Broadcast 21 March on PARS satellite TV (Los Angeles)

This is the first day of the Iranian New Year; for Iranians everywhere this is a day to exchange greetings and good wishes. One such exchange took place today on television between PARS TV news analysts Mehrdad Parsa and Alireza Meybodi. This was their first TV appearance together, although both men have appeared daily in separate PARS programs for years. In these excerpts they exchanged thoughts about recent developments in Iran and prospects for the new year.

Meybodi: And then we had this unpleasant report about Mr. Ahmadinejad's reaction to the film 300. Some analysts have said that Mr. Ahmadinejad's remarks could help increase the film's sales. This is the very thing you were afraid of.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments could play a part in increasing the fortunes of the people who made the film 300--and they produced this fictitious film to make money, and in the name of the Iranian nation in such circumstances, and in so doing they undermined all of our identities. Mr. Parsa, did you see this film?

Parsa: I didn't see all of it, but I saw parts of it, and in my view the film isn't worth talking about to the extent the Islamic Republic has done. As you said, this only increases its sales. I think there was a conspiracy between the Islamic republic and the filmmakers to accomplish this.

Meybodi: Don't forget, so far no official has done more than Mr. Ahmadinejad to damage our national interest in the world. No imperialist official has been able to make us so indebted to the people of the world with respect to history and the issue of the holocaust. He has even succeeded in convertin the war between the Arabs and Israel to a war between Iran and Israel and tied all of Palestine's problems to our nation's destiny!

And now there is the Lebanon problem! He has made the problems of the small war-stricken nation of Lebanon into an Iranian problem! Unfortunately these are the services Mr. Ahmadinejad has rendered in his international contacts to damage our national interest!

Parsa: What Ahmadinejad is saying occupies the minds of the people a little, with the propaganda that comes afterwards and the way it gets into the Islamic Republic's television networks, but in truth, this leaves the people uninformed about what is going on behind the scenes.

The government signs contracts with the Europeans to buy gasoline and sell oil; it imports gasoline from unknown sources and sells crude oil. What are these contracts?

There has been talk of nationalizing the oil in our country since the time of Mohammad Mosaddeq. Yesterday we celebrated 29 Esfand [20 March] as Oil Industry Nationalization Day, and one wonders whether our oil industry is a national industry or not.

Meybodi: As you said, the Islamic republic has two faces. We have the underground Islamic republic, which is the place for selling contracts. Just yesterday the French press announced that the Total Company paid $80 million in bribes to the Islamic republic's officials in the oil company to get it hands on Iran's oil fields and resources. These bribes went into the Islamic republic's accounts in various banks--I mean the bank accounts of the Islamic republic's officials--$80 million!

As you said, yes, unfortunately we have an underground Islamic republic that you do not see. This Islamic republic is invisible. The visible Islamic republic that we see is that display window where Ahnadinejad sits along with Mr. Khatami, Mr. Tilita Parsi and the government's agents and brokers outside the country.

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Parsa: Another report I saw on the Internet on one of the government sites in Iran called Asr-e Iran said some of the sheikhs in the UAE in collaboration with elements affiliated with the Islamic republic are planning to hold an annual auction of Iranian girls in Dubai.

This report says the prostitution Mafia in the UAE has started an Internet site to advertise Iranian girls who are 15 or 17 years of age or younger. In addition to the names and ages of these girls, the site has included color photos of each of the girls so the Arab customers can make their selections with a better view.

[snip]

Mr. Meybodi I hope this will be the year of Iran's salvation and next year we will be holding these same celebrations on our own pure soil. This is the hope of all Iranians with their hearts in Iran, such as yourself who have worked in the media for many years.

Mr. Meybodi, I am at the end of this program and I am proud to have had this conversation with you at the beginning of the new year. I would like to hear your wishes in your own words.

Meybodi: I really don't have any hopes other than for Iran's young generation, these 45 million youth who live in the country are the great hope for all of us, that this generation will achieve liberation! Democratic freedom is really the right of this generation after all these misfortunes it has endured for 30 centuries! It is not 30 years, it is 30 centuries of bad days and bad news.

In other words, as someone who works in the news, you will confirm that throughout all these years we have been looking for good news thinking we might be able to enlarge it, or that it might give our compatriots peace of mind, but we haven't found it! No good news has been available. All the news has been unpleasant! All the days have been days of torment and mourning.

If the new year observance of Wednesday Outside arrives or if the Iranian team wens a game in international competition, we all follow it to get together and forget all the difficult and terrifying days.

I am very happy to have been with you Mr. Parsa!

Parsa: I thank you for your kindness and wish a happy new year to you and your honorable family, your wife and your children. I wish you health and victory, and I hope we achieve that good desire for Iran's liberation, that we see a day of freedom in our country and that we will see what the youth of our nation are doing to run the country with a sense of nationalism and patriotism and to preserve Iran.

I thank you very very much for your kindness. I will also use the opportunity to wish a happy holiday to my Bahai compatriots and I entrust all the dear ones to the God of Iran. Mr. Meybodi will continue the program and for now I bid you farewell until the next meeting. May God protect you with happiness and greater kindness!

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Later in the program several viewers called about Mr. Parsa's report that Iranian girls are to be sold in the Dubai. One caller said this report could easily be false because a webmaster need not check the facts before publishing a report. To this Mr. Meybodi replied that to him it is remarkable that such a thing would even be allowed somewhere in the world today. Another caller said later that since there are no laws in Islam against selling humans, there are no laws against it in Dubai, and there is nothing surprising about it.

Crossposted from Satellite News.