As Western media outlets obsessively cover the protests in Iran, the Arab press has been approaching the events with mixed emotions. Since much of the media in the Middle East is state-controlled, press coverage provides an interesting window into the complex relationship between Iran and the Arab world.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been leading Arab opposition to Iran's nuclear program. These countries, worried about Iran's quest for regional domination, would be expected to highlight the recent tumult in their state organs. But the media in both countries have been eerily quiet on the issue. On Sunday, following the most violent day of clashes, Saudi paper Al-Riyadh followed its week-long habit of burying Iran news low on the front page with a headline not about regime attacks on protestors, but about the fishy suicide bombing at the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini--which many Iranian Twitterers suspect was a Reichstag-like government gambit to discredit protestors. Egypt's heavily state-controlled media has been similarly nonchalant. On Saturday, Al-Ahram, the establishment daily, led with coverage of President Hosni Mubarak's latest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. At the bottom of the page, hidden below the fold, was a small piece on Iran from the news wires. Even the relatively liberal and independent Al-Masri Al-Youm featured a piece about swine flu as its top story on Friday.
The lackluster coverage belies the fact that Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as much as they fear Iran's regional designs, are probably just as afraid of their uncomfortable internal similarities. Egypt, like Iran, has democratic pretensions, holding vaguely free elections while making it impossible for a real opposition to gain power. And Saudi Arabia's ruling dynasty, like Iran's velayat-e-faqih system of clerical rule, claims the mandate of heaven itself. Perhaps worried that their populations would get dangerous ideas of voicing their own discontent, or to ascribe too much significance to unrest in a country whose influence they are keen to minimize, the national papers of both countries seem committed to downplaying the events.
On the other hand, the Lebanese press has probably been the most supportive of the Iranian opposition. This is particularly true of outlets associated the with the March 14 coalition, which rivals the Iranian-backed March 8 coalition under Hezbollah. Al-Mustaqbal, Al-Nahar, and the Daily Star, unlike the Saudi papers, show dramatic pictures of huge crowds in Iran. Lebanese writer Raghida Dergham argued on Friday that the victory of pro-Western forces in Lebanon's elections just a week before the Iranian polls stiffened Khamenei's determination not to suffer "two defeats"--one in Lebanon and one at home.
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