The Iranian nuclear program’s water reactor at Arak. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

As the P5+ 1 talks with Iran in Vienna dragged on past yet another scheduled deadline, the BBC News website report on the subject included the habitual promotion of the notion of a benign Iranian nuclear program.

The so-called P5+1 – US, UK, Russia, France, China and Germany – said talks would go on until at least Monday.

The powers suspect Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.

Iran says its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes.

Notably, however, neither that July 10 article, nor any other English language BBC report, informed audiences about the annual day of Iranian state sponsored hate known as “Al Quds Day,” which this year fell on July 10 – even as negotiations continued.

The BBC News website’s UK and regional pages were also devoid of reporting on the British version of Al Quds Day, which took place near BBC premises. Apparently the flying of a terrorist organization’s flag, calls for the eradication of Israel, and the negation of Jews’ right to self-determination on London’s streets is not news these days.

BBC Persian’s audiences were, however, provided with an album of photographs from the events in Iran (attended by the Iranian president that the BBC persists in portraying as ‘moderate’), and those visiting the BBC Arabic website found an article about Al Quds Day in Yemen.

Reporting on the Al Quds Day event in Tehran, the WSJ’s Sohrab Ahmari wrote:

Regime leaders joined in the festivities. The government’s representatives included the reputedly moderate President Hasan Rouhani, not-so-moderate former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, his brother Sadeq, the head of the judiciary, and Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, commander of the Iranian army’s ground forces.

Mr. Rouhani said in a Persian-language statement on his website: “With unity, resistance, jihad and sacrifice, the Muslims, including the Palestinian people, will reach their lofty goals.” He didn’t specify those goals, but the “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” banners held up by marchers around him, seen in photographs published by regime media outlets, drove home the point. Mr. Rouhani went on to blame “the Zionist regime and the Global Arrogance”—a favorite regime nickname for Washington—for “bankrolling the strife” roiling the Muslim world.

Tehran’s Kayhan newspaper also weighed in. Iran’s 1979 revolution, the newspaper wrote in an English-language editorial, “busted the myth of the holocaust which the Zionists and their godfathers allege happened in Europe during World War 2.” The editorial predicted that the U.S., “which currently terrorizes humanity as the sole superpower, will one fine day cease to be visible on the map of the world.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appoints Kayhan’s editor in chief, and the newspaper is widely seen as the leader’s main mouthpiece. The leader’s top military aide, Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, echoed the paper. According to an English-language Fars News report, Gen. Safavi told Quds Day attendees: “Muslims unity and continuation of armed jihad (struggle) and the Islamic resistance of the Palestinian nation constitute the only strategy for saving and liberating the Holy Quds.”

One might think that sort of context would be helpful to BBC audiences trying to understand the ins and outs of the potential outcomes to the tortuous P5+1 negotiations with Iran. The BBC obviously doesn’t.