Iranian officials have become more vocal and more explicit in airing conspiracy theories regarding last week’s Israeli interdiction of the Klos-C, a Panamanian-flagged Iranian arms ship bound for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazzayeri, of the Iranian armed Forces, told Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency Sunday, “the Americans and the Zionists probably ordered (from) Hollywood the production of a movie with the scenario of a cargo ship carrying Iranian weapons to Gaza in Palestine.”
UPI quoted Iranian Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazzayeri making the accusation as part of a longer story detailing the weapons on board the ship, which included 40 M302 rockets with ranges capable of blanketing much of Israel, as well as “180 12mm mortar shells and about 400,000 7.62mm bullets.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had previously taken to Twitter to question the timing of the vessel’s interception, linking it to the annual AIPAC policy conference and describing the incident as the “same failed lies.”
An Iranian ship carrying arms for Gaza. Captured just in time for annual AIPAC anti Iran campaign. Amazing Coincidence! Or same failed lies.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) March 6, 2014
Zarif is considered by some foreign policy analysts to be a key moderate figure in the Iranian regime, and a Reuters story on his nomination by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had declared that Rouhani “could hardly do better” than to pick him as a “signal [of] his determination to rebuild relations with the United States.”
It is not clear to what degree Zarif’s public conspiracy theories can be aligned with that image, and observers may instead contextualize his comments within recently published analysis – based on his recently-available autobiography – assessing him “to be every bit as religiously ideological as the radicalized student activist he was in the late 1970s.”
[Photo: Reuters / YouTube]