(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Hillel Frisch - In Lebanon, Iran has the Hizbullah militia at its disposal and probably the Lebanese army as well. But does Iran wield soft power there as well? Hizbullah possesses two major media sites in Lebanon - al-Manar and al-Mayadeen. Yet a 2014 study by a leading Lebanese bank of the 20 largest websites includes neither. Iranian singers are not aired on Lebanese media, primarily because there is little appetite for music sung in Farsi. (The overwhelming majority of songs aired are in Arabic, followed by English and French.) In the Lebanese movie scene, the U.S. seems to have a near monopoly. Iranian television serials have zero visibility. The writer is a professor of political and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at its BESA Center.
2018-08-03 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive