Newsweek Int'l piece on VOA expansion....
 

MSNBC.com
A Radioactive Dilemma
Wanted: a sensible policy to check Tehran's nuke program
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

April 24, 2006 issue - In the minds of some Bush administration officials, the
solution to America's new foreign-policy crisis lies with people like "the
Larry King of Iran." That's what Ahmad Baharloo's executive producer, Maryam
Velgot, calls the ruggedly handsome host of the Persian-language show
"Roundtable With You" on Voice of America. Baharloo, an Iranian exile in
Washington, will soon be a prime instrument of the administration's new
democracy-promotion campaign in Iran. Of the $85 million President George W.
Bush has requested from Congress for the campaign, about $50 million will go to
expanding Farsi television programs on VOA, and Baharloo is a star performer.
Beginning in June, Baharloo's interview-and-call-in show will be beamed into
Iranian homes seven days a week instead of just one. The goal: to blanket the
repressive, cleric-run state with open dialogue and glad tidings from America.
Asked whether any Larry King-type character "even the real one" could do much
to engender democratic revolution, Velgot says, "Well, he's more like the old,
serious Larry King." She adds that there is much more coming, like a fast-paced
news-magazine show with a chic, comely host named Luna Shad that "can be
likened to Anderson Cooper's '360'." That will also move from one day a week to
seven.
Bush won't call this policy "regime change." And it certainly isn't the kind of
regime change we remember from his first term, when he employed a much blunter
instrument in Iraq. But it is one of the ways that the administration is
groping for a non-military solution to a brutally difficult predicament. Last
week Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran will move its
nuclear program to full-scale uranium enrichment and he threw in another ugly
threat to Israel for good measure even as U.S. officials lobbied hard for an
anti-Iran resolution at the U.N. Security Council. Countering several recent
news reports, U.S. officials denied that airstrikes on Iran's nuclear
facilities were even close to imminent. But the president pointedly sidestepped
questions about whether military contingency planning was underway.
The point of the new hearts-and-minds program, U.S. officials say, is to remind
the Iranian people what goodies await them mainly economic prosperity if they
drop their nuclear ambitions. Yet outside interference tends to enrage
Iranians, who have never forgiven Washington for the CIA-assisted coup that
toppled elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. "It's not new,"
Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, says of the American
campaign. "They increased their activities in Iran two or three years ago and
now instead of a reformist president we have a conservative president. That
tells you how successful they were."
Zarif may have a point. Before the Iranian presidential elections last June,
Bush issued a statement criticizing the fairness of the process. Even affluent
voters who said they hated the Shiite mullahs told a NEWSWEEK reporter in Iran
at the time that American arrogance so angered them they decided to vote for
Ahmadinejad, the radical candidate. In such an atmosphere, a military attack of
any kind would only incite Iranians even more, many U.S. officials concede.
There is some evidence the Bush administration may be dabbling in covert action
as well. The Iranian regime has been incensed in recent months by a series of
attacks by "bandits" along the border, and has accused U.S. and British
intelligence agencies of fomenting unrest. U.S. officials insist they have
nothing to do with such attacks. And some officials familiar with U.S.
intelligence operations say they are unaware of any presidential directive, or
"finding," instructing the CIA or other U.S. agencies to conduct covert
actions. If true, that means the president is relying, for the moment, on Ahmad
Baharloo and his broadcast brigade.
With Mark Hosenball, Richard Wolffe and John Barry in Washington, Christopher
Dickey in Paris and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Arizona

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12335362/site/newsweek/