Jon Snow: Britain Should Talk to Iran, Gordon Brown Up For It?

Jon Snow: Britain Should Meet With Iran Now

Newscaster Jon Snow

British broadcaster and journalist Jon Snow has reported from around the world and interviewed numerous leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chavez. In a 2006 interview with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Channel 4 News, Snow got Blair to admit a bombshell. Blair was forced to concede that he had never even heard of Mossadegh!

Now that Tony Blair has stepped down as Prime Minister, Snow offers advice for Blair's replacement, Mr. Gordon Brown in a May 6, 2007 article in The Daily Mail, "Take tea in Tehran, Gordon...it will be as sweet as the welcome".

Snow, who has reported extensively from Iran, proposed that Gordon Brown travel to Iran within his first 100 days in office. He notes that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited Iran five times. During Snow's own visit to Tehran, he observed a society that is "ancient and modern, fundamentalist and secular, authoritarian and liberal." He continues:

Despite the hejabs and the morality police, Iran looks West. Most people I met had an iPod and a laptop. Iran boasts a 6,000-year-old civilisation, but it is also a young country - half of its people are under the age of 25.

Frequently, the Iranians I met told me how much they loved the British. They did not mention the war in Iraq, although they often reminded me that we overthrew their revered nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq back in 1953. Almost every time they asked me, 'Will we be bombed?'

Speaking of "being bombed", Jon Snow's interview with Israel's Ambassador to London, Zvi Ravner, during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 should be mandatory viewing in American corporate media centers. Snow points to Israel's collective punishment against the people of Lebanon, the destruction of power stations and other infrastructure. "Is that an act of terror, would you say?", he asks Ravner. "Is that an act of terror or isn't it?" Such as an exchange would never occur in the U.S. media.