fermenting counter-revolution in Iran: brooking institute
The nature of the regime is at the core of the challenge it poses, but the starting point of a counter-strategy is containment: that is, George Kennan’s classic vision of bringing countervailing pressures to bear against a revolutionary power’s external expansion until the structural contradictions within the system begin to weaken it internally.
Iran is not mainly an American problem; it is a challenge in the first instance to our allies and friends in the Middle East. Thus, the first stage in a counter-strategy is to bolster Arab allies and friends as counter-weights to Iranian power. While military cooperation with some Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, is controversial at home, tightening American links with these allies is logically the core of such a strategy.
A wider strategic consensus may be emerging that would join the United States, key Arab states, and Israel against the Iranian threat. This should be nurtured. Arab countries have other options, including their own nuclear development, or appeasement of Iran. Far preferable is that they retain confidence in us as a reliable friend and protector.
Restoring this balance needs to include:
some success in stabilizing Iraq
broader use of economic pressures (as opposed to the narrowly targeted sanctions resorted to thus far)
stepping up support of civil society in Iran, including improving the quality of U.S. official broadcasting into Iran
more on the Brooking Institute
Indian academic denounces US abduction of Iranian diplomats in Iraq
Indian academic on Tuesday denounced US abduction of Iranian diplomats in Iraq as in contravention with international law and disrespect for diplomatic immunity.
Dr. Baseer Ahmad, who is head of the department of Islamic Studies at Hamdard University in New delhi, said that US raid on Islamic Republic of Iran’s Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil was an open violation of the Vienna Convention.
He said in an exclusive interview with IRNA that US action is an abuse of power by the occupying forces and negligence of their responsibility to provide security in Iraq.
He said that according to the Geneva Convention, the occupying powers are required to provide security for foreign diplomats in Iraq as a part of their duties.
“This raid raises questions about President Bush’s new strategy on Iraq and the mission of the newly beefed-up American military presence in this country. Iraqi’s stability and security should not be used as cover for hostility against other nations,” Baseer said.
He pointed out that behavior of US forces is being seen as direct interference in Iran-Iraq relations whose negative consequences would aggravate the Iraqi situation for which the US forces should be blamed.
Baseer Ahmad asked India, Russia and China the three emerging superpowers to use their influence and pressurize US for the immediate release of diplomats of Islamic Republic of Iran’s consulate in the Iraqi city of Arbil.
US forces on January 11, 2007 raided the Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil and after disarming the consulate’s guards and breaking open its gate, entered the consulate building and abducted its five staff members besides looting some document and computers.
The Islamic Republic of Iran set up its consulate in Arbil in as per the wishes of the Iraqi Kurdish people and which was later on confirmed by the Iraqi government for facilitating the travel of Iraqi people especially those seeking medical help in Iran.
the mistakes of history
The history is worth knowing, but let’s have it right from the horse’s mouth as recounted by Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington offered on the U.S. House floor.
In 1953, the United States and United Kingdom launched Operation Ajax, a covert CIA operation to destabilize and remove the democratically elected government of Iran, including then Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Under Mossadegh, the Iranian government decided to reclaim Iran’s rightful ownership of its national oil treasure, which had been exclusively controlled by the British who were taking 85 percent of the profits.
Oh, and by the way, the UK also kept the books secret, merely telling Iran what its 15 percent take was. As soon as Mossadegh began to reclaim Iran’s oil treasure, it was all over. Operation Ajax was set into motion. The U.S. embassy in Tehran provoked phony internal Iranian dissent, while the Brits engineered an Iranian financial crisis by orchestrating a global boycott of Iranian oil.
“We brought down the Iranian government and installed the Shah. For two decades, we propped up the Shah against the will of the Iranian people. It was all about controlling Iran.” It still is. Today, ABC News is reporting exclusively that Bush has authorized a new covert CIA plot to bring down the Iranian government. The plan reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions. The ABC News had earlier reported that the U.S. supported and encouraged an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, that has conducted deadly terrorist raids inside Iran.
Parnaz Azima
Parnaz Azima is a correspondent of the US government’s anti-Iran propaganda outlet: Radio Farda. Azima was recently arrested in Iran, and is presently on bail, and required to stay in Iran.
Radio Farda and RadioFarda.com is a joint project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA). The 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service is produced in Washington, D.C. and Prague, Czech Republic, with audio transmissions to listeners online and via AM, shortwave and satellite. On the air, Radio Farda features fresh news and information at least twice an hour, with longer news programming in the morning and the evening. Radio Farda also broadcasts popular Persian and Western music.
The “radio station” promotes US State Department, and anti-Islamic Republic propaganda on behalf of Iranian exiles.
Radio Farda is a U.S. government-funded radio station that broadcasts to Iran. It was founded in late 2002, and by 2006 was receiving $7 million a year in federal funding. That amount may increase dramatically, as the U.S. becomes more involved in Iran and Iranian politics.
In a recent article, Warren P. Strobel and William Douglas of McClatchey newspapers report that a “…Pentagon unit has drafted a report charging that U.S. international broadcasts into Iran aren’t tough enough on the Islamic regime.” Strobel and Douglas go on to say the report “appears to be a gambit by some officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere to gain sway over television and radio broadcasts into Iran, one of the few direct tools the United States has to reach the Iranian people.” The author of the report is Ladan Archin, a Wolfowitz protege, currently working in the Pentagon’s Iranian Directorate under Abram Shulsky.
more on the cia psy/black ops
“Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information,” he said.
The CIA will also be allowed to supply communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass internet censorship by the clerical regime.
“The Intelligence Ministry succeeded in finding, recognizing and confronting some spy networks of infiltrating elements from the Iraqi occupiers in west, southwest and central Iran,” said the statement, carried by the official IRNA news agency.
“These spy networks were guided by the intelligence services of the occupiers and were supported by some influential Iraqi groups. The detailed news will be announced in the next few days.”
The mistranslated “wiped off the map” quote attributed to Iran’s president has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis.
US senator propose special “Iran democracy building” envoy.
By making human rights and democracy-building a top priority, we can support the efforts of the Iranian people to end oppression and chart their own future,” Brownback said in a statement.
According to the proposed bill, the special envoy would report directly to the secretary of state on Iran’s human rights record and on democracy building efforts in the Islamic Republic.
The envoy would also serve as a contact point for Iranian opposition groups outside the country, and support multilateral efforts with the United Nations and European Union to promote human rights and political freedom in Iran.
Lets take a look at who this senator is:
Republican Senator (and Presidential Candidate) Sam Brownback is an ultraconservative who has “a 19 percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union and an “F” grade from the National Education Association…” (As if a guy opposed to Civil Liberties in his own country is really going to promote anything in Iran — of-course, this is all about puppetifying Iran. )
What is especially interesting is that while he rails against the Islamic Republic, he apparently has no problem with “mixing” Christian religion and politics in the US:
Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback said religion has a strong role to play in America at a time when “an enormous set of cultural and economic issues are on the plate.”
I believe in a robust public square for the celebration of faith. This has been a big, tough issue for us as a nation. I believe in the separation of church and state, but not the removal of faith from the public square. That faith is the central part of the background of the United States.
The Case of Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is back in the United States and has been, amongst other things, suggesting that Iran is a lawless state “Iran does not observe laws.” Many liberals, who consider Ebadi a “human rights worker,” have not looked into Ebadi’s politics, and statements. While she may, for example, call Iran a “lawless state” on CNN – she has refrained from pointing out how the US has arrested hundreds and thousands without any pretext, without any charges, and are holding them in places such as Guanatanemo, and in other torture gulags.
Ebadi’s political leanings are towards returning to an Iran that was under the “shah” – while she does not advocate monarchy, she is extremely uncomfortable with the anti-imperialist stand of the Islamic Republic, and would prefer to return to an era where Iran was best friends with the US and “Israel.” In this respect, she is a “human rights worker” only in name, and she primarily serves those interests that would prefer an Iran that had a “mutually beneficial relationship” as a puppet of American imperialism.
There was a time when relations between the United States and the Iranian government were mutually beneficial. That honeymoon period began in 1953 when Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, was in power. A good friend of the United States, the shah purchased U.S. weapons and signed important oil contracts with American companies. He also became a close ally of Israel in the Middle East.
Also see an Open Letter to Shirin Ebadi:
“Dear Ms. Shirin Ebadi:
The appeal you and Mohammad Sahimi addressed to “Western democracies” in the International Herald Tribune on January 19 disappointed this former admirer of yours. Your invitation to the current and previous imperial powers to intervene for human rights in Iran fails precisely on grounds of the noble principles you invoked to construct your argument.
…
You are used to being adored as a fearless champion who speaks truth to power in Iran. But when it comes to democracy and equality beyond Iran’s borders — the big picture — you stand with the anti-democratic powerful. Therefore, your advocacy for the rule of law, pluralism, and human rights in the International Herald Tribune ends up contradicting these very ideals.
Ordinary Iranians need not be historians to know that advance of the so-called free-market “democracy” is, on the contrary, accomplished by systematic uprooting and brutality in the name of law. They experienced it during the rule of the deposed Shah and they have seen it in Indochina, Indonesia, South Africa, Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Yugoslavia, Palestine, Iraq, and dozens of other blood-soaked places. That awareness explains the reluctance of the vast majority of Iranians to join you in decisive action against the current government in Iran.
In 1978-79, Iranians overpowered one of the mightiest police states the world has known with bare hands, against the wishes of global powers. I challenge you to explain why you believe our people could not do the same today, if they wished to, without the foreign help that you advocate.
Iranian reformists focus exclusively on government wrongdoing, conveniently neglecting that today’s world is equally misruled by multinational corporations which lack transparency. You have asked Western investors and their partner, the World Bank, to help correct human rights abuses in Iran. I hate to burst your bubble, Ms. Ebadi, but you are in effect asking unelected entities to teach democracy to an elected government! That is hardly a healthy way to promote transparency, because now the whole world knows that the private sector has corrupted the US government to the bone.”
CIA operations to destabilise Iran
According to the American television network, Bush signed a formal “non-lethal presidential finding” earlier this year authorising “a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions”.
Based on information from unnamed former and current CIA officials, ABC News reported that Bush approved the plan “about the time that [Admiral William] Fallon took over [as head of the Pentagon’s Central Command]”—that is, about mid-March. It also stated that National Security Adviser Steve Hadley and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams both gave the green light for the operation.
The timing of the plan coincides with a steady stream of articles, prominently placed in the media, highlighting Tehran’s crackdown on women’s dress, arrest of dissidents, alleged nuclear weapons programs and support for anti-occupation militia operating inside neighbouring Iraq. While it is impossible to know how many of these reports are direct CIA “plants,” they point to a concerted campaign of propaganda and disinformation. Whatever the impact inside Iran, such stories serve to poison public opinion in the US and internationally in preparation for a possible military strike.
There is nothing particularly secret about the Bush administration’s campaign for “regime change”. Last year Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought and received $75 million for anti-Iranian propaganda broadcasts and to fund opposition groups inside and outside Iran. In 2005, the figure was just $10 million. Rice also established an Iranian Affairs office last year, initially headed by Elizabeth Cheney, the vice president’s daughter, to coordinate policy and provide “pro-democracy funding” for opponents of the regime. The Boston Globe reported in January that a team of top officials from the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, Treasury and National Security Council, known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG), had been working for some time to strengthen military alliances against Iran, finance Iranian dissidents and undermine the country economically.
The campaign for “regime change” in Iran has nothing to do with defending “democracy” or the political rights of the Iranian population. Its sole purpose is to advance US strategic and economic interests. Iran not only contains huge reserves of oil and gas, it sits at the strategic crossroads of the resource-rich regions of Central Asia and the Middle East.
Republicans criticize ABC news
Two Republican presidential candidates today criticized the ABC News report Tuesday about the CIA’s covert plan to destabilize the Iranian regime
CIA covert efforts
CIA covert efforts to destabilize Iran
Thu, 24 May 2007 10:07:18
CIA is launching covert operations to destabilize Iran.
American ABC News Network has revealed CIA’s covert operations designed to destabilize Iran and instigate a soft revolution in the country.
The network on Wednesday quoted former CIA and Defense Department officials as saying that President George W. Bush has signed a document authorizing secret operations inside Iran to destabilize the Iranian government.
Based on the report, this non-military campaign involved media propaganda, publication of articles in newspapers and manipulation of Iran’s currency and banking transactions.
A former CIA agent told ABC television that the Bush administration has come to the realization that military operations against Iran have negative impact.
The disclosure of US’s sabotage plot against Iran coincides with the arrest of Washington-based academic Haleh Esfandiari who has been working as the Soros Foundation representative.
Esfandiari has admitted that Soros Foundation has established an unofficial connection network inside Iran under the pretext of promoting democracy and human rights but with the covert aim of overthrowing the Iranian government.
