What is there about the Iranian election of June 12 that has led to it being one of the leading stories in media around the world every day since? Elections whose results are seriously challenged have taken place in most countries at one time or another in recent decades.
Countless Americans believe that the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen by the Republicans, and not just inside the voting machines and in the counting process, but prior to the actual voting as well with numerous Republican Party dirty tricks designed to keep poor and black voters off voting lists or away from polling stations.
The fact that large numbers of Americans did not take to the streets day after day in protest, as in Iran, is not something we can be proud of. Perhaps if the CIA, the Agency for International Development (AID), several US government-run radio stations, and various other organizations supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (which was created to serve as a front for the CIA, literally) had been active in the United States, as they have been for years in Iran, major street protests would have taken place in the United States.
The classic “outside agitators” can not only foment dissent through propaganda, adding to already existing dissent, but they can serve to mobilize the public to strongly demonstrate against the government. In 1953, when the CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, they paid people to agitate in front of Mossadegh’s residence and elsewhere and engage in acts of violence; some pretended to be supporters of Mossadegh while engaging in anti-religious actions. And it worked, remarkably well. [1]
Since the end of World War II, the United States has seriously intervened in some 30 elections around the world, adding a new twist this time, Twittering. The State Department asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, helping to mobilize protesters. [2] The New York Times reported: “An article published by the Web site True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers: that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so).” [3]
In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and “educating” Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran, kidnapping Iranian diplomats in Iraq, kidnapping Iranian military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq, continually spying and recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran’s currency and international financial transactions, and imposing various economic and political sanctions against the country. [4]
“I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs,” said U.S. President Barack Obama with a straight face on June 23. Some in the Iranian government [have been] accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd.” [5]
“Never believe anything until it’s officially denied,” British writer Claud Cockburn famously said.
In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama mentioned that “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” So we have the president of the United States admitting to a previous overthrow of the Iranian government while the United States is in the very midst of trying to overthrow the current Iranian government. This will serve as the best example of hypocrisy that’s come along in quite a while.
So why the big international fuss over the Iranian election and street protests? There’s only one answer. The obvious one. The announced winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Washington ODE, an Officially Designated Enemy, for not sufficiently respecting the Empire and its Israeli partner-in-crime; indeed, Ahmadinejad is one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. foreign policy in the world.
So ingrained is this ODE response built into Washington’s world view that it appears to matter not at all that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s main opponent in the election and very much supported by the protesters, while prime minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the attacks on the US embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which took the lives of more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck bombing of a US Navy installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons. Remarkably, a search of US newspaper and broadcast sources shows no mention of this during the current protests. [6] However, the Washington Post saw fit to run a story on June 27 that declared: “the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.”
Can it be that no one in the Obama administration knows of Mousavi’s background? And do none of them know about the violent government repression on June 5 in Peru of the peaceful protests organized in response to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement? A massacre that took the lives of between 20 and 25 indigenous people in the Amazon and wounded another 100. [7] The Obama administration was silent on the Peruvian massacre because the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, is not an ODE.
And neither is Mousavi, despite his anti-American terrorist deeds, because he’s opposed to Ahmadinejad, who competes with Hugo Chavez to be Washington’s Number One ODE. Time magazine calls Mousavi a “moderate”, and goes on to add: “It has to be assumed that the Iranian presidential election was rigged,” offering as much evidence as the Iranian protestors, i.e., none at all. [8]
It cannot of course be proven that the Iranian election was totally honest, but the arguments given to support the charge of fraud are not very impressive, such as the much-repeated fact that the results were announced very soon after the polls closed. For decades in various countries election results have been condemned for being withheld for many hours or days. Some kind of dishonesty must be going on behind the scenes during the long delay it was argued. So now we’re asked to believe that some kind of dishonesty must be going on because the results were released so quickly. It should be noted that the ballots listed only one electoral contest, with but four candidates.
Phil Wilayto, American peace activist and author of a book on Iran, has observed:
Ahmadinejad, himself born into rural poverty, clearly has the support of the poorer classes, especially in the countryside, where nearly half the population lives. Why? In part because he pays attention to them, makes sure they receive some benefits from the government and treats them and their religious views and traditions with respect. Mousavi, on the other hand, the son of an urban merchant, clearly appeals more to the urban middle classes, especially the college-educated youth. This being so, why would anyone be surprised that Ahmadinejad carried the vote by a clear majority? Are there now more yuppies in Iran than poor people? [9]
All of which is of course not to say that Iran is not a relatively repressive society on social and religious issues, and it’s this underlying reality which likely feeds much of the protest; indeed, many of the protesters may not even have strong views about the election per se, particularly since both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are members of the establishment, neither is any threat to the Islamic theocracy, and the election can be seen as the kind of power struggle you find in virtually every country.
But that is not the issue I’m concerned with here. The issue is Washington’s long-standing goal of regime change. If the exact same electoral outcome had taken place in a country that is an ally of the United States, how much of all the accusatory news coverage and speeches would have taken place?
In fact, the exact same thing did happen in a country that is an ally of the United States, three years ago when Felipe Calderon appeared to have stolen the presidential election in Mexico and there were daily large protests for more than two months; but the American and international condemnation was virtually non-existent compared to what we see today in regard to Iran.
Iranian leaders undertook a recount of a random ten per cent of ballots and recertified Ahmadinejad as the winner. How honest the recount was I have no idea, but it’s more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004.
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[1] William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 9
[2] Associated Press, June 16, 2009
[3] New York Times, June 21, 2009
[4] See Seymour Hersh, New Yorker magazine, June 29, 2008; ABC News, May 22, 2007; and Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch, June 19-21, 2009 for descriptions of some of these and other anti-Iran covert activities.
[5] White House press conference, June 23, 2009
[6] The only mention is by Jeff Stein in “CQ Politics” [Congressional Quarterly], online, June 22, 2009, “according to former CIA and military officials”.
[7] Center for International Policy (Washington, DC) report, June 16, 2009
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6191
[8] Time magazine, June 29, 2009, p.26
[9] AlterNet.org, June 14, 2009; Wilayto is the author of “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation’s Journey through the Islamic Republic”
With all due respect sir, it seems that you are a very professional politician, but some of your views are not correct about Iran, you can not analyze every events in the history of a country like Iran with 7000 years of civilization with simply comparing it with the other incidents in this country or the other ones. We are the young and hopeful generation of our country and we certainly know that our votes were stolen in this election. It is not important for us that why your media try to enlarge our movement, this is your problem and you have to deal with it, but you can not just make this movement disappear by just connecting it to the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran or the other ones. Another important mistake that you and some of the other professionals made is that you think that Mr. ahmadinejad is more favorable among the poor people, that is completely wrong, for during his 4 year term he destroyed our economy by importing goods from china. So if the people of US can not come to the streets for their rights, we came, and contrary to what you said there are lots of documents about this grand fraud in the election. I advise you to read Chatham House analysis about the election and also Mr. Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) weblog, because he was present before, during and after election here and saw with his own eyes the structured military coup d’etat that drwoned our hopes and desires. By the way your voice in your article is just our government’s voice who wants to destroy this popular movement by sticking it to the foreigners.
Dear young protester,
you may have legitimate causes, more social freedom, easier access to the western world, less worries about a military confrontation with USrael, better economic opportunities for the young, etc.
You and likes of you may or may not reach those goals once Iran is brought to its knees and has lost its independence and sovereignty to become another servant client state with a puppet government through the old divide and rule strategy of the anglo-american elites using “color revolution” strategy of “non-military use” regime change.
Iran is THE pivotal state that is in their way of “Full Spectrum Dominance” of the Globe by conquering Eurasia and its resources and to not allow China and Russia to become equal rivals.
Read:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/06/color-revolutions-old-and-new.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/06/reviewing-f-william-engdahls-full.html
Pray, tell me what do bunch of corrupt and power and money hungry IR officials lusting to make deals with the western oligarchs have promised you that is worth servitude and serfdom under the most inhuman cabal of ruthless fascistic corporate-state oligarchy in the west hiding behind the mask of those phony, make-believe, utterly corrupt smoke and mirror shows the call democratic elections in their own countries?
Did Pres. Khatami or Rafsanjani with all those promises of better lives and more freedom for Iranians, do anything except killing dissidents and students and to try to deal and wheel with the west by cowering to them only to receive crippling sanctions and be called a part of the Axis of Evil?
As a child I was a witness to the CIA’s divide and rule tactics in the streets of Tehran and saw how the their mercenary mob and thugs attacked Mosaddegh’s house in our neighborhood after a pitched battle with his guards aiming to capture and kill him. He managed to escape the CIA hired mob with the help of our neighbors from the roof top to another rooftop but his house was ransacked and destroyed.
True Iranian nationalists do not want war in any form (cold or hot) but if it is imposed on them will fight to death to protect Iran’s independence and sovereignty and its rightful place in the family of nations.
I am afraid the only thing that will make the self-absorbed youthful population of Iran to wake up from their narcissistic stupor is the military aggression that USrael have been threatening Iran with for many years which is quite feasible now that their “velvet revolution”, as Kissinger said, seems to have failed.
What will happen to these protesters then? Would they fight for their country or become the mercenary mob and the fifth column to rape their own country in the name of the subservient “Trojan Horse style democracy” like the ones in Belgrade and other “color revolutioned” countries?
A true Iranian nationalist will ALWAYS say:
cho iran nabashad tan-e man mabaad!
(If you’re trying to take over Iran you must pass over my dead body!)
Dear Mr. Nationalist, or I’d better say angry nationalist, why are you so angry, I am not an enemy, I am a very ordinary, but educated person who lives in Iran and belongs to this country, I think that this events revealed that some people like you can not talk to their fellow counrtymen with rationality and calmness and peace, your sentences are like the battons of military men who are beatting the people every day in the streets. I hope that one day we can talk with one another with more peace and patience and we can bear the voices of the other people who are living in this country too.
The second thing is that why are you mixing different issues with one another, why do you think that we do not love our country, my brother fought for this country and became martyred and if any one dared to attack us we will fight with them with our full power and strength, but this is another issue, the thing that I mentioned is that, we voted and we believe (of course according to different documents) that lots of wrong things happened in this election and because of this there should be another election.
I am not an enemy, I am not getting any support from any where and I adore my country, but I do not believe in this govenment, because as I said before Mr. Ahmadinejad not only destroyed the economy of this country by importing goods from China and serving Russia, but also made lots of wrong decisions in the internal matters of the country, and made Iran an angry country who wants to fight with all of the world and listen to no one but himself. If you are older than me so you must remember the motto of our revolution NOT EAST, NOT WEST, if we want to have an independent country, then we should not rely on Russia too, the country that played us many years for Boushehr plant.
The other thing that you mentioned is about Israel’s attack, as you see now that Mr. Ahamdinejad’s second term has begun, Israel already bagan its threats to attack Iran, because of unreasonable and non realistic foreign and nuclear policies of our government.
The other important thing is that, do you really compare Mr. Mossadegh with Mr. Ahmadinejad, did Mossadegh killed, tourtured, prisoned, …….. his opponents, did mossadegh said to his opponents that you will shut up or I will kill you?
If you are a nationalist, WHICH I DOUBT and you read the historty of our freedom and democracy movements form Qajar times, WHICH I DOUBT, you never dare to compare such a great hero like Mossadegh with a weak person like our president, who for his ambitions attack the dormitories of students once in a week.
Sir we are living in one counrty, so we have to be able to hear the other voices. In the last sentence of your comment you threatened me, but I do not want to finish my comment with the language of threat, hoping that one day we could be friends and together we build a better tomorrow for our country.