Israel Radio Show Captivates Iranians

Yaroslav Trofimov. The Wall Street Journal. 6/23/2009 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124571901245939581.html#printMode)

JERUSALEM—In his Friday sermon, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reserved special wrath for "Zionist radio" that he said tried to drive a wedge between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic. Such attention from Iran's supreme leader was music to the ears of Menashe Amir, a bespectacled Iranian-born Israeli who has been broadcasting in Persian from Jerusalem for the past five decades.

"We're listened to in Iran and considered very credible and effective," Mr. Amir says with pride. "We're close to the Iranian people, we know what they want, and we have our sources that give us detailed news about everything that's going on in Iran."

The spread of the Internet and satellite television in Iran over the past decade seemed to eclipse the prominence of Mr. Amir's old-fashioned shortwave broadcasts on Kol Israel, Israel's public radio. But now, as the Web in Iran is either blocked or dramatically slowed and satellite-TV channels are jammed by the government amid spreading unrest, Mr. Amir has suddenly become relevant again.

"Today we have many more listeners inside the country because Iranians are thirsty for any information" about the unrest, the 69-year-old Mr. Amir says. He estimates the Iranian audience for Kol Israel's 85-minute daily show in Persian is between two million and six million people. Independent audience numbers, for obvious reasons, are impossible to come by.

Though semiretired, Mr. Amir has been hosting the show every day since Iran's controversial June 12 elections, narrating news summaries and taking live telephone calls from listeners within Iran. The call-in part of the broadcast, normally a weekly feature, is now on air daily due to the current unrest. Because Iran bans phone and postal links with Israel, Iranian callers dial a special number in Germany; as a precaution, Mr. Amir asks them not to mention their names or hometowns.

On a recent day, as Mr. Amir sat in his tiny studio in Kol Israel's Jerusalem offices, one caller from Iran, his voice trembling with emotion, recounted how "there's blood on the streets and people are being killed like butterflies." Another urged the world to help the protesters—reminding that Persian emperor Cyrus the Great protected and aided the Jews two and a half millennia ago, and asking the Jewish state to repay the favor by supporting Iranian demonstrators today.

Mr. Amir hasn't made any calls to sources inside Iran for decades, he says, fearing his voice would be recognizable to anyone who may be monitoring his contacts' phones. But he and other journalists at the service keep in touch via email and other means of electronic communications with local sources.

He boasts of being able to beat the competition on anything from the latest price of cheese in Tehran to confidential discussions within the Islamic Republic's establishment.

Neatly dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and a tie despite Jerusalem's sweltering heat, Mr. Amir embodies the golden age in Israel's relationship with Iran, the Jewish state's closest regional ally until the shah was overthrown in 1979's Islamic revolution.

"I am 100% Iranian, and I wish the best to Iran. Israel and Iran are natural friends," he says, his studio decorated with posters of Iranian movie stars, a printout of an Iranian flag and a family photograph of Prince Reza Pahlavi, the late shah's exiled son and heir.

"There are still many who remember the period of fruitful cooperation between Israel and Iran, and they want it back," Mr. Amir adds.

Still, Israeli analysts caution, Mr. Amir's vision of renewed Israeli-Iranian friendship is unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future, even if the protesters, led by former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, somehow gain the upper hand in Tehran.

"The entire population has been raised for the past 30 years with the cultic mantra of "death to Israel," " says Prof. Ze'ev Maghen, a Persian speaker who heads the Middle East Studies department at Israel's Bar Ilan University. "It's almost impossible to conceive of a positive outlook on peace between Israel and Iran."

Born into a Jewish family in Tehran, Mr. Amir worked for Iran's Kayhan newspaper—now the mouthpiece of the Islamic regime—before he moved to Israel in 1960. He is one of some 60,000 such immigrants—a community that still maintains close contact with the estimated 15,000 Jews who remain inside Iran.

The community plans a demonstration of support for Tehran protesters on Tel Aviv's seafront promenade Tuesday. Iranian-born Israelis include Shaul Mofaz, until earlier this year Israel's minister of defense, who is often heard in Mr. Amir's broadcasts.

An institution in Israel, Mr. Amir, who also edits the Israeli foreign ministry's Persian-language Web site, bristles at suggestions that he must be coordinating his programming with Israeli government officials because Kol Israel is a public broadcaster that targets a strategic foe.

"Nobody gives us advice—we're the ones who give advice" to the government, he says indignantly. "We know the Iranian psychology, and can tell exactly what's happened there and what the news means."

Mr. Amir minces no word in expressing his outrage over a statement by Meir Dagan, the chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, who told a parliamentary committee last week that the extent of fraud in Iran's contested presidential elections was no worse than what happens in liberal democracies.

"If that's what Mossad really thinks, they don't have any idea of what's going on in Iran," Mr. Amir said.

Kol Israel, of course, isn't the only foreign radio station broadcasting in Persian. The British Broadcasting Corporation, the Voice of America and U.S.-funded Radio Farda also beam into the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khamenei, however, on Friday singled out Kol Israel, naming it first in his tirade against alleged foreign interference in Iranian affairs.

"The enemies are trying through their media, which is controlled by dirty Zionists. The Zionist, U.S. and U.K. radio are all trying to say that there was a competition between those who supported and those who didn't support the state," the ayatollah said, insisting that all presidential candidates fully accepted the Islamic Republic and its government system. "Accusing the government of corruption because of Zionist reports is not the right thing."

Ayatollah Khamenei's diatribes are likely to lure new listeners to Mr. Amir's program, Israeli analysts say. "The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend," explains Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya. "But, if the regime is so much against it, you have to listen to it."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A6
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