bombard the individual with information, the individual becomes incapable of thinking," he said. "We must understand that nothing can be achieved merely by trying to control the situation or countering it. Instead, we must adopt an active posture."

He went on to accuse 'the enemy' of repetitively using certain vocabulary to express [and advance] its special interests. "This repetition is so extreme that even some o f the elite fall for it," he said.

Hosseinian then turned to media activities by the Reform government. "Due to the nature of the news coming from universities, we had been falsely led to believe... that hot political issues were of importance to the students," he said. "However, when we spoke to students it became clear to us that they cared about scientific, welfare and union issues and politics did not hold much significance for them."

Yeah, right.

My guess is that the reporter to whom they are referring is JPost's Sabina Amidi. I doubt she'll be going back there any time soon.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:16 PM