TEHRAN – A number of Western and Israeli newspapers and news agencies have represented Iran's Friday march marking Quds Day as a move incongruous with efforts by the Islamic Republic to improve its political relations with the world.

The said media have especially tried to imply that the rallies undermine Iran's diplomatic efforts to reach a deal on the country’s nuclear program with world powers.

“The rallies Friday come as Iran and six world powers hold talks in Vienna aimed at working out a deal to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for easing tens of billions of dollars in economic penalties on the Islamic Republic,” Haaretz wrote Friday.

Israel National News went, “Millions of Iranians took part in the annual ‘Death to Israel Day’ in Iran on Friday, ironically coinciding with the twice-extended deadline for a deal on the Islamic regime's nuclear program that apparently will be extended yet again.”

Jerusalem Post even preferred to do what it wanted at the very headline, reading, “As Iran talks continue in Vienna, Israel, U.S. flags, burn in streets of Tehran”

“Our death-to-America nuclear negotiating partners,” was what the Wall Street Journal chose as headline.

A paragraph from the report read, “Tehran’s Kayhan newspaper also weighed in. Iran’s 1979 revolution, the newspaper wrote in an English-language editorial, ‘busted the myth of the holocaust which the Zionists and their godfathers allege happened in Europe during World War 2.’ The editorial predicted that the U.S., ‘which currently terrorizes humanity as the sole superpower, will one fine day cease to be visible on the map of the world.’”

The New York-based newspaper Algemeiner chose to report a “human rights group” reaction to the Iranian Quds Day march.

It reported that the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on U.S. President Barack Obama to denounce “marches in Iran marking the country’s aggressively anti-Zionist international Quds Day.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, said despite negotiating with Iran, the U.S. remained one of the country’s core enemies, along with Israel, the Algemeiner added.


------ Beyond nuclear talks

Some media did not stop at the nuclear negotiations and included other issues that they tried somehow to relate to the occasion.

NBC News went beyond Israel and included regional issues such as Syria, saying, “Huge crowds chanted anti-Israel and U.S. slogans in Iran's capital on Friday, an indication of the power that hardliners still hold even as negotiators struggle to finalize a nuclear deal that would help normalize the country's relations with the rest of the world... The U.S.'s close ally, Israel, is dead set against a deal. It says Tehran should not be allowed to enrich any uranium — as envisioned under the agreement that is being negotiated… Iran has backed Iraqi forces against [the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)] and Syrian government forces against rebels including Al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front.”

“Protesters chanted ‘Down with America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ as they set fire to Israeli and American flags. Saudi Arabia was also a target of the chants this year, reflecting the escalating tensions between the kingdom and Iran. After [the Ansarullah] took control of Yemen’s capital Sanaa and ousted the Yemeni government earlier this year, the Saudis retaliated with an extensive air campaign targeting the … faction,” wrote the news website Tower, which covers news on Israel and the Middle East.

“Saudi joins Israel as target of Jerusalem Day protests,” a Daily Mail headline read.


SP/P