Iran's media at war

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1:11On the 28th of February, the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran, targeting military sites and the country's leadership.

1:24The next day on Iranian TV, a visibly emotional presenter announced the death of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

1:39But sorrow turned into defiance on TV screens as a new Ayatollah Khamenei was announced, the son Mushtaba. The succession was framed as something reminiscent of a rebirth. Khamenei has been made decades younger. We've not lost Khamenei, we have a rejuvenated Khamenei instead. Immediately after the announcement, there were several people. They went to their rooftops and started saying that to Moshtaba.

2:12Dissent is dangerous here. Just weeks earlier, mass protests were met with brutal force. When the country later came under attack, state media switched into war mode. We already had a more restrictive media environment from the January protests. We had internet blackout, polarised atmosphere. Now what we have is a wartime version of that, which is far more extreme. In this episode, we peek under the bonnet of the machinery that shapes official narratives and controls information. And we revisit the turbulent first days of the war as they unfolded on national TV.

2:57Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Krass Ivanova Twig and this is the Global Jigsaw from BBC Monitoring where we look at the world through the lens of its media exploring the narratives, the propaganda and the disinformation

3:16Radio Tehran We are not in the territory of Ukraine Western countries are not the international community That era has finished To fully immerse ourselves in the Iranian war narratives, it's useful to understand the propaganda playbook. Just weeks before the U.S.-Israeli strikes, the authorities ordered a crackdown on mass protests. Tens of thousands were killed, according to some human rights organizations.

3:57Information the authorities wanted to conceal, and they have form in doing that. Watching for exactly this kind of media behaviour, Barry Sadeed from our Iran team spends his days glued to state TV. After the January protests, we did have articles on reports around state raids on hospitals targeting protesters. The newspaper that published those articles, Hamai Han, A reformist outlet was almost immediately shut down. And the journalist responsible prosecuted as well. And that's the kind of the edge, if you like, that ensures the journalist that might be more likely to cross that line will think twice.

4:36Because of the regime of prosecution, because of very restrictive laws around what the Iranian government would describe as misinformation. Prosecution is one form of information control. But there are other tools as well, including the rumoured internet kill switch. Probably the most egregious impact of these information restrictions, the internet blackout in particular, has been the difficulty of Iranians contacting one another. As in the most reliable source of any kind of local information around the war and the conflict would be actual other Iranians. And also, of course, the difficulty in terms of contacting the outside world and getting any kind of information.

5:15In the age of constant connectivity, Iranians found themselves once again cut off from each other and from the world. Nushin, another colleague from our Iran team, explains what that meant. When the war started, it seemed that telephone and landlines were also cut off. And it got to the point where there is absolutely no way you can get in touch with your loved ones. A few days after the war started, people could reach out to one another, but it was a bit intermittent. What does that mean for the media diet? What sources of news are available? You would have the state broadcaster, TV channels on.

6:01You can access TV, radio, newspapers, limited access to internet and good access to satellite TV as well. Satellite TV carries material the authorities view as enemy propaganda, and it has been targeted through legislation. It's illegal to have a foreign satellite dish, but it's a law that's essentially not enforced. So it's incredibly common. The majority of Iranians will have access normally to those foreign-based Iranian news channels. If they work, that is. The Islamic Republic is operating jammers, sometimes ineffectively, to block access to, for example, or Iran International, BBC Persian.

6:42That means these information-starved Iranians would have to perhaps turn to state media. And what they've been given is this vision by the Islamic Republic, and that's one of a totally mobilised public swearing revenge. Iranians have always found ways around internet restrictions, often by using VPNs. But this time, it seems the screws have been tightened. VPNs have played a specifically interesting role in this war. I think there's been explicit warnings sent around by text that people found using VPNs will be prosecuted and encouraging Iranians to inform on other Iranians using VPNs. Occasionally people are able to break through with VPNs or by using Starlink terminals, which were actually jammed by the Islamic Republic during the January protests and now have also been banned with the government warning that people will be prosecuted for owning the terminals.

7:37Let's pause for a moment on the idea that the state sends warnings directly to people's mobile phones. These are said to have increased both in frequency and in scope. This is a new trend I'd say in the past few years. I remember a few years back women who were not observing the hijab they would get text messages saying that you were spotted in so and so location not wearing your headscarf properly, or sometimes they send a message saying you've been summoned. Obviously, it is very scary. But in terms of mass messaging to the entire nation, I'd say it is becoming more and more frequent. So those text messages could have provided that kind of information to avoid certain areas or where to get help and so on.

8:26But instead, what kind of messages do they send? They send threats, warnings. Threats about what? Do not collaborate with the enemy. Do not post social media messaging that is in support of the enemy. Do not post videos of the areas that have been hit and struck by the enemy. It's not unusual for a country at war to not want to release details about damage to military targets. Back to those mass messages. This is the main line of communication between Iranians and the state, and it's less about public safety, shelters guarding themselves from the airstrikes, and more so about threats of prosecution.

9:08For the avoidance of any doubt, the chief of the police issued an extra warning on state TV. If someone acts at the enemy's behest, we will regard them as the enemy, and we will treat them as we treat the enemy. All our team have their fingers on the trigger, ready to defend the revolution. Meanwhile, information about safety is conspicuously absent from state media. At the time of war, there are no clear instructions for safety measures for people to go to certain areas for sheltering, or there are no audible alarm systems to notify people that an attack is imminent. I have also seen social media footage and heard some audible sirens in them, but that is very limited and it is unclear whether that kind of an alarm system is actually functioning or it's just in random places and areas.

10:10Let's take you inside those dramatic opening days of the war and how they were framed.

10:21It didn't take long for the bombing to be acknowledged on air. As the war came to dominate the day, what followed was a carefully curated narrative. They have a wall-to-wall coverage of this war.

10:46The state broadcaster, the TV and the radio, as well as a lot of news outlets, are downplaying or very often completely ignoring the attacks on military sites. And they are instead highlighting civilian casualties and damages to civilian infrastructures like hospitals, schools. On the first day, a girls' school was hit in Minap, said to be by an American missile, although the US Defense Secretary has denied it. More than 150 people were killed. It shocked the nation.

11:31On that very first day, rumours started spreading that the Supreme Leader had been killed. At first, there was an official denial. Confirmation was delayed until the next day.

11:48We had the vision of this kind of shaking TV presenter in tears, sobbing as he announced a death.

12:02In his words, the mountain of the revolution, the guardian of the Islamic Republic, our loving father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Essentially from that point, the core of all state media coverage has been the former Supreme Leader. And people rushed to the streets and started crying and sobbing.

12:26And there were live footage of people beating their chests or their foreheads and they were very angry and saying that they wanted revenge.

12:41Initially, the TV switched into a morning mode. But I think after a day, that changed into more combative tone of now is the time to take revenge. And the nation is ready to get martyred for the leader. What do you think are they achieving with this change of tone towards the martyrdom themes? Martyrdom is an ingrained concept for Shia Muslims. And this could mean that they want the country to be united and rally around the flag. At the time of war, they want people to sacrifice their lives for their motherland. This is something very specific to Shia Muslims, who are the majority of an Iran, and a minority in the wild and Muslim world.

13:31And it's their specific tradition that draws on the energy of the martyred imams in history. And that's part of the energy that also drove the original Islamic revolution as well, where people mobilized. Every street, every square, we have constant marches and these marches center on mourning.

13:55Whether it's the mourning of local people who died in airstrikes, as they have in provinces across Iran, but more essentially mourning of Ayatollah Khamenei. And what we have seen is that every night, mostly pro-government and pro-establishment groups, they get together in Tehran, in other big cities, and they kind of show that sense of unity, saying that we are ready for this war, facing all these attacks head-on.

14:30And it's worth introducing a point here about the role of mourning and death, specifically in Shia Islam culture. If someone dies in the service of a cause, their death means much, much more than their life. And it galvanizes as opposed to being caused for depression or even despair. So with Khamenei's death, we had the building up of his own martyr legend. The Americans and Israel essentially gave the Supreme Leader perfect death. Khamenei didn't die of a heart attack. He was killed by a foreign enemy while on duty, leading the nation under attack. This is the narrative that secured his legend.

15:10Khamenei wasn't really killed in a bunker 50 meters below the ground. He wasn't killed in a secret compound far away from the capital, preparing to flee to Russia, as some rogue reports suggested. He was killed in his own compound, which is as known to Iranians as 10 Downing Street would be for British people. and he was killed alongside the majority of his family, so several of his sons and daughters-in-law, his daughter and two of his grandchildren as well. How was this visualised on TV? What we had was state media even issuing pictures of his kitchen table, like a very ordinary dining room but covered in dust debris from the airstrike and commentators saying that Hymenae died the death that he wanted, the death of a kind of a holy warrior fighting, in his words, the enemy.

16:03That's exactly what has galvanized the social base of the Islamic Republic. When we see them mourning the Supreme Leader, they're not only mourning, but they're stating their anger, their desire for revenge.

16:19And that's something common we see between the incessant vox pops broadcast by state media.

16:30Scenes of just constant daily mobilisation. In Tehran, for example, this kind of dominance of the street by vans and trucks of loudspeakers constantly blaring Nasheed's wartime songs.

16:46Or mourning songs led by processions of mourners.

16:55chanting out the Islamic Republic slogans.

17:05Another really essential part of this wartime state broadcasting has been music. But also, right at the beginning of the war, we had the signaling of the beginning of hostilities by Iranian state media constantly playing this jingle that dated back to the Iran-Iraq war.

17:25And on top of that, we've had constant music videos, music accompanying almost hype videos of Iranian military hardware. That's the soundtrack basically of this wartime media coverage. Khamenei became the focal point of the discourse. He was eulogized by his followers who went through his back catalogue in search of nuggets of wisdom. There's also this incessant rehashing of his previous speeches. And these cover subjects ranging from, of course, the Islamic Revolution, various organs of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei just meeting and greeting children, for example.

18:14Maybe a child will kind of gently ask Khamenei for his ring and Khamenei will give it to him. Another child will ask for his robe and Khamenei will very generously again give that child his robe or he'll be discoursing on French literature, the differences between the French Revolution and the Iranian and Russian revolutions, for example. Khamenei apparently loved to post his thoughts on X, on everything from world literature to his brand of feminism. Khamenei had a notorious Twitter account. He posted a lot about his love of treating women the right way. Woman is a flower, as one of his famous tweets went.

18:49I think it was during the Iran-Israel war that several of the former Supreme Leader's tweets went viral about his love of literature, Victor Hugo especially. What could you read into what happened shortly after the death was announced? What we saw on state media reflected the new kind of shifting landscape of power that was happening behind the scenes. One figure in particular had been given a quite powerful and widespread portfolio by the Supreme Leader. And there's someone who had a direct connection to him. This is the security chief or the head of the National Supreme Security Council, Ali Lari Jani.

19:28Lari Jani was given a broad role in the nuclear portfolio. He had taken charge in terms of masterminding the repression that happened around the surge of protests on January 8th and 9th. And he had also been tasked by the Supreme Leader with the preparation for the expected war with the US and Israel. He's even engaged in a kind of war of words, spats of Trump.

19:56I think one of his initial interviews said, they've burned our hearts, meaning the Supreme Leader, we will burn their hearts. Larijani's wartime role was short-lived. He was killed on the 17th of March.

20:16So figures like Ali Larijani, while their position can be replaced, their profile can't. someone of his wealth of experience, his kind of connections, and also his authority in terms of commanding different areas like in the diplomatic fields, military field, in terms of domestic repression. The more that these figures are being called, the more decentralized the war becomes, and the more it's effectively directed by these local IRGC commanders, armed with missiles and drones and working according to instructions given to them before the outbreak of the war, which is what the Iranians had planned for.