US appoints Farsi spokesman to reach out to Iranians

The US state department has appointed a Farsi spokesman in an attempt to reach out to Iranians while pro-democracy movements are sweeping the Middle East.

The appointment of Alan Eyre by Barack Obama's administration came after a similar move by the British Foreign Office in 2009, which infuriated the Iranian regime.

Several members of the Iranian parliament have spoken out against Barry Marston, the Foreign Office spokesman who regularly posts Farsi videos on YouTube. His videos and a blog post on human rights violations in the country by the former British ambassador to Tehran, Simon Gass,have prompted Iranian officials to accuse the UK of interfering in the country's internal affairs.

The British embassy in Iran has Farsi accounts on both Facebook and Twitter. The US state department has also set up a Twitter account in Farsi to communicate with Iranians through the internet.

The wave of demonstrations in the Middle East have been highlighting the role of social networking websites among pro-democracy activists who use them to promote and publicise their movements.

In an interview with the BBC Persian network, Eyre said his appointment was not an exceptional move by the state department.

Speaking formal Farsi, flavoured with a handful of ancient Persian expressions, Eyre said: "My appointment was not exceptional, we have spokesmen in different languages, our goal is to directly reach out to the honourable people of Iran and explain our official position to them."

Despite poor relations between Tehran and Washington, Eyre struck a conciliatory tone. "We are eager to negotiate with Iran in order to see how it is responding to the concerns of the international community toward the nature of its nuclear programme, and at the same time maintaining its right to use nuclear energy peacefully," he said.

In an unprecedented move, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, which is controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, published a news story on Friday based on the BBC interview. The agency usually ignores BBC Persian, which is accessible only by via illegal satellite dishes in Iran.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/21/us-appoints-farsi-spokesman-iranians