Iran: Whose side are you on continued…? By William Bowles

By William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
28 July 2009

Okay, the battle on the ‘left’ concerning who to support in Iran appears to come down to the following:

On the one hand we appear to have those who say that the mass demonstrations are solely the result of the West’s attempts to undermine and overthrow the existing regime, utilizing a ‘colour revolution’ similar to those used in the Ukraine and Georgia. And there can be no doubt that Western intelligence agencies are up to their necks in destabilization strategies (see below). If this is indeed true the question to ask is: Have Western agencies fomented or exploited the opposition and to what degree has it been a success as measured by the mass demonstrations and by elements of the Left supporting the demonstrations?

On the other side as it were, are those who say there is no foreign intervention, the mass movement is wholly indigenous and reflects growing opposition to the theocracy, or at the very least Western machinations are only incidental to the situation. A good example of this approach is advocated by Hamid Dabashi in his essay ‘Left is wrong on Iran’ where he says,

Iran: Whose side are you on? By William Bowles

By William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
27 July 2009

I have been reading, with much despair and a deal of consternation, the torrent of ‘analysis’ coming out of ‘left’ field about which, if any, side to support in the ongoing struggles in Iran and, at the end of the day, a good deal more is revealed about the ‘left’ in the West than the situation in Iran.

Typically, the ‘left’ has much ‘advice’ to offer Iran, yet the real issue for us, here in the ‘developed’ world is what are we going to do about our governments. Yet such arrogance is not new, it has its roots in the ideology of racism which unfortunately permeates all of us here in the so-called developed world. We look outward instead of inward, where the issues we really need to confront, reside. Let the Iranian people get on with sorting out their own ruling class, they don’t need us to ‘guide’ them.

It is imperative to separate the issue of Western involvement in events from the distinctly Iranian issues of class, religion, gender and so forth, that regardless, have their causes (and solutions) in Iran. This is not say that Western involvement/interference doesn’t affect events and end up being part of the process, but then this is precisely the problem we in the West have to confront: How to separate out the effects of our incessant meddling in other countries’ affairs from the indigenous processes? So, whatever happened to analysis, class, economic, social and otherwise?

The election

The Case of the ‘Fatwa’ to Rig Iran’s Election by Jeremy R. Hammond

By Jeremy R. Hammond
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Foreign Policy Journal
July 21, 2009

The propaganda campaign to paint the victory of the incumbent candidate in Iran’s June presidential election as having been a stolen one began early. Even before the election, the seed was being planted that the election would be stolen to give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a win. This narrative played nicely into the hands of the reformist opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who cried foul following the favorable results for the incumbent. But what evidence is there to support this narrative?

In one prominent example, on June 7, five days before Iran’s presidential election, the website Tehran Bureau reported:

In an open letter, a group of employees of Iran’s Interior Ministry (which supervises the elections) warned the nation that a hard-line ayatollah, who supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has issued a Fatwa authorizing changing votes in the incumbent’s favor.

Season of Travesties – Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009 By Noam Chomsky

Dandelion Salad

By Noam Chomsky
July 14, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.

The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is “a sucker for free and fair elections,” so “it warms my heart to watch” what happened in Lebanon in an election that “was indeed free and fair — not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.” Crucially, “a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri,” the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that “to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese — not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel.” We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): “Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.”

Iran’s Fascism, and Ours By Jeremy R. Hammond

By Jeremy R. Hammond
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Foreign Policy Journal
July 8, 2009

Gary Sick at the Daily Beast explains how the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) have become a formidable power in Iran. “Technically,” he writes, “they take their orders from the leader, but has he ever dared to contradict them? On the contrary, he seems always to court them by granting them ever-greater influence and responsibilities.”

President Ahmadinejad “has appointed his fellow guardsman to positions throughout the bureaucracy” and “The economic role of the Revolutionary Guards has been remarked on in recent years. The Guards themselves and companies run by the Guards have won major contracts in every corner of the economy, from airport construction to telecommunications to auto manufacturing.”

William Engdahl: Full Spectrum Dominance and the NWO

Updated: July 8, 2009 added Part 2

Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews
July 05, 2009

Pt 1 William Engdahl on his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Washington ODE by William Blum

by William Blum
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://antiempirereport.blogspot.com
www.killinghope.org
July 3, 2009

Much ado about nothing?

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.

Ignorance is Strength By Paul Craig Roberts

Dandelion Salad

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 24, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

The American media’s one-sided and propagandistic coverage of the Iranian election has made an American hero out of the defeated candidate, Mousavi.

This leaves one wondering if anyone anywhere in the US media or US government knows that Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1981 to 1989, the decade following the overthrow of the American puppet government by Khomeini, has been fingered as the Butcher of Beirut, responsible for the bloody attacks on the US embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut during the Reagan administration that blew to pieces 241 US Marines, Sailors, and Army troops.

According to Jeff Stein writing in the June 22, 2009, CQ Politics, Mousavi “personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur,” who presided over the terror cell responsible for the attacks.

Has the U.S. Played a Role in Fomenting Unrest During Iran’s Election? by Jeremy R. Hammond

By Jeremy R. Hammond
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Foreign Policy Journal
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]

What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? by Esam Al-Amin

Dandelion Salad

By Esam Al-Amin
http://www.counterpunch.org
June 22, 2009

A Hard Look at the Numbers

Since the June 12 Iranian presidential elections, Iran “experts” have mushroomed like bacteria in a Petri dish. So here is a quiz for all those instant experts. Which major country has elected more presidents than any in the world since 1980? Further, which nation is the only one that held ten presidential elections within thirty years of its revolution?

The answer to both questions, of course, is Iran. Since 1980, it has elected six presidents, while the U.S. is a close second with five, and France at three. In addition, the U.S. held four presidential elections within three decades of its revolution to Iran’s ten.

The Iranian elections have unified the left and the right in the West and unleashed harsh criticisms and attacks from the “outraged” politicians to the “indignant” mainstream media. Even the blogosphere has joined this battle with near uniformity, on the side of Iran’s opposition, which is quite rare in cyberspace.

Much of the allegations of election fraud have been just that: unsubstantiated accusations. No one has yet been able to provide a solid shred of evidence of wide scale fraud that would have garnered eleven million votes for one candidate over his opponent.

[…]

via Esam Al-Amin: What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election?

see

Iran Falls to US PSYOPS By Paul Craig Roberts

For a socialist, not a “color” revolution in Iran

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away by Chris Hedges

What The Media’s NOT Telling You About Iran’s Police Brutality

Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’? By Paul Craig Roberts

Iran-Election-Protests-Green Revolution

Iran Falls to US PSYOPS By Paul Craig Roberts

Iran Falls to US PSYOPS

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 22, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

President Obama called on the Iranian government to allow protesters to control the streets in Tehran. Would Obama or any US president allow protesters to control the streets in Washington, D.C.?

There was more objective evidence that George W. Bush stole his two elections than there is at this time of election theft in Iran. But there was no orchestrated media campaign to discredit the US government.

On May 16, 2007, the London Telegraph reported that Bush regime official 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.”

We are now witnessing in Tehran US “attempts to foment a popular revolution” in the guise of another CIA orchestrated “color revolution.” It is possible that splits among the mullahs themselves brought about by their rival ambitions will aid and abet what the Telegraph (May 27, 2007) reported were “CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.” It is certainly a fact that the secularized youth of Tehran have played into the CIA’s hands.

For a socialist, not a “color” revolution in Iran

Dandelion Salad

by Peter Symonds
http://www.wsws.org
22 June 2009

The protests in Tehran over the weekend have served to highlight the limited social base of the political opponents of the dominant faction of the Iranian clerical regime. The opposition movement has not only failed to draw in broader layers of working people, but has markedly weakened.

From the outset, the color-coded campaign to replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Mir Hossein Mousavi has been a highly orchestrated political operation backed by the US and managed by dissident elements of the ruling elite—in particular, former president and billionaire businessman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—for their own ends.

There is nothing progressive in their aims. Insofar as they have differences with their erstwhile associates, Mousavi and his supporters are seeking to shift policies further to the right through a more rapid accommodation with the US and a drastic acceleration of the program of market reform. They make no appeal to working people, for whom such a program can only mean economic devastation, and base themselves on sections of the bourgeoisie and more privileged and frankly selfish layers of the urban middle classes.

[…]

via For a socialist, not a “color” revolution in Iran

see

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away by Chris Hedges

What The Media’s NOT Telling You About Iran’s Police Brutality

Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’? By Paul Craig Roberts

CIA, Iran and the Election Riots

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
June 22, 2009

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’? By Paul Craig Roberts

Dandelion Salad

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 20, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Tehran. 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 announcement 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.

Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax by Prof. James Petras

Dandelion Salad

by Prof. James Petras
Global Research, June 18, 2009

“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation… Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”
Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009

Introduction

There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.

The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (13.2 million votes).