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Ridiculous CNN Story About Iran Threatening World Cup Team

Prior to the FIFA World Cup contest between the Iranian and US national teams, CNN released a report that alleged to bring information from a “source” that suggested the families of Iranian football players were threatened with torture. Although the report brings no corroborating information to bear, the claims were repeated verbatim across other Western media outlets.

Tensions between the US and Iranian governments have escalated dramatically in past months, with Tehran accusing the US Government of plotting to cause a Syria-style civil war in the country and US President Joe Biden threatening to “free Iran”. Protests broke out in September, with the sudden death in custody of a young Iranian-Kuridsh woman, after she had been arrested by Iran’s morality police for improper wearing of the Hijab (Islamic covering for women). The demonstrations quickly turned violent and later morphed into widespread violent riots, killing at least 50 Iranian police officers and countless civilians in a number of terrorist attacks. The death toll, of those killed by Iranian security forces is currently unclear, with estimates ranging into the hundreds.

It is in this environment, of foreign interference in the civil unrest across the Islamic Republic of Iran, that the US and Iran were destined to meet in the World Cup this year. It has been well established that Western Nations and their media apparatus have made this FIFA World Cup more about politics than sport, with them maintaining a stunning anti-Qatari, anti-Arab and anti-Islamic bias from the outset. It is also in this context that the US-Iran game was set, a matchup that resulted in a victory for the American team on the pitch.

Before getting into the CNN claims and the stance of the US Government on Iran, it must be noted that none of the following information should be attached to the players of the American team. When the US national team’s social media pages removed the emblem reading “Allah” in the middle of the Iranian flag, as an anti-Iran message, the coach of the team, Gregg Berhalter, quickly came forward and apologized, emphasizing that neither he nor the players had any say in the move and that they should not be implicated in what was posted.

CNN’s Anonymous Source On Torture Threats

Going into the game, the Iranian team itself had been the focus of much debate in US and European media, with media outlets across the West bringing on Iranians, who support regime change, to debate whether they should support Iran’s national team or not. After the Iranian team’s victory over Wales, 2 goals to nil, former German football player and ex-coach of the US national team, Jürgen Klinsmann, claimed on a BBC program that Iranians are culturally predisposed to cheating and being violent in sports. Klinsmann repeated this point at least four times, without being challenged by the BBC presenter or the two guests sitting beside him.

The above points are crucial to understanding how perceptions are shaped on Iranians, using outlandish claims about Iran and Iranians that are presented as commonly accepted truths to malleable Western audiences.

CNN begins with claiming that an unnamed “source involved in the security of the games” revealed exclusive information about the Iranian team members having their families threatened. There is no identification of what this alleged source’s position is and no explanation as to how they obtained such sensitive information, instantly making the story questionable. However, despite the identity of the source being hidden in such a way, the story cannot be simply discarded on these grounds alone.

The problems start to unfold with a number of claims made in the article, written for CNN’s website. The “source” alleges that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an official branch of the Iranian military, had spoken to the players of the Iranian national team.

Firstly, CNN’s alleged source claims that the Iranian players were threatened with “violence and and(sic) torture” towards their family members, should they refuse to sing the national anthem in their second World Cup match up, after remaining silent in the first game against England. This was widely interpreted in Western media to have been a form of protest against the Iranian Government, however, there has been nothing to substantiate this claim. It could have been a protest, however, a number of the Iranian national team’s players have been on record as taking a pro-government stance, which is a reason to call the claims into question, although it would be reasonable to assume it was a political statement.

Where does the CNN source claim the Iranian players were threatened? No location, date, or time is given, however, it is claimed that IRGC officials had spoken to the players following their game with England. This is a major red-flag for the authenticity of the claims made, because for the IRGC to be present in Doha, they must be requisitioned by the Qatari Government, if they aren’t, this means that Iran could be guilty of violating Qatar’s sovereignty.

This above point should be focused upon heavily when assessing the validity of CNN’s claims. It is well known that the US Government has significant grievances with Iran, Washington’s largest military base in the entire Middle East is also situated in Qatar, which means that the presence of Iranian military personnel in the country is no laughing matter. If CNN has a source which is capable of following, identifying, and even spying on IRGC members that are operating in Doha, isn’t it safe to assume that the US Government would make a big issue out of this?

In the alleged meetings between IRGC officials and the Iranian national team’s players, there was said to have been threats made that the “source” for CNN recalled. Yet the content of a separate meeting that was claimed by the source to have taken place, between the IRGC and the coach of the Iranian team, was not disclosed. Carlos Queiroz, a Portuguese national, is the Iranian coach and as a non-Iranian surely could disclose the content of such a conversation if direct claims were made about what he or the alleged IRGC officials had said. Including a non-Iranian foreign national in the allegations is perhaps where the author of this piece went the most wrong.

Another claim made, is that prior to the World Cup, the players of the Iranian team were allegedly offered bribes of “presents and cars”; by whom? It is not stated in the report. It would seem that either the IRGC or the “large number of Iranian security officers in Qatar collecting information and monitoring the players”, are implicated in the bribes perhaps, although, again, this is not made clear by the author. If it was prior to the World Cup game with England, then it must have been inside Iran itself that such bribes to allegedly stay silent were offered. This would now mean that CNN’s source was present in Qatar and Iran, monitoring the IRGC and Iranian security officers, all of which were so incredibly poorly prepared that they could not prevent US intelligence spying on them and finding out exact threats and bribes offered to the players.

The claims do not stop there, however, as CNN’s journey to Narnia and back manages to insinuate that the Iranian Government was flooding in pro-Iranian government football fans in order to make the Islamic Republic look like it had more support than it does in reality. The evidence for such claims? None at all.

What is perhaps more telling about this report, is that the most trusted of US media outlets didn’t pick up on it. The most reputable media outlets in the Western world, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the BBC, all failed to pick up on this story. Why would such media outlets, who are publishing anti-Iran content daily, refuse to publish the claims? This alone says something about the seriousness with which the mainstream media has received it. If the claims were true, this would be a bombshell. Instead, news sites like the Mirror, Yahoo and Telegraph picked the story up, outlets with a terrible track record for factual reporting.

Given all the elements to the story, as mentioned above, there is no way that any intelligent person should believe the CNN story to carry any weight. It’s hard to debunk a story of this nature, especially when the story is based upon an unnamed source from an unnamed agency, however, if we are going to rank this one, it’s more difficult to believe than Jeffrey Epstein committing suicide.

Robert Inlakesh
Robert Inlakesh
Robert Inlakesh is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer, Middle-East analyst & news correspondent for The Last American Vagabond.
https://twitter.com/falasteen47

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