\\jciprod01\productn\J\JSA\5-2\JSA204.txt unknown Seq: 1 17-MAR-14 14:01 Anti-Zionism and the Iranian Press Rusi Jaspal* Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, anti-Zionism has remained an impor- tant ideological building block of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This paper examines the manifestation of anti-Zionism in the English-language Ira- nian press in order to elucidate how this ideology is exported to an inter- national readership. The paper presents the results of an empirical study of two leading English-language Iranian newspapers: The Tehran Times and Press TV. The study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and draws upon tenets of Social Representations Theory and the notion of delegi- timization from social psychology. The following themes are outlined: (a) problematizing Israel’s right to exist; (b) unveiling the global Zionist conspiracy; and (c) leading global anti-Zionism—the declining “Zionist regime.” Both anti-Zionist and antisemitic representations are observable in the corpus. The paper identifies three key components of the delegi- timization process and addresses the implications of outgroup delegi- timization for identity, emotion, and action. Key Words: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Iran, Israel, Media, Social Representations The Islamic Republic of Iran makes no secret of its fiercely anti-Zion- ist position, which became an official state policy following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Iran vocally supports Palestinian sovereignty over the whole of present-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and actively calls for the destruction of the Jewish State. This position has drawn support from other Arab and Muslim countries, and condemnation from much of the Western world (Takeyh, 2006). There has been social sciences research into the development and deployment of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Iran (Jaspal, 2013a; Litvak, 2006; Shahvar, 2009). Much research in this area tends to focus upon the political functions of this ideological stance (K¨ untzel, 2010; Takeyh, 2006). This paper makes a novel socio-psychologi- cal contribution to this field by examining textual social representations of Israel in the English-language Iranian press. More specifically, there is a concern with how the English-language Iranian press “exports” Iran’s anti- Zionist policy beyond the national and linguistic borders of Iran. Through the lens of Social Representations Theory (Moscovici, 1988), this paper examines how the press delegitimizes the State of Israel and how it linguis- tically normalizes this prejudicial position for dissemination to an interna- tional readership. 401