Page 301 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

A Game Plan for Infinite War? 29 1

On January 11, U.S. armed forces conducted a raid on an Iraqi foreign liai-
son office in the Kurdish city of Irbil, detaining five Iranian intelligence officials
who were a part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. While the five were not offi-
cially diplomats, they were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's al-
Quds Brigade, on an official mission to Iraq, and representing the Iranian gov-
ernment. The officials were in the process of being awarded diplomatic status at
the time of the U.S. detainment. The officials did not illegally enter the country
on a covert mission; quite the contrary, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari
explained that they were "not [on] a clandestine operation. . . they were known
by us. . . they operated with the approval of the regional government and with
the knowledge of the Iraqi government. We were in the process of formalizing
that liaison office into a con~ulate.''~
U.S. leaders claimed the raid was necessary in order to send a message to
Iranian leaders to stop "meddling" in Iraqi affairs. Iran had been accused by U.S.
leaders of providing improvised explosive devices to Iraqi "insurgents" to be
used against American troops. Iran had also been accused of providing money,
weapons, and training to Iranian militias and "insurgents," and in threatening
U.S. attempts to "stabilize" a war-tom ~ra~.~~ explicitly rejected
leaders
Iraqi
U.S. charges of Iranian "meddling" in Iraqi affairs, filing numerous protests of
the U.S. detainment operation. Kurdish officials labeled the attack as a violation
of Iraqi sovereignty and a violation of international law!' Iraq's Foreign Minis-
ter explained that the detainment of one of the Iranian officials (who had been an
accredited diplomat) was "embarrassing for my country."49
The U.S. and Iranian detainments represent a rare opportunity to conduct a
natural experiment into the ways in which comparable military operations be-
tween the United States and "enemy" regimes are portrayed in the American
media. The reasons for expecting comparable coverage between the two abduc-
tion stories are numerous. As the Iranian detainment of British sailors was pro-
tested as illegal by British and American leaders, so too was the U.S. detainment
of Iranian officials protested by Iraqi and Iranian leaders as illegal. Both abduc-
tions represented major standoffs between powers attempting to exert their au-
thority in the Middle East.
One could easily argue that the U.S. detainment of Iranian officials should
have gamered even more attention than the Iranian detainment of British per-
sonnel. In the case of U.S. detainment operations, the Iranian officials were in
Iraq legally, with the express permission of the Iraqi government. Conversely,
the legal status of the British and American occupation of Iraq has been widely
considered illegal under international law at the highest levels of organizations
like the United Nations (hence any operations of British or American troops can
also be deemed illegal). On another level, the U.S. detainment of the Iranian
officials was explicitly authorized at the highest levels of the American govem-
ment (a clear case of official U.S. provocation against lran),so whereas it was
unknown at the time of the reporting of the British-Iranian standoff whether the
detainment of British Navy personnel was ordered at the highest levels of the
Iranian government or not. Furthermore, Iran's detainment of British forces
paled in comparison to the U.S. detainment of Iranians in terms of potential for