Has the U.S. Played a Role in Fomenting Unrest During Iran’s Election?
by Jeremy R. Hammond
June 23, 2009
Following the announcement of victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his main opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi in Iran’s presidential election on June 12, the country erupted in turmoil as supporters of Mousavi flocked to the streets to protest what they claimed was a fraudulent election, while state security and militia forces cracked down on dissenters, sometimes violently. Iran claimed that the unrest was being fueled by foreign interference, a charge reported but generally dismissed in Western media accounts. But there is ample reason to believe that the U.S. likely had a hand in fomenting the chaos that has since plagued the country many commentators have compared to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah.
The role of the U.S. in overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and installing the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is by now well known. In his speech in Cairo last month, President Barack Obama even referenced the CIA-backed coup, acknowledging that “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”[1]
The U.S. lost their principle ally in the Middle East, however, when the Shah was in turn overthrown as a result of the Islamic revolution that swept the country in 1979, resulting in the clerical regime that continues to this day under Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took over the title from the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
During the Reagan administration, the U.S. illegally sold arms to the Iranian regime even while supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s devastating war against the Islamic Republic. And while neoconservatives in Washington had their eye on Iran as a target for regime change throughout the Clinton years, it wasn’t until George W. Bush came to be president that a strategy for bringing this about began in earnest. Whether the policy of regime change implemented under Bush has been quashed or continued by the administration of President Barack Obama remains to be seen, but what is incontrovertible is that the U.S. has a long and sordid history of interference in Iranian affairs.
The National Endowment for Democracy
One mechanism by which the U.S. interferes in the internal political affairs of other nations is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental agency with funding from both Congress and private individuals whose purpose is to support foreign organizations sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy goals.
NED’s website states that its creation in the early 1980s was “premised on the idea that American assistance on behalf of democracy efforts abroad would be good both for the U.S. and for those struggling around the world for freedom and self-government.”[2]
The idea behind NED was to create an organization to do overtly what the CIA had long been doing clandestinely, and the organization has developed its own history of foreign interference. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” acknowledged Allen Weinstein, one of NED’s founders.[3]
In Nicaragua, for instance, the CIA provoked opposition activities in the hopes that it would prompt an “overreaction” from the Sandinista government. The NED was there, also, providing money to opposition groups while the CIA armed contra terrorists (using money from the sale of arms to Iran, incidentally).[4]
In the Bulgarian elections of 1990, NED spent over $1.5 million in an effort to defeat the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). When the effort failed and the BSP won, NED backed opposition groups that sowed chaos in the streets for months until the president and prime minister finally resigned. [5]
The NED was in Albania supporting the opposition to the communist government that was elected in 1991. Once again, turmoil in the streets led to the collapse of the government, forcing a new election in which the U.S.-backed Democratic Party won.[6]
Between 1990 and 1992, NED financed the Cuban-American National Foundation, an anti-Castro group out of Miami that in turn funded Luis Posada Carriles, a terrorist harbored by the U.S. who was responsible for the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people.[7]
NED was present in Mongolia helping to unite opposition parties under the National Democratic Union to defeat the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party that had won elections in 1992. With backing from NED, the NDU won in 1996 and U.S. media lauded the economic “shock-therapy” that the new pro-West government would implement. Under the new government, the National Security Agency (NSA) also set up shop with listening posts to spy on China. [8]
During the Clinton administration, NED was in Haiti working with the opposition to ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.[9]
And NED was in Venezuela financing the opposition to President Hugo Chavez, including groups involved in the attempted coup in 2002 that nearly succeeded in his overthrow.[10]
NED is also active in Iran, granting hundreds of thousands of dollars to Iranian groups. From 2005 to 2007, NED gave $345,000 to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF).[11] The group claims “no political affiliation” on its website, but is named for the founder of the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance (NAMIR), an opposition group to the clerical regime founded in 1980. According to the group’s website, Boroumand was murdered by agents of the Iranian government in Paris, France, in 1991.[12] The website is registered to the Boroumand Foundation, listed at Suite 357, 3220 N ST., NW, Washington, D.C.[13]
Another recipient of NED grants is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which received $25,000 in 2002, $64,000 in 2005, and $107,000 in 2006. The 2002 grant was to carry out a “media training workshop” to train participants representing various civic groups in public relations. The 2005 money was given in part to “strengthen the capacity of civic organizations in Iran”, including by advising Iranian groups on “foreign donor relations.” The 2006 grant was similarly designed to “foster cooperation between Iranian NGOs and the international civil society community and to strengthen the institutional capacity of NGOs in Iran.”[14]
The group’s president is Dr. Trita Parsi, whose parents fled political repression in Iran when he was four. He studied for his Doctoral thesis at the Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies under Professor Francis Fukuyama.[15]
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst whose articles have been featured in numerous print and online publications around the world. He is the founder and editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy. He was a recipient of the 2010 Project Censored Awards for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. Read more articles by Jeremy R. Hammond.http://www.jeremyrhammond.com
(6 votes, average: 2.83 out of 5)
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Wow, Jeremy. Thanks for putting all this together. Personally, i’d be quite surprised if the whole thing was called off by Obama…even if he thought about doing so. There’s simply too much bureaucratic momentum; furthermore, there are plenty of important people in the Democratic Party who surely like the idea of destabilizing Iran just fine.
Mr. Jeremy, I think your suggestion are wrong and you are attemting to make CIA and USA Government as super power, you want to scare our people, and you want to impose your ideas on people that all changes are made with USA interference. you are totally wrong, and i do not think Iranian People are such stupid and such weak as you describe them. some times USA governemtn hires authors journalists and reaserchers to publish articles and books about USA power, and its capaibility in order to achieve its goals. Iranian People are well known for their civil upheaval, we as Iranian do not need Americans help, because well educated and we know what to do. in this writing you are trying to justify the mass killings, because the only reason regime justifies its brutal conduct with protesters is (betrayders of usa and uk). please keep it as it is, otherwise it will get worse, and such sympathies to the regime shows your hatered towards te Iranian people. America is as same as Iranian regime but in a different form and methods. So please do not advertise the ability of CIA, because we are not interested in it as Iranian people. and your second point : you are trying to say that Iranians are not such brave and pro-democracy and they have not got such power to fight the regime, you are advertising again for USA, to say that the America is backing them up otherwise they are caw is not it.
we as Iranian could read every thing and understand sentences with several different interpretation.
Soran, you are right to say the Iranian people are not stupid and weak, but wrong to say I described them that way. I did not. I simply showed that U.S. interference in Iran is a documented fact and postulated that there is really no reason to believe that the U.S. effort to interfere ever stopped.
How do you like it there in the United Kingdom?
Absolutely meticulous and brilliant research! I’ve got to say, being on the receiving end of the media barrage here in the U.S., I can’t even imagine what the propaganda firehose was like in Iran.
Our special ops forces are amazing. I think this is despicable behavior and likely to ruin Iran for generations, but if you want to protect Israel without overt force…
What a difference between subterfuge and outright war. Germany and Japan become envies of the world, and South America is a basketcase.
Hi Jeremy, thanks so much for this. I feel ashamed to be an American. When I see the students out on the street, ‘for solidarity,’ and folks shouting they want a “free press,” I cringe. What was it Bob Dylam wrote? Masters of War? I cannot help but think that both the students and the government, not to mention the quislings, are only pawns in their game>
Have you watched the complete video of the sermon/speech by the Supreme Leader?
Jeremy,
Your article rehashes old news about past US involvements which may or may not even be true. Thats past history though, we all know the Bush, Cheney, and the neocons have nettled into places they shouldn’t have. But we have a new President who has striken a new tone – admitted the errors of the past and vowed to change course. He is the first President ever to refer to Palestine. Still, the world is a changing and complicated place and sometimes the best US action is to not look the other way. Are you saying we should never interfere?
More to the point:
Are you trying to imply that these mass demonstrations against the gov’t in Iran this past week were completely fabricated events ultimately plotted by the US?
If that is your motive, you have failed.
kathy, I haven’t seen it.
Jimmy, that a strategy implemented under Bush of using propaganda and covert operations to destabilize Iran is pretty incontrovertible. As for Obama, I have yet to see evidence of him “changing course” on Iran policy other than what I said in the article, that he’s put the military option on the back burner. In answer to your question, I don’t know what you mean by “fabricated events”. They were very real events. What I suggested in the article is that the U.S., U.K., Israel, et al had a role (I focused on the U.S. role) in supporting opposition groups, broadcasting anti-regime propaganda, and engaging in covert operations, etc., all of which were likely employed to encourage Mousavi supporters to take to the streets.
Is this the same Jeremy Hammond from Chicago who’s an activist and convicted felon?
At this moment, this is an extremely irresponsible and academically negligent article. America’s failed policies of the past are well known, and better stated elsewhere, but this article provides no current evidence for US involvement. FPJ, and of course Hammond, should feel genuinely ashamed for writing this rubbish.
chachi, No.
Chris, which part do you think is “rubbish”? I sourced every assertion made in the article. The article simply provides relevant background and asks a reasonable question.
US doesn’t have the capability to influence events in Iran, let alone fomenting anything. Iranians have been on their own against the clerical regime from day one. Even now the US is sacrificing human rights and democracy for its own short-sighted interests of dialogue with the mullahs. The US misses the big picture of the regime’s unending desire and attempt to dominate and spread its fundamentally anti-democratic and totalitarian so-called “Islamic” ideology throughout the region and the world. It is in the US best interests to support internal change in Iran BY not aiding or abetting the regime through legitimizing acts such as diplomatic relations, commercial ties, etc.
Moral support of the Iranian people’s struggle is imperative for the US to erase its past behavior in Iran. Shun diplomatic ties, apply sanctions to commercial ties, expel regime representatives and do not recognize the regime as the legitimate political representative of the Iranian nation.
The Iranian people and the PMOI do not need the US help in terms of money or direct assistance, Just ths US’s moral obligation to shun suppression and support human rights.
From what I know the PMOI would welcome any government in Iran that would support democracy, disband the revolutionary guards, the basij, and Iran’s hated Ministry of Intelligence, and hold free elections under UN auspices.
No US government has ever aided the PMOI and they never will. And this is all nonesense propaganda that is totally unsubstantiated and without a shred of proof or evidence. The PMOI is an independent Iranian force and highly active and clandestine in Iran. It does not need US support nor would it accept it as far as I know.
So I think this rubbish is really threadbare smoke screen for legitimizing the current regime and facilitating shaking the bloodstained clenched fist of the mullahs.