An Iranian state television presenter used a rifle to fire shots at a flag of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during a segment this week on weapons training, in a sign of Iran’s intensifying effort to inspire a sense of militant nationalism among its people.
The segment, part of a program called War Headquarters aired on state-run Ofogh TV on Saturday. It showed a member of Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) teaching host Hossein Hosseini how to handle an AK-47 rifle. Hosseini proceeded to demonstrate his newfound rifle skills by popping off a few shots at a screen displaying the flag of the UAE.
The Emiratis, who have endured numerous wanton attacks from Iranian drones and missiles since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury at the end of February, did not immediately comment on the broadcast, but social media around the Persian Gulf lit up with denunciations of Iran simulating even more violence against its neighbors.
“The entire scene seemed as if it came from a state angry at the success of others more than its anger at its enemies,” said Emirates Policy Center chief Ebtisam al-Kitbi.
Mohammed al-Ghamdi, head of the Saudi Producers and Distributors Association, slammed the broadcast as “a reckless act from Iran that stirs global uproar.”
Faisal al-Shammeri, a columnist with Saudi Arabia’s Makkah Newspaper, slammed Iran for “demonizing a Gulf state, normalizing the language of weapons before the public, and turning the media from a news platform into a tool for mobilization and enmity.”
Some of the online critics noted that spraying the UAE flag with bullets on a TV broadcast contradicted Iran’s public assurances that it feels no enmity toward neighboring states, but rather targeted American installations on their soil with its missiles and drones. Other critics worried that the weapons-training broadcasts might panic the public by giving Iranian civilians the idea they would be handed guns and expected to fight in the streets to the bitter end. Some thought the segments were intended to terrorize the Iranian public by demonstrating that the regime still has enough bloody-minded supporters to murder its way out of another popular uprising.
The opposition-run Iran International noted on Tuesday that Iranian state television has lately been filled with programs that feature IRGC members, frequently masked to conceal their identities, teaching the audience how to use military weapons from machine guns to rocket-propelled grenades.
In addition to the segment where the host fired on a UAE flag, another one of these militant TV broadcasts featured an IRGC member aiming his rifle at an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The host then took the weapon and aimed it at an image of President Donald Trump, saying, “I hope these bullets will one day hit their target.”
These grim how-to video clips are mixed with footage of men, women, and even children being taught how to handle weapons in mosques and other public venues, ostensibly after they “volunteered” to “defend the country” and its “system.”
One dismayed Iranian commentator thought the militaristic segments were so appalling that they might be false-flag operations “orchestrated by infiltrators or a fifth column” to “hand Iran’s enemies a perfect excuse for Iranophobia.”
On the contrary, the deputy chief of the Iranian state broadcasting organization IRIB proudly justified the segments as a necessary public service to Iran’s state-run Tasnim News.
“In wartime conditions, and in a country simultaneously engaged in struggle against all the powers and oppression in the world, it is natural for the national media to adopt a wartime posture,” the IRIB’s Mohsen Bormahani insisted.
Bormahani also said it was important for Iranian civilians, even children, to “become acquainted with the concepts of jihad, resistance, and defense, and strengthen their sense of responsibility and readiness within the framework of religious, cultural, Iranian, and Islamic values.”
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