Fake News, Politicization and Lobbying: West Exploits Death of Mahsa Amnini

By Fatima Haydar

Beirut – The internet has made it easier for news to circulate the globe, making the world a small village. But not all news is credible! Most of the times, they are just fake or misleading news and political propaganda.

Just a couple of weeks ago, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a young woman named Mahsa Amini, died. Now, the circumstance of her death is crystal clear and undisputable.

According to a CCTV footage, Amini was never assaulted nor beaten, but rather, she was approached by a female police officer and both women entered a verbal disagreement without any physical altercation.

But Amini’s case has been exploited by several Western media outlets in order to further promote Iranophobia by fabricating lies for political purposes. They made use of her medical condition that led to her death.

Amini had a brain tumor and she has been undergoing treatment for some time prior to the incident. Medical records confirm Amini's multiple visits to the hospital for treatment.

In this context, a fact check of the viral video where Amini is seen being brutally attacked by Iran’s moral police and eventually being arrested falsifies these claims. The videos are from Iran, but they are old and not related to the death of Mahsa Amini.

This video has been circulating on social media during DIFFERENT years with DIFFERENT captions and it comprised various clips of DIFFERENT incidences. The first time this video has been uploaded online was by Radio Farda, dated April 12, 2018, with a caption: “Viral Video: Iranian woman seized for not wearing hijab”.

This brings us to another clip which has been circulating on Twitter these past days alleging that the man in the video was Amini’s grieving “father who promised his daughter that he will dance at her wedding” and now he is “dancing at her grave after she was killed the Iranian ‘regime’ in the protests against killing people for forced hijab”.

The account that posted the video is clearly influenced by a pro-western and anti-Iran rhetoric as he is blaming Amini’s death on Iranians who voted for President Ebrahim Raisi; not to mention, accusing the Iranian president and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards [IRG] of murder.

Again, by fact checking the video, the clip in question turns out to be from a television series in Azerbaijan called “Ata Ocagi”.

What is worth noting is that the Twitter account that posted this video has blocked other Twitter users from replying or correcting him. He is deliberately spreading fake news as a means to taint Iran’s reputation and credibility and attempting to play with the sentiments of clip’s viewers as well as the family of the deceased.

The West has been following its Iranophobic agenda at all costs. But this time, it has gone as far as taking advantage of a young woman’s death for the sake of lobbying the incident.

The United States and other Western countries have been using the pro-Amini protests as an opportunity to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and to force what they call a “regime change” in the Islamic Republic.