For me, any sensible discussion of Iran must accept a number of facts. I will set these out as Set A and Set B. Both sets are true. But ideologues of the right routinely discount Set A, while ideologues of the left routinely discount Set B. That is why most debate on Iran is inane.
Set A
Iranian Islamic fundamentalism allied to fierce anti-Americanism was born from CIA intervention to topple democracy and keep in power a ruthless murdering despot for decades, in the interests of US oil and gas companies
Iranian anti-Americanism was fuelled further by US support for US friend and ally Saddam Hussein who was armed to wage a murderous war against Iran, again in the hope of US access to Iran’s oil and gas
The US committed a terrible atrocity against civilians by shooting down an Iranian passenger jet
Iran is surrounded by US military forces and has been repeatedly threatened to the extent that the desire to develop a nuclear weapon is a reflex
There is monumental hypocrisy in condemning Iran’s nuclear programme while overlooking Israel’s nuclear weapons
Set B
Iran is governed by an appalling set of vicious theocratic nutters
Iran is not any kind of democracy. It fails the first hurdle of candidates being allowed to put forward meaningful alternatives
Hanging of gays, stoning of adulterers, floggings, censorship and pervasive control are not fine because of cultural relativism. Iran’s whole legislative basis is inimical to universal ideals of human rights.
Iran really is trying to develop a nuclear weapons programme, though with some years still to go.
There are two very good articles on the current situation in Iran. One from the ever excellent Juan Cole. I would accept his judgement on the elections being rigged.
http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/class-v-culture-wars-in-iranian.html#comments
The other from Yasamine Mather, which puts it in another perspective.
http://www.hopoi.org/articles/elections%20June%202009.html
I am not optimistic about the outcome of the popular protest.
I hardly ever agree with a thing eddie says but i feel it’s important he’s here to air his views-however strange they may seem to some of us.
Can we ALL desist,eddie included,from the invective and name-calling though,tempting as it is when things get heated?
Please?
That way Craig/we’ll have a better blog with more focus on the real issues?
thanks for clearing that up, chris, glasgow…. I agree about the name, by the way!!!
VamanosBandidos:
If all you can come up with is pathetic name calling then you are a sad individual.
You actually believe that in Iran you can get away with running amok on the street to remind the government whos boss? You are naive!!! What do you think will happen when this all calms down. There will be a crackdown and many of the reformists will be arrested. This is generally what happens but I guess you can’t see that because you are blinded by the idea that Iranian’s are free and we are not.
“Mugabe!! Anyone whom invokes this witchcraft of the British Media is truly a brainless moron!!”
This isn’t witchcraft of the British Media. I can’t believe you wrote that!!!! What planet are you on!!!! This is a man who has destroyed his country with his greed and lust for total power. But all you see is someone fighting against the West.
Do you live in Iran by the way?
Jives I am being very calm and will aim to desist from name calling, but VB you are a very silly person indeed – there are people being shot right now on the streets of Tehran. I know that what happened at the G20 was bad but it cannot in any way be compared to what is happening in Tehran.
I know I slag off the far left, but to their credit the SWP has come out with a party line that is mostly honourable.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18229
Technicolour – how could a cow do what you suggest? They don’t have opposable thumbs.
Cow walks over to missile, cow bends head over missile, cow picks missile up *with its teeth*. Honestly.
I’m concluding I have no idea which outcome to hope for in Iran, apart from one where no-one else gets hurt and all the people can be happy and stuff. My inner cynic says that at the very least this is a peaceful corporate take-over attempt, rather than a hostile one, as in Iraq. But then I think the US and UK know they wouldn’t get away with attacking Iran: no way, no how.
June ?” have you considered a certain irony in all of this. Do you recall John McCain ?” who tried to be, and could have been, the President of the US? Do you also recall his singing the sick song ” Bomb-bomb- bomb Iran” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg)? I wager that there are many people in the US who do have those kinds of sick sentiments which McCain honestly vented when he sang. I then ask myself the question ?” how many of these people in the US at the policy level and amongst the ordinary citizens ?” are now so, so, so, concerned about the democratic health and welfare of the same Iranian people who could have been bombed?
Are You Ready For War With Demonized Iran?
By Paul Craig Roberts (ex-Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during Reagan years)
June 16, 2009 “Information Clearing House”
— How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the US media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China?
Yet, many know of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. The reason is obvious. He is daily demonized in the US media.
The US media’s demonization of Ahmadinejad itself demonstrates American ignorance. The President of Iran is not the ruler. He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s rulers, the ayatollahs who are not willing for the Iranian Revolution to be overturned by American money in some color-coded “revolution.”
Iranians have a bitter experience with the United States government. Their first democratic election, after emerging from occupied and colonized status, in the 1950s was overturned by the US government. The US government installed in place of the elected candidate a dictator who tortured and murdered dissidents who thought Iran should be an independent country and not ruled by an American puppet.
The US “superpower” has never forgiven the Iranian Islamic ayatollahs for the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, which overthrew the US puppet government and held hostage US embassy personnel, regarded as “a den of spies,” while Iranian students pieced together shredded embassy documents that proved America’s complicity in the destruction of Iranian democracy.
The government-controlled US corporate media, a Ministry of Propaganda, has responded to the re-election of Ahmadinejad with non-stop reports of violent Iranians protests to a stolen election. A stolen election is presented as a fact, even thought there is no evidence whatsoever. The US media’s response to the documented stolen elections during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era was to ignore the massive documented evidence of real stolen elections.
Leaders of the American puppet states of Great Britain and Germany have fallen in line with the American psychological warfare operation. The discredited British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, expressed his “serious doubt” about Ahmadinejad’s victory to a meeting of European Union ministers in Luxembourg. Miliband, of course, has no source of independent information. He is simply following Washington’s instructions and relying on unsupported claims by the defeated candidate preferred by the US Government.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, had her arm twisted, too. She called in the Iranian ambassador to demand “more transparency” on the elections.
Even the American left-wing has endorsed the US government’s propaganda. Writing in The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss presents the hysterical views of one Iranian dissident as if they are the definitive truth about “the illegitimate election,” terming it “a coup d’etat.”
What is the source of the information for the US media and the American puppet states?
Nothing but the assertions of the defeated candidate, the one America prefers.
However, there is hard evidence to the contrary. An independent, objective poll was conducted in Iran by American pollsters prior to the election. The pollsters, Ken Ballen of the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the nonprofit New America Foundation, describe their poll results in the June 15 Washington Post. The polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and was conducted in Farsi “by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award.” – You can find their report here
The poll results, the only real information we have at this time, indicate that the election results reflect the will of the Iranian voters. Among the extremely interesting information revealed by the poll is the following:
“Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.
“While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad’s principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran’s provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.
“The breadth of Ahmadinejad’s support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi
“Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
“The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.”
There have been numerous news reports that the US government has implemented a program to destabilize Iran. There have been reports that the US government has financed bombings and assassinations within Iran. The US media treats these reports in a braggadocio manner as illustrations of the American Superpower’s ability to bring dissenting countries to heel, while some foreign media see these reports as evidence of the US government’s inherent immorality.
Pakistan’s former military chief, General Mirza Aslam Beig, said on Pashto Radio on Monday, June 15, that undisputed intelligence proves the US interfered in the Iranian election. “The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful but hollow revolution following the election.”
The success of the US government in financing color revolutions in former Soviet Georgia and Ukraine and in other parts of the former Soviet empire have been widely reported and discussed, with the US media treating it as an indication of US omnipotence and natural right and some foreign media as a sign of US interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that Mir Hossein Mousavi is a bought and paid for operative of the US government.
We know for a fact that the US government has psychological warfare operations that target both Americans and foreigners through the US and foreign media. Many articles have been published on this subject.
Think about the Iranian election from a common sense standpoint. Neither myself nor the vast majority of readers are Iranian experts. But from a common sense standpoint, if your country was under constant threat of attack, even nuclear attack, from two countries with much more powerful military establishments, as is Iran from the US and Israel, would you desert your country’s best defender and elect the preferred candidate of the US and Israel?
Do you believe that the Iranian people would have voted to become an American puppet state?
Iran is an ancient and sophisticated society. Much of the intellectual class is secularized. A significant, but small, percentage of the youth has fallen in thrall to Western sexual promiscuity, to personal pleasure, and to self-absorption. These people are easily organized with American money to give their government and Islamic constraints on personal behavior the bird.
The US government is taking advantage of these westernized Iranians to create a basis for discrediting the Iranian election and the Iranian government.
On June 14, the McClatchy Washington Bureau, which sometimes attempts to report the real news, acquiesced to Washington’s psychological warfare and declared: “Iran election result makes Obama’s outreach efforts harder.” What we see here is the raising of the ugly head of the excuse for “diplomatic failure,” leaving only a military solution.
As a person who has seen it all from inside the US government, I believe that the purpose of the US government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the US government is setting up Iran for military attack.
With the help of Mousavi, the US government is creating another “oppressed people,” like Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, who require American blood and treasure to liberate. Has Mousavi, the American candidate in the Iranian election who was roundly trounced, been chosen by Washington to become the American puppet ruler of Iran?
The great macho superpower is eager to restore its hegemony over the Iranian people, thus settling the score with the ayatollahs who overthrew American rule of Iran in 1978.
That is the script. You are watching it every minute on US television.
There is no end of “experts” to support the script. For one example among hundreds, we have Gary Sick, appropriately named, who formerly served on the National Security Council and currently teaches at Columbia University:
“If they’d been a little more modest and said Ahmadinejad had won by 51 percent,” Sick said, Iranians might have been dubious but more accepting. But the government’s assertion that Ahmadinejad won with 62.6 percent of the vote, “is not credible.”
“I think,” continued Sick, “it does mark a real transition point in the Iranian Revolution, from a position of claiming to have its legitimacy based on the support of the population, to a position that has increasingly relied on repression. The voice of the people is ignored.”
The only hard information available is the poll referenced above. The poll found that Ahmadinejad was the favored candidate by a margin of two to one.
But as in everything else having to do with American hegemony over other peoples, facts and truth play no part. Lies and propaganda rule.
Consumed by its passion for hegemony, America is driven to prevail over others, morality and justice be damned. This world-threatening script will play until America bankrupts itself and has so alienated the rest of the world that it is isolated and universally despised.
I met an Iranian woman a couple of weeks ago and had a long conversation with her. I was particularly interested in what she had to say about Iran as I’d not come in contact with any Iranians since the end of the Shah’s regime. Her husband was doing a PhD at Cambridge and she too was highly educated. She told me she and her husband just couldn’t wait to get back to Iran as things were so awful here. This opinion didn’t take into account missing families or friends, weather or food
I think ‘June’ was me, Mr Barnett. Do I think there are some strange and sad people around, both in power and out of it? Yes. Do I think that a country which voted for what Obama represented would allow a repetition of Iraq? No.
technicolour,
I hope you are right but fear that you overestimate many ordinary americans and underestimate the power of their media.
If you elect a messianic leader then you will probably go where he takes you if only in the misguided belief that he’s different from his predecessor. In some respects I am trying to give Obama the benefit of the doubt but I fear that he will struggle to make a significant difference particularly to foreign policy. That said, I hope I am wrong.
Back on topic, I would like to ask a serious question: Do we actually know that the Iranian election is fraudulent? I have read reports which suggest ‘yes’ and I have read reports which suggest ‘no’. Ignoring such arguments as ‘on the balance of probabilities….’ do we have anything concrete on which to base our assertions?
“Do we actually know that the Iranian election is fraudulent?”
I’ve been reading and viewing and reading and viewing, and for the life of me I can’t decide. The only concrete thing (?) we seem to have is that polls predicted that Ahmadinejad would win.
http://tinyurl.com/nkgagl
“She told me she and her husband just couldn’t wait to get back to Iran as things were so awful here.”
That’s very interesting. It gives me hope that not everywhere is like life in the UK. Everyone I meet seems to be dying of depression.
Maybe we can have a list ‘A’ and list ‘B’ for life in the United Kingdom. Though I feel the depression might be a global situation.
Has anyone here heard of the global ‘Chemtrail’ spraying operation? In all parts of the UK you can see it going on if you just spend a short time each day, for around a week, watching the skies.
The depression and lifelessness of so many people may have a connection with the Chemtrail spraying operation. I have not mentioned ‘conspiracy’. I have just mentioned what I and millions of others have observed for many years.
Perhaps the spraying is not happening over Iran.
Eddie: re cow. The cow would also have previously had to disturb a group of flies, who were otherwise hanging around their patch of the field doing their fly thing, by having an enormous fight with another cow (a red one) over who the patch really belongs to, and trampling on and killing many many flies in the process. It would then have to choose the nastiest fly left over to arm.
Analogies, hey.
PS Agree with dreolin and everyone else – have no idea whether the elections were rigged or not. One thing apparently not being reported on the BBC (might be wrong) is that there have also been large pro-Ahmajinedad rallies. In fact, one such rally was titled “Mossavi supporters” on the BBC website before someone complained (see over at Medialens for details)
Are You Ready For War With Demonized Iran?
By Paul Craig Roberts (ex-Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during Reagan years)
June 16, 2009 “Information Clearing House”
— How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the US media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China?
Yet, many know of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. The reason is obvious. He is daily demonized in the US media.
The US media’s demonization of Ahmadinejad itself demonstrates American ignorance. The President of Iran is not the ruler. He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s rulers, the ayatollahs who are not willing for the Iranian Revolution to be overturned by American money in some color-coded “revolution.”
Iranians have a bitter experience with the United States government. Their first democratic election, after emerging from occupied and colonized status, in the 1950s was overturned by the US government. The US government installed in place of the elected candidate a dictator who tortured and murdered dissidents who thought Iran should be an independent country and not ruled by an American puppet.
The US “superpower” has never forgiven the Iranian Islamic ayatollahs for the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, which overthrew the US puppet government and held hostage US embassy personnel, regarded as “a den of spies,” while Iranian students pieced together shredded embassy documents that proved America’s complicity in the destruction of Iranian democracy.
The government-controlled US corporate media, a Ministry of Propaganda, has responded to the re-election of Ahmadinejad with non-stop reports of violent Iranians protests to a stolen election. A stolen election is presented as a fact, even thought there is no evidence whatsoever. The US media’s response to the documented stolen elections during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era was to ignore the massive documented evidence of real stolen elections.
Leaders of the American puppet states of Great Britain and Germany have fallen in line with the American psychological warfare operation. The discredited British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, expressed his “serious doubt” about Ahmadinejad’s victory to a meeting of European Union ministers in Luxembourg. Miliband, of course, has no source of independent information. He is simply following Washington’s instructions and relying on unsupported claims by the defeated candidate preferred by the US Government.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, had her arm twisted, too. She called in the Iranian ambassador to demand “more transparency” on the elections.
Even the American left-wing has endorsed the US government’s propaganda. Writing in The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss presents the hysterical views of one Iranian dissident as if they are the definitive truth about “the illegitimate election,” terming it “a coup d’etat.”
What is the source of the information for the US media and the American puppet states?
Nothing but the assertions of the defeated candidate, the one America prefers.
However, there is hard evidence to the contrary. An independent, objective poll was conducted in Iran by American pollsters prior to the election. The pollsters, Ken Ballen of the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the nonprofit New America Foundation, describe their poll results in the June 15 Washington Post. The polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and was conducted in Farsi “by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award.” – You can find their report here
The poll results, the only real information we have at this time, indicate that the election results reflect the will of the Iranian voters. Among the extremely interesting information revealed by the poll is the following:
“Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.
“While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad’s principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran’s provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.
“The breadth of Ahmadinejad’s support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi
“Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
“The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.”
There have been numerous news reports that the US government has implemented a program to destabilize Iran. There have been reports that the US government has financed bombings and assassinations within Iran. The US media treats these reports in a braggadocio manner as illustrations of the American Superpower’s ability to bring dissenting countries to heel, while some foreign media see these reports as evidence of the US government’s inherent immorality.
Pakistan’s former military chief, General Mirza Aslam Beig, said on Pashto Radio on Monday, June 15, that undisputed intelligence proves the US interfered in the Iranian election. “The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful but hollow revolution following the election.”
The success of the US government in financing color revolutions in former Soviet Georgia and Ukraine and in other parts of the former Soviet empire have been widely reported and discussed, with the US media treating it as an indication of US omnipotence and natural right and some foreign media as a sign of US interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that Mir Hossein Mousavi is a bought and paid for operative of the US government.
We know for a fact that the US government has psychological warfare operations that target both Americans and foreigners through the US and foreign media. Many articles have been published on this subject.
Think about the Iranian election from a common sense standpoint. Neither myself nor the vast majority of readers are Iranian experts. But from a common sense standpoint, if your country was under constant threat of attack, even nuclear attack, from two countries with much more powerful military establishments, as is Iran from the US and Israel, would you desert your country’s best defender and elect the preferred candidate of the US and Israel?
Do you believe that the Iranian people would have voted to become an American puppet state?
Iran is an ancient and sophisticated society. Much of the intellectual class is secularized. A significant, but small, percentage of the youth has fallen in thrall to Western sexual promiscuity, to personal pleasure, and to self-absorption. These people are easily organized with American money to give their government and Islamic constraints on personal behavior the bird.
The US government is taking advantage of these westernized Iranians to create a basis for discrediting the Iranian election and the Iranian government.
On June 14, the McClatchy Washington Bureau, which sometimes attempts to report the real news, acquiesced to Washington’s psychological warfare and declared: “Iran election result makes Obama’s outreach efforts harder.” What we see here is the raising of the ugly head of the excuse for “diplomatic failure,” leaving only a military solution.
As a person who has seen it all from inside the US government, I believe that the purpose of the US government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the US government is setting up Iran for military attack.
With the help of Mousavi, the US government is creating another “oppressed people,” like Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, who require American blood and treasure to liberate. Has Mousavi, the American candidate in the Iranian election who was roundly trounced, been chosen by Washington to become the American puppet ruler of Iran?
The great macho superpower is eager to restore its hegemony over the Iranian people, thus settling the score with the ayatollahs who overthrew American rule of Iran in 1978.
That is the script. You are watching it every minute on US television.
There is no end of “experts” to support the script. For one example among hundreds, we have Gary Sick, appropriately named, who formerly served on the National Security Council and currently teaches at Columbia University:
“If they’d been a little more modest and said Ahmadinejad had won by 51 percent,” Sick said, Iranians might have been dubious but more accepting. But the government’s assertion that Ahmadinejad won with 62.6 percent of the vote, “is not credible.”
“I think,” continued Sick, “it does mark a real transition point in the Iranian Revolution, from a position of claiming to have its legitimacy based on the support of the population, to a position that has increasingly relied on repression. The voice of the people is ignored.”
The only hard information available is the poll referenced above. The poll found that Ahmadinejad was the favored candidate by a margin of two to one.
But as in everything else having to do with American hegemony over other peoples, facts and truth play no part. Lies and propaganda rule.
Consumed by its passion for hegemony, America is driven to prevail over others, morality and justice be damned. This world-threatening script will play until America bankrupts itself and has so alienated the rest of the world that it is isolated and universally despised.
It already has. See:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt
In Ancient Sumeria, the cow was a sacred beast. One theory has it that our letter, A, alpha, alef, is simply a series of variants of a rotated or inverted, horned cow’s head.
Once, Nebuchadnezzar was all-powerful, then he was nothing.
while, amidst the dusts of time,
Shelley lives forever…
Thanks for the reminder Suhayl.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
PBS
Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows
By Paul Craig Roberts
June 17, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.
The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the cold war claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.
Today the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: “Where is My Vote?” The signs are intended for the western media, not for the Iranian government.
More evidence of orchestration is provided by the protesters’ chant, “death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad.” Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.
The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.
On American TV, the protesters who are interviewed speak perfect English. They are either westernized secular Iranians who were allied with the Shah and fled to the West during the 1978 Iranian revolution or they are the young westernized residents of Tehran.
Many of the demonstrators may be sincere in their protest, hoping to free themselves from Islamic moral codes. But if reports of the US government’s plans to destabilize Iran are correct, paid troublemakers are in their ranks.
Some observers, such as George Friedman [ http://www.realclearworld.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/06/western_misconception_iran_rea.html ] believe that the American destabilization plan will fail.
However, many ayatollahs feel animosity toward Ahmadinejad, who assaults the ayatollahs for corruption. Many in the Iranian countryside believe that the ayatollahs have too much wealth and power. Amadinejad’s attack on corruption resonates with the Iranian countryside but not with the ayatollahs.
Amadinejad’s campaign against corruption has brought Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri out against him. Montazeri is a rival to ruling Ayatollah Khamenei. Montazeri sees in the street protests an opportunity to challenge Khamenei for the leadership role.
So, once again, as so many times in history, the ambitions of one person might seal the fate of the Iranian state.
Khamenei knows that the elected president is an underling. If he has to sacrifice Ahmadinejad’s election in order to fend off Montazeri, he might recount the vote and elect Mousavi, thinking that will bring an end to the controversy.
Khamenei, solving his personal problem, would play into the hands of the American-Israeli assault on his country.
On the surface, the departure of Ahmadeinjad would cost Israel and the US the loss of their useful “anti-semitic” boggy-man. But in fact it would play into the American-Israeli propaganda. The story would be that the remote, isolated, Iranian ruling Ayatollah was forced by the Iranian people to admit the falsity of the rigged election, calling into question rule by Ayatollahs who do not stand for election.
Mousavi and Ayatollah Montazeri are putting their besieged country at risk. Possibly they believe that ridding Iran of Ahmadeinjad’s extreme image would gain Iran breathing room. If Mousavi and Montazeri succeed in their ambitions, one likely result would be a loss in Iran’s independence. The new rulers would have to continually defend Iran’s new moderate and reformist image by giving in to American demands. If the government admits to a rigged election, the legitimacy of the Iranian Revolution would be called into question, setting up Iran for more US interference in its internal affairs.
For the American neoconservatives, democratic countries are those countries that submit to America’s will, regardless of their form of government. “Democracy” is achieved by America ruling through puppet officials.
The American public might never know whether the Iranian election was legitimate or stolen. The US media serves as a propaganda device, not as a purveyor of truth. Election fraud is certainly a possibility–it happens even in America–and signs of fraud have appeared. Large numbers of votes were swiftly counted, which raises the question whether votes were counted or merely a result was announced.
The US media’s response to the election was equally rapid. Having invested heavily in demonizing Ahmadinejad, the media is unwilling to accept election results that vindicate Ahmadinejad and declared fraud in advance of evidence, despite the pre-election poll results published in the June 15 Washington Post, which found Ahmadinejad to be the projected winner.
There are many American interest groups that have a vested interest in the charge that the election was rigged. What is important to many Americans is not whether the election was fair, but whether the winner’s rhetoric is allied with their goals.
For example, those numerous Americans who believe that both presidential and congressional elections were stolen during the Karl Rove Republican years are tempted to use the Iranian election protests to shame Americans for accepting the stolen Bush elections.
Feminists take the side of the “reformer” Mousavi.
Neoconservatives damn the election for suppressing the “peace candidate” who might acquiescent to Israel’s demands to halt the development of Iranian nuclear energy.
Ideological and emotional agendas result in people distancing themselves from factual and analytical information, preferring instead information that fits with their material interests and emotional disposition. The primacy of emotion over fact bids ill for the future. The extraordinary attention given to the Iranian election suggests that many American interests and emotions have a stake in the outcome.
Khameini’s speech today, “If they continue (to protest on the streets)they will be receiving other consequences, behind the scenes. I’m asking my friends and brothers to follow the laws. Let God give us blessing to follow those ways.”
Translation. Any further protests and we will shoot you.
This is not just about a stolen election, it’s about the right to protest. I am sure that all of you will support the right of protest in Iran?
Fascinating article here
http://tinyurl.com/mxeq5f
on the so-called rash of Twitter postings supposedly from Iranians, but actually coming from Israelis.
“Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection”
“This is not just about a stolen election”
Given that pre-election polls predicted a 2/3 majority for Ahmadinejad it is by no means clear that the election has been stolen at all. The proposed partial re-count of disputed regions, in the presence of the defeated candidates, seems quite a sensible first step.
“I am sure that all of you will support the right of protest in Iran?”
Absolutely.
Fascinating. If you believe that sort of nonsense. There is plenty of evidence that Israeli hawks favoured Ahmedinejad’s election – he is a useful hate figure. There may have been three twitterers from Israel, I’m sure there are several from Britain – but there are hundreds in Iran and given the suppression of the media it seems that internet and mobile phone technology is the only way that events can be transmitted to a wider world. In his speech Khameini keeps going on about British radio. It’s as if the technologies of the last fifty years have not reached his consciousness. The whole point of twitter is that you have to be on the ground for it to have any meaning.
MJ, did you look at the first twitter the article refers to? Several later postings in Arabic, requests to translate student flyers into English, earlier posts look pretty much what you’d expect from someone on the ground & trying to get news out to the world. And using English is the obvious way to do it. Not convinced by the other “proof” that these three were mentioned in the Jerusalem Post, either. Why wouldn’t they be?
It was dreoilin, not me, who posted the twitter article and no, I haven’t followed it up. My interest at the moment is what evidence, if any, there is to suggest vote rigging. It all seemed to start when Mousavi declared himself the winner before the votes had even been counted. This seems to have galvanised his supporters, not to mention the rest of the world, but why did he think he had won when pre-election polls suggested otherwise? What’s the evidence?
Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows
By Paul Craig Roberts
June 17, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.
The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the cold war claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.
Today the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: “Where is My Vote?” The signs are intended for the western media, not for the Iranian government.
More evidence of orchestration is provided by the protesters’ chant, “death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad.” Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.
The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.
On American TV, the protesters who are interviewed speak perfect English. They are either westernized secular Iranians who were allied with the Shah and fled to the West during the 1978 Iranian revolution or they are the young westernized residents of Tehran.
Many of the demonstrators may be sincere in their protest, hoping to free themselves from Islamic moral codes. But if reports of the US government’s plans to destabilize Iran are correct, paid troublemakers are in their ranks.
Some observers, such as George Friedman [ http://www.realclearworld.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/06/western_misconception_iran_rea.html ] believe that the American destabilization plan will fail.
However, many ayatollahs feel animosity toward Ahmadinejad, who assaults the ayatollahs for corruption. Many in the Iranian countryside believe that the ayatollahs have too much wealth and power. Amadinejad’s attack on corruption resonates with the Iranian countryside but not with the ayatollahs.
Amadinejad’s campaign against corruption has brought Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri out against him. Montazeri is a rival to ruling Ayatollah Khamenei. Montazeri sees in the street protests an opportunity to challenge Khamenei for the leadership role.
So, once again, as so many times in history, the ambitions of one person might seal the fate of the Iranian state.
Khamenei knows that the elected president is an underling. If he has to sacrifice Ahmadinejad’s election in order to fend off Montazeri, he might recount the vote and elect Mousavi, thinking that will bring an end to the controversy.
Khamenei, solving his personal problem, would play into the hands of the American-Israeli assault on his country.
On the surface, the departure of Ahmadeinjad would cost Israel and the US the loss of their useful “anti-semitic” boggy-man. But in fact it would play into the American-Israeli propaganda. The story would be that the remote, isolated, Iranian ruling Ayatollah was forced by the Iranian people to admit the falsity of the rigged election, calling into question rule by Ayatollahs who do not stand for election.
Mousavi and Ayatollah Montazeri are putting their besieged country at risk. Possibly they believe that ridding Iran of Ahmadeinjad’s extreme image would gain Iran breathing room. If Mousavi and Montazeri succeed in their ambitions, one likely result would be a loss in Iran’s independence. The new rulers would have to continually defend Iran’s new moderate and reformist image by giving in to American demands. If the government admits to a rigged election, the legitimacy of the Iranian Revolution would be called into question, setting up Iran for more US interference in its internal affairs.
For the American neoconservatives, democratic countries are those countries that submit to America’s will, regardless of their form of government. “Democracy” is achieved by America ruling through puppet officials.
The American public might never know whether the Iranian election was legitimate or stolen. The US media serves as a propaganda device, not as a purveyor of truth. Election fraud is certainly a possibility–it happens even in America–and signs of fraud have appeared. Large numbers of votes were swiftly counted, which raises the question whether votes were counted or merely a result was announced.
The US media’s response to the election was equally rapid. Having invested heavily in demonizing Ahmadinejad, the media is unwilling to accept election results that vindicate Ahmadinejad and declared fraud in advance of evidence, despite the pre-election poll results published in the June 15 Washington Post, which found Ahmadinejad to be the projected winner.
There are many American interest groups that have a vested interest in the charge that the election was rigged. What is important to many Americans is not whether the election was fair, but whether the winner’s rhetoric is allied with their goals.
For example, those numerous Americans who believe that both presidential and congressional elections were stolen during the Karl Rove Republican years are tempted to use the Iranian election protests to shame Americans for accepting the stolen Bush elections.
Feminists take the side of the “reformer” Mousavi.
Neoconservatives damn the election for suppressing the “peace candidate” who might acquiescent to Israel’s demands to halt the development of Iranian nuclear energy.
Ideological and emotional agendas result in people distancing themselves from factual and analytical information, preferring instead information that fits with their material interests and emotional disposition. The primacy of emotion over fact bids ill for the future. The extraordinary attention given to the Iranian election suggests that many American interests and emotions have a stake in the outcome.
sorry MJ. Mossavi was playing politics, don’t you think?
I like Ruth’s story about the Iranian woman who couldn’t wait to leave the UK & get back there!
Absolutely, whoever you are. That’s it, in a nutshell.
I meant the Paul Craig Roberts piece.
agree, thanks nameless person.