West has twisted vision of terrorism: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Tony Gosling, an investigative journalist in Tehran, to share his thoughts on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s remarks at the Second International Congress on Iranian Victims of Terrorism, saying Iran is one of the main victims of terrorism, blaming major foreign powers for supporting terrorist groups in the region.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: You were at the conference this morning. I want to get your thoughts about attending the conference, the importance of such conferences bringing to light the victims of terrorism for example in Iran?

Gosling: Well I am not sure what you have already shown here on Press TV and it is nice to be here actually in Tehran rather than on Skype. But one of the things Mr. Rouhani said which struck me is really a message which needs to go out to the whole world, is effectively the lack of action on the oil tankers, the fact that ISIS is a terrorist group that the West is supposed to be fighting is able to trade oil freely around the world and as Mr. Rouhani pointed out the West boasts about its satellites being able to read the number plates, the news print even on papers that people are reading in the street and yet it cannot see these oil tankers going around the world making money for ISIS.

I would suggest and there are a lot of people around the world including people in the British military right now and ex-military people I have had on my program in Bristol who point out that this is a farce. The British people and the people in the western world are being sold a lie here because actually in reality ISIS could be closed down in a blink of an eye, closing down bank accounts and also actually attacking the headquarters of ISIS in many places but there is a particular hotel in Mosul for example which could be closed down immediately but the West does not seem to want to do that.

What they do want to do though is to bring more and more NATO countries in on the fight against ISIS. We have heard just within the last few days that now the Turks are also doing airstrikes in Syria. I and many other analysts around the world and we have been discussing things over coffee here in Tehran are quite convinced that the ISIS plan effectively is a kind of attack on Syria by the West and that the only thing that is stopping this of being realized in the West is the cover that has been provided by the western media. People at the BBC simply do not ask the basic questions that people around the pubs in England, the bars in New York are asking these questions but the western media does not ask them.

Press TV: President Rouhani also mentioned double standards when it comes to looking at terrorism. I want to come to this specific case of Iran and the victims of terrorism within this country. President Rouhani there mentioned MKO, a terrorist group which is now seemingly backed at least somewhat implicitly by the United States off its terror blacklist now. How do you feel about that sort of double standard?  

Gosling: Well I can tell you one thing. You never hear anything on the British media about Iranian victims of terror and I was quite shocked when I first heard from your publicity people here at the charity that there had been so many victims, 17,000 people and yet somehow the western media paints Iran as a terrorist country, in other words the government a terrorist. Well this is just ridiculous. Every government has armed forces but those armed forces are not actually always terrorists, so that is just a ridiculous concept that I think really needs to be properly explained. Again it is the western press largely which is to blame for these misconceptions.  

Press TV: And of course the issue of Israel came up as well in President Rouhani’s speech. How do you feel about as President Rouhani I believe put it state-sponsored terrorism towards the Palestinians?

Gosling: Well it is not just towards the Palestinians but yes he is absolutely right about that. Let’s not forget I am an Englishman and I have friends, many of them older people who served in Palestine in the 1940s under the British mandate and they will tell you very, very great detail about Israeli as it was at the time of course the Americans with the first country in the world to recognize the Israeli state even though the British did not want them to, there was the attack in 1946 on the King David hotel which was the British headquarters in Jerusalem and there were many, many victims of those attacks, I think it was something like 80 people died in that Israeli terror attack.

Now those terrorists at that time in a way the Israeli state was founded on terrorism and ever since we have had people who have been involved in terrorist attacks like the Sabra and Shatila massacres who have made it to the top of Israeli society. I must say also that we have got a similar problem growing in Britain where rather than being put in jail many people who are war criminals are allowed to walk the streets. Tony Blair for example many people believe he is a war criminal and actually in some ways they were rewarded or promoted for their crimes. So we have got a twisted vision in the West. It is the kind of vision that the British writer George Orwell wrote about in the 1950s, in 1940s in his novels particularly 1984 where he talks about the twisting of reality where war can become peace. We have got that really going on right now in the West.

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