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Days 80-89: While we spent many days being overwhelmed with friendliness and volunteered assistance from people that we met on the street, a darker picture of the state emerged from the government-controlled TV news.

As we were in Iran during the week that French foreign minister Kouchner observed that, with respect to the Iran nuclear crisis, the world should “prepare for the worst” and “the worst is war”, the Iranian media went into overdrive.

For days, there was barely a single story that did not concern the nuclear issue, Iran’s readiness for war and its preparedness to work with the IAEA.

Towards the end of our time there, Iran conducted a test flight for two of its domestically produced Iran-140 fighter aircraft, clearly intended as a show of force to its own people, although probably of limited impact beyond Iran.

After a few days, the heavily propagandised nature of the news began to grate on us.

It was a combination in roughly equal parts.

The first part was good news about Iran’s ties with the world, support it had received from various members of the international community and the value of Iran’s exports to neighbouring and EU countries.

The second part was a constant stream of bad news about the US and Israel. No story was too small to report if it reflected badly on enemies of the state. Often, these reports featured highly pejorative language, which somewhat diminished the effect that the reporting was intended to have.

To give you a taste, I have reproduced below ten consecutive news ticker lines that flashed across our screen on our second last day in Iran:

US contractor Blackwater stirs Iraqi anger
French FM: my comment on Iran nuclear issue misinterpreted
Weekly Time accuses Paris of flaring up crisis in world
Russia slams US missile shield system
4 mln Iraqis displaced in US 2003 war
Japanese hold exhibition to criticise US WMD arsenals
5 US anti-war nationals seek protection in Finland
Italy: Leftists oppose US adventurism in Iraq
Defiant US Dems proceed with Iraq legislation
Iran receives requests for Iran-140 fighter plane

With world news programmes readily available on satellite TV, it’s difficult to see just what impact this relentless stream of one-sided reporting has on the Iranian people.

What is certain is that the Iranian people, who characteristically displayed genuine openness, friendliness and hospitality towards us, didn’t appear taken in by all the hype.