by Prof. Akbar E. Torbat
In Iran’s presidential elections, on June 12, 2009, the incumbent president Mahmud Ahmadinejad won a landslide victory. His main contender Mir-Hossein Mousavi could only secure about one third of the votes. The following is an explanation of what has happened and why Ahmadinejad has gained popularity to be reelected despite the Western media showing him differently.
Iran’s Presidential Elections 2009
A day before the election, the Iranian political activist Nasser Zarafshan said “a Ukraine-type velvet revolution” is in the cards to be played by the West in order to dominate Iran. A well financed high-tech campaign using YouTube, Facebook and twitter on the Internet and text messaging communication was underway in Iran. Yet, these means of communication are only known to a small fraction of Iran’s population. In addition, thousands of expensive posters, CDs, and other items prepared by pro-Mousavi green camp quickly flooded the streets of Tehran. The Western Media and especially the Farsi Language television programs such as the Persian BBC and Voice of America had potent impacts on the so called “reformists” or the neoliberal candidates’ supporters, but not Ahmadinejad’s constituencies that are masses not affected by such modern propagandas. The Western media boasted Mousavi’s image without knowing much about who he was. Obviously, he could not be painted as “Iran’s Gandhi” as some Western reporters ridiculously touted. Mousavi is not a charismatic leader and does not have an impressive record. In fact he was an Islamic fanatic when he became prime minster. He helped to shut down the Iranian universities for three years in order to launch the so called “Cultural Revolution”. Also, during his repressive premiership, thousands of Iranian political prisoners were executed. He has been out of politics for about 20 years and has not been socially active. He does not have broad view of what is happening in the world and especially in the neighboring countries.
In this election, behind the scene, the former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani was the key architect of Mousavi’s election campaign and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei backed Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani wishes to dominate the Islamic regime’s political structure replacing the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who is at the top echelon of the clerical regime. Rafsanjani is very wealthy and is the most favorite cleric by the West. He does not seem to mind letting the West control Iran’s oil resources in exchange for ruling Iran by himself. In the past, people have called him “King Akbar”. In such situation, if he succeeds, the Islamic Republic could be turned into a Persian Gulf type monarchy or sheikhdom instead of a Western democracy as is dreamed by some Iranian political elites. However, Rafsanjani has been under pressure because of his corruption in arms purchases during Iran-Iraq war and the money he and his family members received to give oil contracts to the French oil company Total and his roles in ordering political assassinations of many of dissidents at home and abroad. Before the elections, Mousavi’s campaign spent conspicuously in the city of Tehran under the banner of Green color. Where he got the money from is an unanswered question.
The Presidential candidates in Iran are vetted by a twelve member body that is called Council of Guardian. In this election only three candidates from within the Islamic regime were selected by the Guardian Council to contest Ahmadinejad; the other nominees were not allowed to run. In the election, the incumbent President faced the last Iranian prime minister, Mir-Hossein Mousavi; a cleric and a former Parliament speaker, Mehdi Karroubi; and a former senior military commander, Mohsen Rezaei. However, none of the three contenders were delivering any new agenda on how to deal with the countries’ problems; they only criticized what the incumbent president had not done well in their view. Nearly 40 million Iranians or 85% of the eligible voters participated in the election. This was the highest turnout in ten presidential elections held in Iran. The official results as announced on June 14 by the Interior Ministry were: Ahmadinejad 24.5 million (63.62%), Mousavi 13.2 million (33.75%), Rezaei 0.67 million (1.73%), and Karroubi 0.33 million (0.85%) of the votes. The invalid votes canceled were 0.40 million (1.4%). The Spokesman for the Interior Ministry Ali Asghar Sharifi-Rad said the results were accurate and the representatives of all candidates had been present at the polling stations and signed off the final tallies.
Disputing the Election Results
Surprisingly, some well known Iranians became tools of Western media propaganda during and after the elections. An Iranian professor at Columbia University, an Iranian academic in the Hoover Institution, and a well known Iranian filmmaker residing in France were among many who jumped the bandwagon to claim the election was rigged. None of them showed any credible evidence to prove how a candidate who had more than 10 million votes compared to his main contender was not legitimately elected. Many filled the media with false claims, saying genuine results could not be declared as fast as they had been by the Iranian media. They misled the public because in reality about 3 hours after the poles were closed, Iranian media started announcing the election results of only 20% of the votes counted, and that was followed with more up-to-date data until the final tallies were announced at a later time. At the end, the announced results in favor of the incumbent were close to what had been predicted by several respected polling agencies (for example see The Washington Post June 15) in the runoff to the elections.
The three candidates who did not have any credible evidence for the alleged rigging asked for annulling the elections from the very beginning. They never wanted a recount because their representatives had been present at the polling stations and had already signed off on the results. They knew the numbers were not on their side as was largely predicted. In the following days, the main contender, Mousavi, brought his supporters to the streets of Tehran, the only major city he had won, to pressure the regime for annulling the results. This did not prevent millions of Iranians from coming out to the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities to express their support for the status quo versus the West campaign to put its most favorite candidate who was Rafsanjani’s proxy in power. After a few days of protests in the streets of Tehran in which a number of people were killed; on June 19 in a powerful speech at Tehran University, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei called for an end to street protests and assured the public that the government by no means had betrayed the votes of the nation. He blamed the Zionists and the Western powers, “specially the malicious British government”, for the post election protests and the riots.
Ahmadinejad's Populism
In 2005, Ahmadinejad advocated populist economic policies during his presidential campaign, which included “putting oil money on impoverished peoples’ dining table (Sofreh).” As a result, he gained strong grassroots’ support from urban poor and rural dwellers. Ahmadinejad became the first enduring non-cleric president who wanted to pursue the initial goals of the revolution that included economic justice and political sovereignty. When he became president, he implemented some small-scale development projects, including building hospitals, bridges, roads, and schools in the rural areas, financed by the oil money. Ahmadinejad gained support from underprivileged Iranians who favor his economic justice program. He was also supported by those who believe he has promoted Iran’s technological and defense progress. There are about three million impoverished women in Iran who weave carpets in their homes. Ahmadinejad brought a law to give them full insurance. Also, Ahmadinejad initiated distribution of some government-owned enterprises’ shares called “Justice Shares,” to redistribute state wealth to the low income Iranians. Justice shares are mutual fund shares of the state-owned enterprises that are privatized.
The election in Iran depicted a class struggle between those who live comfortably in modern urban centers and want Western style social life versus impoverished people in rural areas and smaller cities who seek better life in the traditional Islamic culture. The former had strong support from the West for social change, while the latter relied on the status quo in the country. The affluent Iranians do not like Ahmadinejad but the urban poor and those in the rural areas love him. As has been reported by the Christian Science Monitor, Ahmadinejad is greeted like a rock star when he visits small cities and rural Iran.
Some university professors and student groups do not like Ahmadinejad because they consider him to be an Islamic fanatic. In December 2005, Abbasali Amir Zanjani, a cleric was appointed the Chancellor of Tehran University. The appointment caused strong backlash from the intellectuals and the university students against the President. Zanjani was finally replaced in February 2008 by an economist Farhad Rahbar. Also, early forced retirement of a number of professors in Tehran University caused wide student protests. Tehran University is the first university established in Iran and has been historically the center of intellectual activism. As a result, Ahmadinejad became unpopular within some circles of Iranian intellectuals. But that has not affected his popularity among the majority of lower-middle class and impoverished Iranians.
Radical Islam and Liberation Theology
Ahmadinejad has been able to make alliance with some countries in Latin America. Latin America’s Catholic Church and radical Islam have something in common. Both religious movements have support of the masses to challenge domination of their countries by the Western imperial powers. There is a similarity between radical Islamists in Iran and the supporters of liberal theologians’ movements in Latin America. They both have common ideology to resist the West hegemony. Liberation theology, originated in Catholic Church, emphasizes effort to bring justice to the poor and oppressed. Liberation theology uses democratic socialism as a political theory to combat poverty. Radical Islam similarly uses political aspects of Islam as a force for creating national liberation and economic justice. Ali Shariati is known to be the first Islamist thinker who merged Islam political ideology and liberation theology. He was influenced by Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara, but unlike them who rejected religion in supporting national liberation, Shariati tailored Iran’s Islamic ideological roots as a means to mobilize masses for national liberation. However, Shariati was against clerical rule. He died mysteriously before the revolution in 1977, widely believed to be a victim of the Shah’s secret police (Savak) assassination. He did not live to see the clerics dominating political leadership in Iran.
Ahmadinejad pursues the same brand of Islamic radicalism as Shariati. He has been able to use religion to challenge the hegemony of the West as the liberation theologian leaders have done in Latin America. In this context Ahmadinejad joins similar brand of political figures such as Luiz Lula da Silva of Brazil, Hugo Chavez Venezuela, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, and Bolivian President Evo Morales who enjoy popularity among the Roman Catholic Church followers. However, there is an important distinction between the Islamic Republic and the Latin American governments. The Islamic Republic is a quasi-theocracy run by the clerics, while the Latin American countries are secular republics that are only supported by the Church. In the past, some Muslim political leaders have advocated Islamic Socialism. Examples are: Mohamed Ali Jinnah and Zulfakar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, and Jamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt. Ahmadinejad too has strived for a socially just Islamic State in Iran. It remains to be seen whether he can succeed.
Akbar E. Torbat (atorbat@csudh.edu ) teaches at the College of Business Administration and Public Policy, California State University – Dominguez Hills. He has published a number of articles in scholarly journals concerning Iran. He received his Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Showing posts with label ahmed nejad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ahmed nejad. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
US 'has agents working inside Iran'
The US has intelligence agents in Iran but it is not clear if they are providing help to the protest movement there, a former US national security adviser has told Al Jazeera.
Brent Scowcroft said on Wednesday that "of course" the US had agents in Iran amid the ongoing pressure against the Iranian government by protesters opposed to the official result of its presidential election.
But he added that he had no idea whether US agents had provided help to the opposition movement in Iran, which claims that the authorities rigged the June 12 election in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president.
"They might do. Who knows?" Scowcroft told Josh Rushing for Al Jazeera's Fault Lines programme.
"But that's a far cry from helping protesters against the combined might of the Revolutionary Guard, the militias and so on - and the [Iranian] police, who are so far completely unified."
Limited options
Scowcroft's admission that Washington has agents stationed in Iran comes a day after the US president issued tougher rhetoric against the government in Iran.
Barack Obama's sterner tone came after days of deadly clashes between the opposition and Iranian security forces and militias.
Obama has been criticised by US conservative politicians for not taking a stronger line against Tehran amid the government crackdown, but Scowcroft, a former adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and the senior George Bush, said the US could only do so much.
"We don't control Iran. We don't control the government, obviously," he said.
"There is little we can do to change the situation domestically in Iran right now and I think an attempt to change it is more likely to be turned against us and against the people who are demonstrating for more freedom.
"Therefore, I think we need to look at what we can do best, which is to try to influence Iranian behaviour in the region."
At least 19 people have been killed in post-election violence in Iran, which broke out at the scene of protests questioning the veracity of the poll results.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, has rejected the official results of the vote and has called for a fresh election to be held, while Mehdi Karoubi, another defeated candidate in the election, has called the new government "illegitimate".
But the Guardian Council, Iran's highest legislative body, has said that there were no incidences of major fraud in the vote and has declared that the official results will stand.
Brent Scowcroft said on Wednesday that "of course" the US had agents in Iran amid the ongoing pressure against the Iranian government by protesters opposed to the official result of its presidential election.
But he added that he had no idea whether US agents had provided help to the opposition movement in Iran, which claims that the authorities rigged the June 12 election in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president.
"They might do. Who knows?" Scowcroft told Josh Rushing for Al Jazeera's Fault Lines programme.
"But that's a far cry from helping protesters against the combined might of the Revolutionary Guard, the militias and so on - and the [Iranian] police, who are so far completely unified."
Limited options
Scowcroft's admission that Washington has agents stationed in Iran comes a day after the US president issued tougher rhetoric against the government in Iran.
Barack Obama's sterner tone came after days of deadly clashes between the opposition and Iranian security forces and militias.
Obama has been criticised by US conservative politicians for not taking a stronger line against Tehran amid the government crackdown, but Scowcroft, a former adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and the senior George Bush, said the US could only do so much.
"We don't control Iran. We don't control the government, obviously," he said.
"There is little we can do to change the situation domestically in Iran right now and I think an attempt to change it is more likely to be turned against us and against the people who are demonstrating for more freedom.
"Therefore, I think we need to look at what we can do best, which is to try to influence Iranian behaviour in the region."
At least 19 people have been killed in post-election violence in Iran, which broke out at the scene of protests questioning the veracity of the poll results.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, has rejected the official results of the vote and has called for a fresh election to be held, while Mehdi Karoubi, another defeated candidate in the election, has called the new government "illegitimate".
But the Guardian Council, Iran's highest legislative body, has said that there were no incidences of major fraud in the vote and has declared that the official results will stand.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Iran: fear of foreign plotters may be justified
by Simon Tisdall
Long-term instability in Iran is an alarming prospect for western countries keen to resolve disputes over the country’s nuclear programme and other contentious issues. But continuing political weakness in Tehran is also likely to produce the opposite effect — increased regime concern about external attempts to interfere, destabilise, and exploit its vulnerabilities. This paranoid trend threatens unpredictable, even dangerous consequences - but may be justified.
Pinning blame for Iran’s post-election turmoil on malign foreign enemies is already under way among so-called principalist, conservative factions. The pro-Ahmadinejad Keyhan newspaper on Tuesday denounced plots by “politically bankrupt dictators” to thwart the popular will. “The hopes of the imperialist triangle (America, U.K. and the Zionist regime) for a crawling coup d’etat in the Middle East and revival of the dead Middle East plan have been dashed,” it declared.
Javan newspaper was similarly acerbic. “Today democracy slogans have become a lever to provoke, interfere and overthrow,” it said. “By announcing results in the presidential elections that did not benefit their favourite candidate ... some foreign media such as BBC Persian [service], al-Arabiya, Fox News, CNN and some French media have started a new wave to create social and political division and cause riots.”
In largely cautious responses to Friday’s polls, Barack Obama’s administration has been careful not to feed the fires of xenophobic resentment. “It’s up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iran’s sovereignty and want to avoid the U.S. being the issue inside of Iran,” Mr. Obama said. But Iranian officials say U.S. protestations of non-interference would be more credible if the White House cancelled a $400m Bush era covert programme, authorised in 2007, which they say was intended to destabilise Iran, with the ultimate aim of regime change.
According to the journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker last year, covert operations by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command were used to support the PJAK Kurdish dissident group in northern Iran, the disaffected ethnic Arab minority in Khuzestan in the south-west, and militant Baluchi Sunni Muslim separatists in the south-east, bordering Pakistan.
While not officially acknowledged or disavowed in the U.S., the covert programme has been repeatedly linked by Iran to ongoing violence, bomb attacks and assassinations in all three areas, as well as to the main external opposition group, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is allegedly funded and armed by the U.S. Iran also occasionally claims to have evidence of involvement by Israel’s Mossad spy agency and British intelligence.
Although the problem can be overstated, Iranian leaders of all political complexions have reason to worry about the so-called minorities question in a country comprising multiple ethno-linguistic groups, namely Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkmen, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews and Georgians. Recent reports from Iranian Kurdistan, for example, speak of 100 or more checkpoints being erected by Revolutionary Guards and the shelling of PJAK positions inside northern Iraq.
Iranian officials have linked the recent suicide bombing of a Shia mosque in Zahedan, in Sistan-Baluchistan, to U.S., British and Israeli support for the Jundullah Sunni Muslim separatist group. A failed attempt last month to blow up a domestic airliner in Ahvaz, in Arab Khuzestan, brought similar claims.
Iran said on Tuesday that members of a foreign-backed “anti-revolutionary group” responsible for fomenting unrest and armed with bomb-making materials had been arrested. Intelligence minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said the group “wanted to achieve its goal through explosions and terror and in this connection 50 people were arrested ... They were supported from outside the country.” Given the current uproar in Tehran, the temptation for the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and President Ahmadinejad to deflect attention by hitting out at real or imagined foreign enemies, for instance by indirectly re-targeting U.S. forces in Iraq or causing problems for NATO forces in Afghanistan, is growing dangerously. But even such extreme measures may not work.
The moderate Seda-ye Edalat newspaper wasn’t swallowing the regime’s line about external threats on Tuesday. “Why does the government not let the people protest peacefully?” it asked. “Why do we always want to call Iranian protesters a group of hooligans bribed by foreigners to sabotage everything?”
Long-term instability in Iran is an alarming prospect for western countries keen to resolve disputes over the country’s nuclear programme and other contentious issues. But continuing political weakness in Tehran is also likely to produce the opposite effect — increased regime concern about external attempts to interfere, destabilise, and exploit its vulnerabilities. This paranoid trend threatens unpredictable, even dangerous consequences - but may be justified.
Pinning blame for Iran’s post-election turmoil on malign foreign enemies is already under way among so-called principalist, conservative factions. The pro-Ahmadinejad Keyhan newspaper on Tuesday denounced plots by “politically bankrupt dictators” to thwart the popular will. “The hopes of the imperialist triangle (America, U.K. and the Zionist regime) for a crawling coup d’etat in the Middle East and revival of the dead Middle East plan have been dashed,” it declared.
Javan newspaper was similarly acerbic. “Today democracy slogans have become a lever to provoke, interfere and overthrow,” it said. “By announcing results in the presidential elections that did not benefit their favourite candidate ... some foreign media such as BBC Persian [service], al-Arabiya, Fox News, CNN and some French media have started a new wave to create social and political division and cause riots.”
In largely cautious responses to Friday’s polls, Barack Obama’s administration has been careful not to feed the fires of xenophobic resentment. “It’s up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iran’s sovereignty and want to avoid the U.S. being the issue inside of Iran,” Mr. Obama said. But Iranian officials say U.S. protestations of non-interference would be more credible if the White House cancelled a $400m Bush era covert programme, authorised in 2007, which they say was intended to destabilise Iran, with the ultimate aim of regime change.
According to the journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker last year, covert operations by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command were used to support the PJAK Kurdish dissident group in northern Iran, the disaffected ethnic Arab minority in Khuzestan in the south-west, and militant Baluchi Sunni Muslim separatists in the south-east, bordering Pakistan.
While not officially acknowledged or disavowed in the U.S., the covert programme has been repeatedly linked by Iran to ongoing violence, bomb attacks and assassinations in all three areas, as well as to the main external opposition group, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is allegedly funded and armed by the U.S. Iran also occasionally claims to have evidence of involvement by Israel’s Mossad spy agency and British intelligence.
Although the problem can be overstated, Iranian leaders of all political complexions have reason to worry about the so-called minorities question in a country comprising multiple ethno-linguistic groups, namely Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkmen, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews and Georgians. Recent reports from Iranian Kurdistan, for example, speak of 100 or more checkpoints being erected by Revolutionary Guards and the shelling of PJAK positions inside northern Iraq.
Iranian officials have linked the recent suicide bombing of a Shia mosque in Zahedan, in Sistan-Baluchistan, to U.S., British and Israeli support for the Jundullah Sunni Muslim separatist group. A failed attempt last month to blow up a domestic airliner in Ahvaz, in Arab Khuzestan, brought similar claims.
Iran said on Tuesday that members of a foreign-backed “anti-revolutionary group” responsible for fomenting unrest and armed with bomb-making materials had been arrested. Intelligence minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said the group “wanted to achieve its goal through explosions and terror and in this connection 50 people were arrested ... They were supported from outside the country.” Given the current uproar in Tehran, the temptation for the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and President Ahmadinejad to deflect attention by hitting out at real or imagined foreign enemies, for instance by indirectly re-targeting U.S. forces in Iraq or causing problems for NATO forces in Afghanistan, is growing dangerously. But even such extreme measures may not work.
The moderate Seda-ye Edalat newspaper wasn’t swallowing the regime’s line about external threats on Tuesday. “Why does the government not let the people protest peacefully?” it asked. “Why do we always want to call Iranian protesters a group of hooligans bribed by foreigners to sabotage everything?”
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated Color Revolution?
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Counterpunch
Saturday, June 20, 2009
A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the release of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs’ lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad’s attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are “explaining” the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad’s win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
Counterpunch
Saturday, June 20, 2009
A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the release of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs’ lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad’s attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are “explaining” the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad’s win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
Iran's PRESSTV Versus America's CNN
If you still believe that CNN’s 12-hour straight coverage of Iran is about democracy, then Hitler was my mom!
Here’s is Ahmed Quraishi who shows you, with pictures, how CNN & BBC, the leaders of the Am-Brit media, were caught lying.
Just when the Iranian protesters decided not to defy their government's ban on street trouble, CNN and the rest of the American media went into an overdrive today to provoke the Iranian protesters, and especially mislead the younger ones into creating a situation that could result in bloodshed.
In twenty years of watching CNN, I have never seen it stoop so low as it did today.
The question is: If an American or British newspaper or TV network's agenda begins to eerily resemble that of CIA or MI-6 [the Am-Brit enterprise], does this mean that these custodians of media independence are actually government mouthpieces?
Obviously, the US government and the CIA will not let this opportunity in Iran slip out of hand. Remeber that the CIA, the NSA and other American spy agencies were given millions of dollars for covert operations targeting Iran under Bush. These programs are still operational and have not been cancelled by Obama. Once there is violence, all you need to do is to unleash local agents connected to foreign elements, coupled with massive media propaganda to encourage chaos in order to create maximum trouble and instability for the government in Iran.
The US government and CIA are already using Afghanistan to insert terrorists into eastern parts of Iran.
CNN today was no different than any state-run TV channel in a dictatorship in central Africa or the Middle East. And it was funny. I mean really. CNN never devotes more than 10 or 15 minutes in extreme cases for even the most important world leaders, and here it was devoting nonstop hours to endless drivel by 'Iran experts' some of them quite literally full of s**** and a majority of them wasn’t even able to give intelligent answers. Most of whom had nothing new to say but CNN wanted to create a worldwide hype to keep Iran's government under the spotlight. CNN editors allowed many unimpressive speakers to sit and speak for hours. But since there was nothing to "cover" today in Iran, CNN resorted to "creating" a crisis, manufacturing a hype about something that wasn't even happening: the 'expected' turnout of protestors defying the government.
Protestors largely stayed indoors. But CNN kept insisting that something was happening. For special effect, CNN used old footage to mislead the international audience about the size of today’s protestors.
Obviously I can't imagine that it is any of CNN's business to keep the protests alive and prevent them from dying out. But it is certainly the interest of the US government and the CIA.
So there is only one explanation to what CNN was doing:
To encourage the younger protestors to come out and defy the security and risk deaths so that CIA could stoke more trouble.
CNN also directly attacked PRESSTV, Iran's dynamic international English-language TV news channel. CNN anchors were apparently told to disparage PRESSTV calling it a 'government mouthpiece'.
Mouthpiece, eh? Compared to what? FoxNews, which spent the last eight years working as a mouthpiece to Bush? Or CNN and BBC that often become one with their governments when it comes to foreign policy and military aggression?
If CNN's agenda appears to mirror that of US government and the CIA, with no questions asked and no room for the opposite viewpoint, doesn’t that make CNN a government mouthpiece too?
How about CNN and New York Times and others airing and printing absolute lies about Iraq's nuclear program in order to convince the world that an invasion was necessary? And then when everything turned out to be a ruse created by CIA and MI6 and promoted by CNN, NYT and others as truth, do we see the Am-Brit free media apologizing for becoming government puppets?
When nothing happened on the streets in Tehran most of the day today, CNN anchorwoman Rosemary Church kept announcing with emphasis and with Broadway-dramatism, "There is a tense calm" in Iran.
Ooooh.
But my personal favorite was this line, "A very balanced reporting" or "a very balanced analysis" that Ms. Church repeated whenever a biased one-sided reporter or 'expert' finished his or her rant on Iran.
There were two exceptions in the CNN coverage coming from two journalists: Christian Amanpour and Jonathan Mann. Both refused to turn off their professional instincts and blindly follow the instructions from the newsroom.
Ms. Amanpour surprised everyone at one point when she inadvertently exposed CNN's hypocrisy by telling her interviewer Rosemary Church that it was important to underline that a majority of Iranian protestors stayed away today after the government warning.
And then Amanpour said that most of the videos that CNN kept showing throughout the day today were old footage. Amanpour appeared to be emphasizing that viewers need to be told that CNN was playing footage from yesterday and the day before and that there were no crowds on Tehran's streets of the size being shown in the footage.
Amanpour’s comment seemed to have struck Ms. Church smack in the face. She appeared dumbstruck for a minute. It was almost as if she knew [from the instructions she must be receiving thru an earphone from the newsroom] that she was not supposed to say these things and expose CNN's game plan.
Then Jonathan Mann also violated the script and at one point stopped to ask CNN to replay a rare video that came out of Tehran today. The fresh video showed a handful of protestors, certainly fewer than ever before.
Mann inquired from his biased commentator that he wasn't able to see the streets in previous videos because of the huge number of protestors. But the new video showed empty streets barring a few kids. Again, the commentator, who was pro-American Iranian, was dumbfounded.
Here's another fine evidence of who is motivating CNN and other 'Am-Brit independent international media outlets':
CNN did not go into overdrive until quite late in the day when it became clear that the protests were dying down. My guess is that some people within the US government freaked out at this. Someone might have said [probably at Langley], 'If the protests die down, that's it. Find a way to keep the momentum and encourage the kids there to come out on the streets. Let's push the Iranian security into a murderous mishap.'
And suddenly CNN goes into a nonstop one-sided ethically-questionable coverage. I am sure that simultaneously CIA's Iran desk must be busy in 'quiet outreach' through Facebook and Twitter and through their assets on the ground in Iran.
It is time that the Am-Brit 'international media' realize that many people outside Europe and America can see through their machinations, the way they gang up on certain countries or on certain issues that hide other interests of the Am-Brit combine. We've seen this happen so many times, in Georgia and elsewhere, that it stands exposed.
To me this has nothing to do with democracy and human rights. Sure, the Iranian government has problems and it has opponents within the Iranian populace. So it’s not a big deal if a few of them gather in Los Angeles and Washington in small demos. What IS a big deal is how the Am-Brit media has rushed to play a strategic game disguised as journalism. This is the same Am-Brit media that continues to produce CIA and MI6 agents hiding as accredited journalists. The latest example is of an Iranian woman who was sent back to Iran as an American journalist so that she could get in touch with her former colleagues in a sensitive government department and obtain secret documents. She was caught with those documents. And now we have two American journalists from Korean descent sent to North Korea for the same purpose, espionage. All three spies found major American news organizations ready to give them the cover of an accredited journalist so that CIA could use them for espionage. This is the state of the Am-Brit media that sets the world news agenda.
This episode should also serve as a lesson for Iran. The Iranian government actually helped Washington and London invade Iraq and Afghanistan and supported the two invasions on military and intelligence levels. The hope was that somehow this will convince Washington and London to accept the Iranian government and start working with it.
Today, the Iranian government learns the lesson the hard way.
And the Am-Brit media can be and is manipulated by the governments in London and Washington just like anywhere else. The best part of it, of course, is that the US State Department gets to issue grade reports about how other countries fare on media freedoms.
The Am-Brit media had been exposed during the false campaign against Iraq in 2003. But people have short memories. Iran's elections in 2009 should serve as a welcome reminder on the performance of the Am-Brit media.
And these elections should also become a permanent signpost for CNN's amazing fall.
P.S.: Google and Facebook are speeding up Persian translations of their sites and BBC rushes to find other satellites to beam into Iran. Wow. Even companies feel for democracy and are willing to go the extra mile for the sake of democracy in Iran! Last question to all the buffoons who still think this is about democracy: How come we don't see Russian, German, French, Singaporean, Indian or Israeli companies feeling the pain for democracy? Why is it that only Am-Brit companies are at the forefront of the fight for Iranian democracy?!!
http://aq-lounge.blogspot.com/2009/06/presstv-versus-cnn.html
In my personal opinion this is very sad day for Muslims & Iranians all over the world. Iran was the only Islamic country left with unity in them & its not anymore. Zionists have funded nicely & they are the ones to get applaud for their victory yet again in dividing & ruling. But what is this so called Muslim Ummah of 1.5 billion full of ignorant inferiority complex animals doing????except fulfilling their desires????Obviously you can't expect anything from Pakistani journalists/anchors (bunch of fans of Cheap Justice/sharif/zardari-BB/india/musharraf) but still Iran really needs help today from against this zionist propaganda, could anyone from 1.5 billion think of any way to go against this psy-op????
Here’s is Ahmed Quraishi who shows you, with pictures, how CNN & BBC, the leaders of the Am-Brit media, were caught lying.
Just when the Iranian protesters decided not to defy their government's ban on street trouble, CNN and the rest of the American media went into an overdrive today to provoke the Iranian protesters, and especially mislead the younger ones into creating a situation that could result in bloodshed.
In twenty years of watching CNN, I have never seen it stoop so low as it did today.
The question is: If an American or British newspaper or TV network's agenda begins to eerily resemble that of CIA or MI-6 [the Am-Brit enterprise], does this mean that these custodians of media independence are actually government mouthpieces?
Obviously, the US government and the CIA will not let this opportunity in Iran slip out of hand. Remeber that the CIA, the NSA and other American spy agencies were given millions of dollars for covert operations targeting Iran under Bush. These programs are still operational and have not been cancelled by Obama. Once there is violence, all you need to do is to unleash local agents connected to foreign elements, coupled with massive media propaganda to encourage chaos in order to create maximum trouble and instability for the government in Iran.
The US government and CIA are already using Afghanistan to insert terrorists into eastern parts of Iran.
CNN today was no different than any state-run TV channel in a dictatorship in central Africa or the Middle East. And it was funny. I mean really. CNN never devotes more than 10 or 15 minutes in extreme cases for even the most important world leaders, and here it was devoting nonstop hours to endless drivel by 'Iran experts' some of them quite literally full of s**** and a majority of them wasn’t even able to give intelligent answers. Most of whom had nothing new to say but CNN wanted to create a worldwide hype to keep Iran's government under the spotlight. CNN editors allowed many unimpressive speakers to sit and speak for hours. But since there was nothing to "cover" today in Iran, CNN resorted to "creating" a crisis, manufacturing a hype about something that wasn't even happening: the 'expected' turnout of protestors defying the government.
Protestors largely stayed indoors. But CNN kept insisting that something was happening. For special effect, CNN used old footage to mislead the international audience about the size of today’s protestors.
Obviously I can't imagine that it is any of CNN's business to keep the protests alive and prevent them from dying out. But it is certainly the interest of the US government and the CIA.
So there is only one explanation to what CNN was doing:
To encourage the younger protestors to come out and defy the security and risk deaths so that CIA could stoke more trouble.
CNN also directly attacked PRESSTV, Iran's dynamic international English-language TV news channel. CNN anchors were apparently told to disparage PRESSTV calling it a 'government mouthpiece'.
Mouthpiece, eh? Compared to what? FoxNews, which spent the last eight years working as a mouthpiece to Bush? Or CNN and BBC that often become one with their governments when it comes to foreign policy and military aggression?
If CNN's agenda appears to mirror that of US government and the CIA, with no questions asked and no room for the opposite viewpoint, doesn’t that make CNN a government mouthpiece too?
How about CNN and New York Times and others airing and printing absolute lies about Iraq's nuclear program in order to convince the world that an invasion was necessary? And then when everything turned out to be a ruse created by CIA and MI6 and promoted by CNN, NYT and others as truth, do we see the Am-Brit free media apologizing for becoming government puppets?
When nothing happened on the streets in Tehran most of the day today, CNN anchorwoman Rosemary Church kept announcing with emphasis and with Broadway-dramatism, "There is a tense calm" in Iran.
Ooooh.
But my personal favorite was this line, "A very balanced reporting" or "a very balanced analysis" that Ms. Church repeated whenever a biased one-sided reporter or 'expert' finished his or her rant on Iran.
There were two exceptions in the CNN coverage coming from two journalists: Christian Amanpour and Jonathan Mann. Both refused to turn off their professional instincts and blindly follow the instructions from the newsroom.
Ms. Amanpour surprised everyone at one point when she inadvertently exposed CNN's hypocrisy by telling her interviewer Rosemary Church that it was important to underline that a majority of Iranian protestors stayed away today after the government warning.
And then Amanpour said that most of the videos that CNN kept showing throughout the day today were old footage. Amanpour appeared to be emphasizing that viewers need to be told that CNN was playing footage from yesterday and the day before and that there were no crowds on Tehran's streets of the size being shown in the footage.
Amanpour’s comment seemed to have struck Ms. Church smack in the face. She appeared dumbstruck for a minute. It was almost as if she knew [from the instructions she must be receiving thru an earphone from the newsroom] that she was not supposed to say these things and expose CNN's game plan.
Then Jonathan Mann also violated the script and at one point stopped to ask CNN to replay a rare video that came out of Tehran today. The fresh video showed a handful of protestors, certainly fewer than ever before.
Mann inquired from his biased commentator that he wasn't able to see the streets in previous videos because of the huge number of protestors. But the new video showed empty streets barring a few kids. Again, the commentator, who was pro-American Iranian, was dumbfounded.
Here's another fine evidence of who is motivating CNN and other 'Am-Brit independent international media outlets':
CNN did not go into overdrive until quite late in the day when it became clear that the protests were dying down. My guess is that some people within the US government freaked out at this. Someone might have said [probably at Langley], 'If the protests die down, that's it. Find a way to keep the momentum and encourage the kids there to come out on the streets. Let's push the Iranian security into a murderous mishap.'
And suddenly CNN goes into a nonstop one-sided ethically-questionable coverage. I am sure that simultaneously CIA's Iran desk must be busy in 'quiet outreach' through Facebook and Twitter and through their assets on the ground in Iran.
It is time that the Am-Brit 'international media' realize that many people outside Europe and America can see through their machinations, the way they gang up on certain countries or on certain issues that hide other interests of the Am-Brit combine. We've seen this happen so many times, in Georgia and elsewhere, that it stands exposed.
To me this has nothing to do with democracy and human rights. Sure, the Iranian government has problems and it has opponents within the Iranian populace. So it’s not a big deal if a few of them gather in Los Angeles and Washington in small demos. What IS a big deal is how the Am-Brit media has rushed to play a strategic game disguised as journalism. This is the same Am-Brit media that continues to produce CIA and MI6 agents hiding as accredited journalists. The latest example is of an Iranian woman who was sent back to Iran as an American journalist so that she could get in touch with her former colleagues in a sensitive government department and obtain secret documents. She was caught with those documents. And now we have two American journalists from Korean descent sent to North Korea for the same purpose, espionage. All three spies found major American news organizations ready to give them the cover of an accredited journalist so that CIA could use them for espionage. This is the state of the Am-Brit media that sets the world news agenda.
This episode should also serve as a lesson for Iran. The Iranian government actually helped Washington and London invade Iraq and Afghanistan and supported the two invasions on military and intelligence levels. The hope was that somehow this will convince Washington and London to accept the Iranian government and start working with it.
Today, the Iranian government learns the lesson the hard way.
And the Am-Brit media can be and is manipulated by the governments in London and Washington just like anywhere else. The best part of it, of course, is that the US State Department gets to issue grade reports about how other countries fare on media freedoms.
The Am-Brit media had been exposed during the false campaign against Iraq in 2003. But people have short memories. Iran's elections in 2009 should serve as a welcome reminder on the performance of the Am-Brit media.
And these elections should also become a permanent signpost for CNN's amazing fall.
P.S.: Google and Facebook are speeding up Persian translations of their sites and BBC rushes to find other satellites to beam into Iran. Wow. Even companies feel for democracy and are willing to go the extra mile for the sake of democracy in Iran! Last question to all the buffoons who still think this is about democracy: How come we don't see Russian, German, French, Singaporean, Indian or Israeli companies feeling the pain for democracy? Why is it that only Am-Brit companies are at the forefront of the fight for Iranian democracy?!!
http://aq-lounge.blogspot.com/2009/06/presstv-versus-cnn.html
In my personal opinion this is very sad day for Muslims & Iranians all over the world. Iran was the only Islamic country left with unity in them & its not anymore. Zionists have funded nicely & they are the ones to get applaud for their victory yet again in dividing & ruling. But what is this so called Muslim Ummah of 1.5 billion full of ignorant inferiority complex animals doing????except fulfilling their desires????Obviously you can't expect anything from Pakistani journalists/anchors (bunch of fans of Cheap Justice/sharif/zardari-BB/india/musharraf) but still Iran really needs help today from against this zionist propaganda, could anyone from 1.5 billion think of any way to go against this psy-op????
Friday, June 19, 2009
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