This is the kind of thing America used to do really well in the Cold War, but has forgotten how to do today: Gooood morning Tehran! This is Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - While arch-foes Israel and Iran step up tough rhetoric against one another, short-waves and a wood-paneled radio studio in Jerusalem offer the two peoples a rare bridge for communication.

Seated behind a microphone in studio 4 of the Israel Broadcast Association compound near Jerusalem’s Zion square, Menashe Amir, a guru for Iranian affairs, reads today’s news bulletin in perfect Farsi.

Sixty six-year-old Amir left his home town of Tehran 47 years ago to come to Israel and has since worked as a broadcaster at the Voice of Israel service in Farsi, which is beamed via short-wave into Iran.

“In 40 minutes we cover news from the world, the Middle East and the Israeli-Arab peace process but also news inside Iran,” he says.

Amir vehemently rejects any suggestions he and his colleagues are involved in state propaganda against Iran, where the Jewish minority has fallen since Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 but still numbers some 25,000.

“We expose Iranian citizens to things the regime tries to hide,” says Amir. “I don’t want to call ourselves anti-regime. We have millions of listeners in Iran because of our objectivity.

”We represent the state of Israel but not the government of Israel. We are not briefed by anyone on what to say or do,“ Amir insists. ”Sometimes we brief the security services“ such as Mossad, Israel’ssecret service.

The over-all objective of the broadcasts, aired daily for two hours, is the ”education of Iranians to democracy.”