Pressure and Aggression No Longer Guarantee the Achievement of our Goals – We Must Consider ‘Culture-Building’

imageSo says the Iranian Intelligence Ministry through its new public service announcement promoting Iranians to report suspicious activity.  MEMRI has the transcript and the PSA that ran last week. 

The video intends to scare Iranians of American soft power that purportedly seeks to undermine the regime from within using cultural warfare, which has been "on the back burner in Iran for years."  The U.S. cabal, headed by a CGI John McCain, a "senior White House official" who "orchestrates numerous conspiracies" against Iran, is told a plan to make use of leading cultural figures and that a lot has already been achieved through international scientific conferences. 

The story is simple: be afraid of engaging with foreigners, watch for suspicious activities of your friends and neighbors and your son, who is willing to betray his country for a chance to visit the U.S. There are a few scratch-your-head and go "huh?" in this 4min+ commercial, but hey, we’re not the target audience. 

By the way, only the Americans are CGI.  Apparently they couldn’t get McCain, George Soros, Gene Sharp ("theoretician of civil disobedience and velvet revolutions"), and Bill Smith to agree to be filmed for this.  Maybe they were respecting the Writer’s strike.  The rest of the PSA is live action with non-union actors.

Reminds me of counter-communist propaganda of the 1950s.  Not quite as campy though.

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