But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of [...]]]> Due to recent protests in Iran, authorities are reportedly jamming the BBC Persian satellite broadcast. Iran’s leaders regard the channel as a propaganda outlet for the Brits’ nefarious aim of regime change.

But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of propaganda: the neoconservative-dominated “Iranium” documentary from the Clarion Fund.

The BBC Persian piece notes that the film’s writer and director, Alex Traiman, is an ideological Israeli settler who lives in the West Bank; it is critical of many of the facts and figures in the film.

The movie’s narrator, Academy Award-winning Iranian actor Shoreh Aghdashloo, answered some tough questions. Aghdashloo said she is against a war — which organizers of a premiere event said was Traiman’s goal — but can tolerate opposing or critical views. She said that some of the comments about “executions” may be exaggerated, but this film reveals the true appearance of the regime.

That tracks closely with Traiman’s own comments. At the Heritage Foundation premiere, the West Bank settler more or less admitted that the movie presents an alarmist account.

Aghdashloo, having admitted some exaggerations, goes on to praise the film as a detailed historical account. The point, she said, is the Iran can’t be trusted with a bomb. “Can you trust a regime that does not respect its own people/children to have such a destructive weapon?” she asks in the interview.

So, if she’s against war, and Iran doesn’t relent in its alleged nuclear weapons program, what does she suggest doing?

This problem is the same one which Clifford May, a star of “Iranium” and the head of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, faced when quizzed on television about it. May and other neocons call for sanctions and “credible military threats,” though they think neither tack is likely to succeed. Some former Iraq hawks, like Ken Pollack, have softened their stance on Iran — calling for a policy of eventual military containment because launching a war would be disastrous. May, on the other hand, thinks that should pressure fail, bombing would be the next U.S. move.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, another expert from FDD interviewed for “Iranium,” is an unabashed Iran hawk, who manages to squeeze in jokes about how much he has written about advocating an attack on the country.

It seems that, unlike Pollack, some hawks have not learned their lessons from Iraq. This should give pause to Aghdashloo, as she opposes a war. Those who painted a worst-case scenario for Iraq — as “Iranium” does for Iran — were wrong. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet those who ignore these lessons are exactly the people with whom Aghdashloo has joined forces.

Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi also appeared in the BBC Persian report. While Aghdashloo said she lent her voice to the film to speak the truth, Dabashi claimed that her voice doesn’t give the film any credibility. In fact, he said, her presence in the movie only undermines her own credibility.

More then Aghdashloo, what worries me is how quickly those involved in this film seem to acknowledge and dismiss its exaggerations. The choice to use violent force in international affairs is one of the gravest decisions a government — whether in the U.S. or Israel — can undertake. That these critics of Iran are so sloppy when trying to present the public with a series of casus belli is disconcerting.

Traiman, an ideological settler in the West Bank, told the crowd he made “Iranium” (which Eli and I reviewed) [...]]]> At the Heritage Foundation screening of the ‘bomb Iran’ scare documentary released by the Clarion Fund, writer and director Alex Traiman rambled extemporaneously about why the U.S. needs to “do something” about Iran.

Traiman, an ideological settler in the West Bank, told the crowd he made “Iranium” (which Eli and I reviewed) to “sound an alarm” about Iran.

“People told us: perhaps you’re telling this message a little too strongly,” he said.

“I’d rather the alarm go off on this screen and in this room today than to have air raid sirens going off in an American city or Israel or Saudi Arabia or wherever else.”

After the public Q and A, I asked Traiman about whether he lives in the ideological West Bank settlement of Beit El (he does) and chatted with him about his movie.

“I think it’s all right for a documentary to have a view point,” he told me, casting doubt on the sincerity of a statement he’d made during the presentation that a documentary was meant to further public discourse (with admitted alarmism?).

Since Traiman more or less admitted that his movie is a piece of propaganda unconcerned with accuracy, it’s worth asking about the motivation behind such a deliberately tendentious effort.

Eli Clifton and I wrote in our review of “Iranium” that the film is clearly aimed at making a case for escalating measures against Iran, especially the military option. We also noted that the movie took a lot of political shots at Democrats and featured neoconservative pundits associated with Republican-leaning publications, institutions, and policies.

Like the film itself, Traiman took some unjustified shots at U.S. President Barack Obama’s positions during the “Iranium” screening at Heritage.

Traiman said (with my emphasis):

We’ve gotta show support for the right side of this debate, which is the Iranians, the Iranians that risked their lives in June 2009 to fight for freedom of speech, to fight for free elections, to fight for democracy. We’ve got to support them. If we would come out with simple statements — in June 2009, if we would have said we support the Iranian people’s rights to free and fair elections, and their rights to protest in the streets, we might have already gotten through these problems.

Compare that to this June 20, 2009, statement from Obama (my emphasis again):

We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

Right, so we don’t need to engage in hypotheticals. What do you reckon Traiman’s recommendation will be if the tack of releasing statements doesn’t work (which it already didn’t)?

The shot against Obama’s treatment of the June 2009 crisis is patently obvious here, especially when one compares Traiman’s statement at the same briefing about the unfolding events in Egypt:

[D]evelopments in each country are unique. We have to understand that while we’ve pushed very strongly for democracy in Iraq and elsewhere, demcoracy is not always the end-all be-all. In the Middle East, these are countries that are not accustomed to democracy…

I’m guessing here, judging from the example Traiman gives of the U.S. “push[ing] very strongly for democracy in Iraq,” that this mode of operation — not his hesitancy on Egypt — is what he has in mind for Iran. You might call it the Iraq option.

I guess “Iranium” can be both settler propaganda and a partisan shot.