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Re: Iran election crisis...
You're close...Green Shoots and Ladders 
Originally posted by fliped42
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Man you are not kidding. Great photos.Originally posted by metalman View PostComment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
I'm sure there are foreign policy elites here in the USA who are not very happy with the goings on in Iran. The mullahs serve a purpose as a boogie man and a supposed reason for an interventionist policy in the Middle East. .Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Dude, we talked about this already?Originally posted by don View Post
It's the "GREEN" revolution! No, I'm not kidding, google "green revolution in Iran".Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Yep green, but I also read velvet, it would be a good thing to ask the planners.Originally posted by jtabeb View Post
Iran: Another Face of Velvet Revolution
By Ardesir Ommani
The opposition to the presidency of Ahmadinejad is doing its utmost to create unrest and prepare the ground for a velvet takeover and repeat what the West (US, UK, France and Germany) did in Georgia slightly more than five years ago. But this act is not realizable in Iran, because the workers and farmers, the millions who gave the lives of their children for the cause of independence and sovereignty, defend the Revolution and their real President who has frustrated the schemes and plots of the warmongers.
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http://mathaba.net/news/?x=620735June 10, 2009, 4:41 pm
A Green Revolution for Iran?
As election fever grips Tehran, and it begins to seem possible that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lose to his main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, in Friday’s presidential election, Iranians who want to stick with the incumbent have been dropping hints that the campaign to vote him out of office might be the culmination of some sort of foreign plot to undermine their country.
After a rally for Mr. Ahmadinejad at Tehran’s largest mosque on Monday, a man explained to Lindsey Hilsum of Britain’s Channel 4 News (about 1 minute into the video report embedded below) that “all these people want Islamic republic — not liberal democracy, not Orange Revolution.” The fact that Mr. Moussavi’s supporters have made a color — in this case green, which has solid Islamic credentials — the symbol of their movement probably just reinforces the fear among some Iranians that what they are witnessing is a local version of the Orange Revolution, which swept an opposition government into power in Ukraine.
Iranians come by their willingness to believe that foreigners are plotting against them honestly, since American and British intelligence agents did, in fact, conspire to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. More recently, Seymour Hersh reported just last year that the Bush administration was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on covert operations designed to destabilize the country’s government. Then last month a senior Democratic Congresswoman, Jane Harman, seemed to suggest that the United States should be encouraging separatist movements inside Iran. While Ms. Harman apologized for her remarks, a spate of recent bombings and attacks in Iran, possibly carried out by separatists, has made Iranians wonder if the Obama administration’s policy towards them might involve bombs as well as barbecues.
But Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has cultivated these fears as well. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, last year the ministry produced and broadcast an elaborate, and unintentionally funny, public service announcement warning Iranians that Western pro-democracy movements were really covers for anti-government plots hatched in the White House.
Still frame from a video produced by Iran’s intelligence ministry (via MEMRI.org).
In the long-form commercial posted, with subtitles, on MEMRI.org, (registration required) animated versions of John McCain and George Soros are shown meeting inside the White House to plot against Iran. The evil genius they confer with is an animated version of Gene Sharp, the political scientist whose theoretical work on nonviolent protest inspired the color revolutions of Eastern Europe.
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http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...tion-for-iran/Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Divine assessment vs people power
By Pepe Escobar
Though the masters
Make the rules
For the wise men
And the fools
I've got nothing, Ma
To live up to - Bob Dylan, "It's alright, Ma (I'm only bleeding)" (1965)
PARIS - It's now "divine assessment" (copyright Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) versus (green) people power - no holds barred. For Iranian state power, not only people power is to blame. It's official: blame it on "Washington" and the "foreign media".
On the other hand, here's the upgraded voice of the Tehran street, where the new top rallying cry is "Seyyed Ali Pinochet, Chile Iran nemishe" (Seyyed Ali Pinochet, Iran won't be like Chile). A seven-point list of demands has been Twittered and passed hand-to-hand (here in its original Twitter English version) since Tuesday afternoon.
1. Remove Khamenei from supreme leader because he doesn't qualify as a fair supreme leader.
2. Remove [President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad from president because he took it forcefully and unlawfully.
3. Put [Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali] Montazeri as supreme leader until a review group for the ghanooneh asasi [constitution] is set up.
4. Recognize [losing presidential candidate Mir Hossein] Mousavi as the official president.
5. A government by Mousavi and start a reform of the constitution. 6. Free all political prisoners without any ifs and buts, right away.
7. Call off any secret organization such as gasht ershad [morality police].
Montazeri, on his own website, has answered the call since Tuesday. He endorsed peaceful, civilian protests to "claim rights"; condemned the state-sponsored, mainly Basiji (paramilitary) violence; and questioned the election outcome as a whole. He called for three days of mourning for the reported 10 protesters killed on Monday. (Some Iranian sources have put the total at 32 dead.)
Montazeri should have been Khomeini's successor; but he questioned in profound detail Khomeini's notion of velayat-e-faqih (the ruling of the jurisprudent) and was isolated in house arrest in the holy city of Qom. Khamenei, a mere hojjatoleslam, was installed in a white coup after ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989.
Cracks in the mullahcracy are now becoming visible. As Rooyeh has reported, Rafsanjani, the head of the Council of Experts (86 top clerics, no women) has called for an emergency council meeting in Qom. This is supremely crucial. The future of Khamenei - which means the future of the foundations of the Islamic Republic itself - is to be discussed in full.
Khamenei is ill. (Please see An ill wind in Iran Asia Times Online, March 2, 2007.) Most, if not the whole current drama, is about his succession. Rafsanjani, as chairman, can not only steer the votes but install his own candidate as supreme leader. The Ahmadinejad faction's candidate is apocalyptic, Mahdist, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who is also a member of the Council of Experts. A showdown is inevitable.
Cracks all over
The key question now is whether the Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC) - the main beneficiary of this new Islamic revolution set up as a military dictatorship of the mullahtariat - will be pushed to the brink by unarmed people power in the streets and literally come out all guns blazing to safeguard its (unlimited) privilege and bring the widespread protests to a swift end. (See The IRGC shakes its iron fist , Asia Times Online, June 18).
There are cracks in the IRGC monolith as well. According to the Cyrus news agency, in Farsi, no less than 16 senior IRGC commanders - three of them "veterans of the Iran-Iraq war [of the 1980s]" - were arrested because they were blatantly supporting (green) people power. It's fair to assume many are supporters of losing presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, who was an extremely respected head of the IRGC.
Whatever the strategy behind the decision of the Guardians Council to order a partial recount of some votes, Mousavi's supporters and the wider people power don't believe in it. Spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said the council was "ready to recount the disputed ballot boxes claimed by some candidates, in the presence of their representatives". The Fars News Agency, talking about the recounting now underway, points out that in Kermanshah, a Kurdish province, there was "no irregularity". Ahmadinejad is as popular with Kurds as Palestinians are with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
Moreover, Iranians know the 12-member Guardians Council, six ayatollahs and six jurists, will never allow another poll. The council is headed by ultra-right winger, Ahmadinejad-friendly Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.
The regime's crackdown betrays fear. Mohammad Asgari, responsible for the security of the IT network in the Ministry of Interior, and who had leaked crucial evidence about election rigging in the provinces, may have been killed this past Tuesday in a car accident (no full confirmation at the time of writing). According to his figures, Mousavi won the election with almost 19 million votes - a number very similar to informed messages coming from Iran from Saturday to Sunday.
Moreover, former foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi was arrested on Wednesday in the Pars Hospital in Tehran, and with around 100 other intellectuals was taken to Evin prison.
The level of agonizing at the very top must be unbearable. One can almost palpably feel the silent panic. The previous regime - the shah dictatorship - fell exactly like this. Yes, it is 1979 all over again. The bazaaris - who were essential for Khomeini in 1979 - are now overwhelmingly against the axis of the supreme leader, Ahmadinejad and the IRGC.
Iran's historical pendulum of monarchy and clergy now seems to be heading towards a third way, which happens to be the same way Iran was heading to in 1953, when the US Central Intelligence Agency staged its anti-democracy coup. After prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was done with, there was supremacy of the monarchy (the shah - self-proclaimed gendarme of the Persian Gulf) and supremacy of the clergy (the Islamic revolution).
People power now yearns for democratic freedoms - pure and simple. And by the composition of the huge, "illegal" daily rallies in Tehran, that does not mean only the urban, north Tehran middle class,students and intellectuals, but vast sectors of the lower middle class and the working class as well.
You have the right to agree with us
As it stands, the regime would love nothing better than a subdued Tehran as a totally Basiji-occupied territory, a militia version of the classic hip hop anthem "the Man controls the day, we control the night"; but in this case it's unarmed civilians who are driving events day and night.
In desperation, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has ordered foreign media to back off from covering "illegal demonstrations"; forced everybody to work from their bureaus; canceled all press passes; and expelled journalists. In sum, it has decreed "you have the right to report nothing". The IRGC is already deploying a full crackdown on the internet. That may be irrelevant. As much as corporate media - from anywhere - has been rendered mostly irrelevant. Iranians are deploying an absolute non-stop, 24/7 thriller; a guerrilla communication redux, an ultra-raw version of history in the making via blogs - this is a nation of young bloggers- YouTube and Twitter, battling by all means necessary ultra-slow or shut down Internet, jammed phone lines going in and out, blocked chats, blocked SMS.
Civilians, for their part, are being shot at by Basiji, but they don't back off either. This is a revolution of sorts in real time - shot in real time by actual citizens. And all this has been reverberating all over the world. Here in Paris, cable TV has been discussing the cyberwar in depth. In the case of the US, formidable websites and blogs such as the National Iranian American Council liveblogging, Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post or The Daily Dish's Andrew Sullivan have been spreading the word. Even the BBC news website felt the need to turn green.
"Where is my vote?", in both Farsi and English, is now a worldwide battle cry. "Down with the dictator" is now being replaced by the hilarious "2+ 2 = 24 million", a shot at Ahmadinejad's constant distortion of inflation and unemployment data.
Respected Iranian intellectual Ebrahim Nabavi spelled it all out in his website: "A president that has received 24 million votes doesn't need to imprison hundreds of people and cut all lines of communication." In Tuesday's monster worker strike - offices in Tehran were virtually deserted - doctors and nurses, in their lab coats, chose to take to the streets. Iranian soccer players at their World Cup qualifier match with South Korea on Wednesday wore green wrist bands.
It's crucial to keep in mind that all this extraordinary drama - at least for now - is being played out within the limits of the Islamic Republic system. The outstanding Tehran protest on Wednesday - with at least tens of thousands of people - was essentially silent, and extremely peaceful, while at night people all over Iran scream "Allah-u Akbar" (God is great) from the top of their lungs. This is about Iran. This is not - and never was - about the West.
And just like a bossa nova song playing on an elevator on fire, while people power was still driving events, Ahmadinejad showed up at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, this Tuesday, proclaiming "the international capitalist order is retreating" and the age of empires has ended. That's entirely possible, of course - but maybe there are some other old orders ending as well.
President Barack Obama, wisely, has said, "something has happened in Iran" - whether it's Tiananmen in Beijing, a new Wenceslas Square in Prague, or a new Selma, Alabama. In fact, something's happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Mahmud?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF19Ak01.htmlComment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Iran's election result may not be fraudulent. Our polling suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory is what voters wanted
Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 June 2009 20.00 BST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061603391.htmlIndependent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, pre-election polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organisations from 11 May to 20 May was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighbouring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasised his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favoured Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.
Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.
cont...
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009...-twitter-gasm/"Twitter's impact inside Iran is zero," said Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles. "Here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves."Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/96907
Ron Paul Is Sole Dissenter From Resolution Supporting Iranian Protests
Posted June 19th, 2009 by pawnstorm12
Ron Paul Is Sole Dissenter From Resolution Supporting Iranian Protests
By Eric Kleefeld - June 19, 2009, 1:53PM
The House voted 405-1 today for a resolution in support of the Iranian dissidents and condemning the ruling government. And the one man who opposed it was...Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
Paul said in his floor speech that he was in "reluctant opposition" to the resolution -- that he of course condemns violence by governments against their citizens. On the other hand, he also doesn't think the American government should act as a judge of every country overseas, and pointed out that we don't condemn countries like Saudi Arabia or Egypt that don't even have real elections.
"It seems our criticism is selective and applied when there are political points to be made," Paul said. "I have admired President Obama's cautious approach to the situation in Iran and I would have preferred that we in the House had acted similarly."
Paul's statement:
I rise in reluctant opposition to H Res 560, which condemns the Iranian government for its recent actions during the unrest in that country. While I never condone violence, much less the violence that governments are only too willing to mete out to their own citizens, I am always very cautious about "condemning" the actions of governments overseas. As an elected member of the United States House of Representatives, I have always questioned our constitutional authority to sit in judgment of the actions of foreign governments of which we are not representatives. I have always hesitated when my colleagues rush to pronounce final judgment on events thousands of miles away about which we know very little. And we know very little beyond limited press reports about what is happening in Iran.
Of course I do not support attempts by foreign governments to suppress the democratic aspirations of their people, but when is the last time we condemned Saudi Arabia or Egypt or the many other countries where unlike in Iran there is no opportunity to exercise any substantial vote on political leadership? It seems our criticism is selective and applied when there are political points to be made. I have admired President Obama's cautious approach to the situation in Iran and I would have preferred that we in the House had acted similarly.
I adhere to the foreign policy of our Founders, who advised that we not interfere in the internal affairs of countries overseas. I believe that is the best policy for the United States, for our national security and for our prosperity. I urge my colleagues to reject this and all similar meddling resolutions.
He sure is a Republican from way back then. I may not agree on everything he says in economics, but he stands by what he believes in.Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
What is up with this crowd. This is thrilling. A new age of people power and cyberwar. Would you all have brushed off prgue spring as a cia conspiracy? Are you rooting for the mullahs? Isn't this better than old style war? It's the same power that allows us (strangers) to communicate and share ideas. Does it cut both ways? Of course. Tony hawke can pimp frosted flakes from the whitehouse. Mobs can liberate or lynch. Does the west have a hand in it? Sure. But people power is great to watch.Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
The War Criminal praising the netOriginally posted by goadam1 View Post
Internet has changed foreign policy for ever, says Gordon Brown
In exclusive interview with the Guardian, prime minister says web era 'more tumultuous than any previous economic or social revolution'
Foreign policy can never be the same again — and it's all because of the internet, Gordon Brown said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.
Referring to the so-called Twitter revolution in Iran, the prime minister said technological advances and the democratisation of information mean "foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites".
"You cannot have Rwanda again," he said. "This week's events in Iran are a reminder of the way that people are using new technology to come together in new ways to make their views known."
He described the internet era as "more tumultuous than any previous economic or social revolution". "For centuries, individuals have been learning how to live with their next-door neighbours," he added.
"Now, uniquely, we're having to learn to live with people who we don't know.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...foreign-policy
I had a bad feeling when the BBC started their new channel for Iran while cutting jobs at home.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7315
'You decide how safe it is,' BBC tells viewers of new Persian channel
Iran sure looks smaller on some maps
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=11313
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Re: Iran election crisis...
I agree, it is exhilarating. Just don't try it at homeOriginally posted by goadam1 View Post
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Is This the Culmination of Two Years of Destabilization
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
(Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.)
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.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06192009.html
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Another article from PCG
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
Text size
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars
June 20, 2009
...
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.”
...
http://www.infowars.com/are-the-iran...or-revolution/Comment
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Re: Iran election crisis...
Shades of Georgia and Russia. . .
Beijing cautions US over Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar
China has broken silence on the developing situation in Iran. This comes against the backdrop of a discernible shift in Washington's posturing toward political developments in Iran.
The government-owned China Daily featured its main editorial comment on Thursday titled "For Peace in Iran". It comes amid reports in the Western media that the former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is rallying the Qom clergy to put pressure on the Guardians Council - and, in turn, on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - to annul last Friday's presidential election that gave Mahmud Ahmadinejad another four-year term.
Beijing fears a confrontation looming and counsels Obama to keep the pledge in his Cairo speech not to repeat such errors in
the US's Middle East policy as the overthrow of the elected government of Mohammed Mosaddeq in Iran in 1953. Beijing also warns about letting the genie of popular unrest get out of the bottle in a highly volatile region that is waiting to explode. Tehran on Friday saw its sixth day of massive protests by supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, whom they say was cheated out of victory.
A parallel with Thailand
Meanwhile, China's special envoy on Middle East, Wu Sike, is setting out on an extensive fortnight-long regional tour on Saturday (which, significantly, will be rounded off with consultations in Moscow) to fathom the political temperature in capitals as varied as Cairo and Tel Aviv, Amman and Damascus, and Beirut and Ramallah.
Beijing also made a political statement when a substantive bilateral was scheduled between President Hu Jintao and Ahmadinejad on Tuesday on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Conceivably, Hu would have discussed the Iran situation with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev during his official visit to Moscow that followed the SCO summit. Earlier, Moscow welcomed Ahmadinejad's re-election. Both China and Russia abhor "color" revolutions, especially something as intriguing as Twitter, which Moscow came across a few months ago in Moldova and raises hackles about the US's interventionist global strategy.
China anticipated the backlash against Ahmadinejad's victory. On Monday, The Global Times newspaper quoted the former Chinese ambassador to Iran, Hua Liming, that the Iranian situation would get back to normalcy only if a negotiated agreement was reached among the "major centers of political power ... But, if not, the recent turmoil in Thailand will possibly be repeated". It is quite revealing that the veteran Chinese diplomat drew a parallel with Thailand.
However, Hua underscored that Ahmadinejad does enjoy popularity and has "lots of support in this nationalist country because he has the courage to state his own opinion and dares to carry out his policies". The consensus opinion of Chinese academic community is also that Ahmadinejad's re-election will "test" Obama.
Thus, Thursday's China Daily editorial is broadly in the nature of an appeal to the Obama administration not to spoil its new Middle East policy, which is shaping well, through impetuous actions. Significantly, the editorial upheld the authenticity of Ahmadinejad's election victory: "Win and loss are two sides of an election coin. Some candidates are less inclined to accept defeat."
The daily pointed out that a pre-election public opinion poll conducted by the Washington Post newspaper showed Ahmadinejad having a 2-1 lead over his nearest rival and some opinion polls in Iran also indicated more or less the same, whereas, actually, "he won the election on a lower margin. Thus, the opposition's allegations against Ahmadinejad come as a trifle surprising".
The editorial warns: "Attempts to push the so-called color revolution toward chaos will prove very dangerous. A destabilized Iran is in nobody's interest if we want to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, and the world beyond." It pointedly recalled that the US's "Cold War intervention in Iran" made US-Iran relationship a troubled one, "with US presidents trying to stick their nose into Iran's internal business".
Theocracy versus republicanism
Beijing understands Iran's revolutionary politics very well. China was one of the few countries that warmly hosted Ruhollah Khomeini as president (in 1981 and 1989). In contrast, India, which professes "civilizational" ties with Iran, was much too confused about Iran's revolutionary legacy to be able to correctly estimate Khamenei's political instincts favoring republicanism. Most of the Indian elites aren't even aware that Khamenei studied as a youth in Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University.
Be that as it may, the Hu-Ahmadinejad meeting in Yekaterinburg on Tuesday once again shows Beijing has a very clear idea about the ebb and flow of Iran's politics. Hu demonstrably accorded to Ahmadinejad the full honor as Beijing's valued interlocutor.
Chinese media have closely followed the trajectory of the US reaction to the situation in Iran, especially the "Twitter revolution", which puts Beijing on guard about US intentions. Indications are that the US establishment has begun meddling in Iranian politics. Rafsanjani's camp always keeps lines open to the West. All-in-all, a degree of synchronization is visible involving the US's "Twitter revolution" route, Rafsanjani's parleys with the conservative clergy in Qom and Mousavi's uncharacteristically defiant stance.
Obama faces multiple challenges. On the one hand, as Helene Cooper of The New York Times reported on Thursday, the continuing street protests in Tehran are emboldening a corpus of (pro-Israel) conservatives in Washington to demand that Obama should take a "more visible stance in support of the protesters". But then, a regime change would inevitably delay the expected US-Iran direct engagement and upset Obama's tight calendar to ensure the negotiations gained traction by year's end, while Iran's centrifuges in its nuclear establishments keep spinning.
Also, a fragmented power structure in Tehran will prove ineffectual in helping the US stabilize Afghanistan. However, top administration officials like Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would like the US to "strike a stronger tone" on Iran's turmoil. Cooper reported they are piling pressure on Obama that he might run the risk of "coming across the wrong side of history at a potentially transformative moment in Iran".
A Thermidorian reaction
No doubt, the turmoil has an intellectual side to it. Obama being a rare politician gifted with intellectuality and a keen sense of history would know that what is at stake is a well-orchestrated attempt by the hardcore conservative clerical establishment to roll back the four-year-old painful, zig-zag process toward republicanism in Iran.
Mousavi is the affable front man for the mullahs, who fear that another four years of Ahmadinejad would hurt their vested interests. Ahmadinejad has already begun marginalizing the clergy from the sinecures of power and the honey pots of the Iranian economy, especially the oil industry.
The struggle between the worldly mullahs (in alliance with the bazaar) and the republicans is as old as the 1979 Iranian revolution, where the fedayeen of the proscribed Tudeh party (communist cadres) were the original foot soldiers of the revolution, but the clerics usurped the leadership. The highly contrived political passions let loose by the 444-day hostage crisis with the US helped the wily Shi'ite clerics to stage the Thermidorian reaction and isolate the progressive revolutionary leadership. Ironically, the US once again figures as a key protagonist in Iran's dialectics - not as a hostage, though.
Imam Khomeini was wary of the Iranian mullahs and he created the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as an independent force to ensure the mullahs didn't hijack the revolution. Equally, his preference was that the government should be headed by non-clerics. In the early years of the revolution, the conspiracies hatched by the triumvirate of Beheshti-Rafsanjani-Rajai who engineered the ouster of the secularist leftist president Bani Sadr (who was Khomeini's protege), had the agenda to establish a one-party theocratic state. These are vignettes of Iran's revolutionary history that might have eluded the intellectual grasp of George W Bush, but Obama must be au fait with the deviousness of Rafsanjani's politics.
If Rafsanjani's putsch succeeds, Iran would at best bear resemblance to a decadent outpost of the "pro-West" Persian Gulf. Would a dubious regime be durable? More important, is it what Obama wishes to see as the destiny of the Iranian people? The Arab street is also watching. Iran is an exception in the Muslim world where people have been empowered. Iran's multitudes of poor, who form Ahmadinejad's support base, detest the corrupt, venal clerical establishment. They don't even hide their visceral hatred of the Rafsanjani family.
Alas, the political class in Washington is clueless about the Byzantine world of Iranian clergy. Egged on by the Israeli lobby, it is obsessed with "regime change". The temptation will be to engineer a "color revolution". But the consequence will be far worse than what obtains in Ukraine. Iran is a regional power and the debris will fall all over. The US today has neither the clout nor the stamina to stem the lava flow of a volcanic eruption triggered by a color revolution that may spill over Iran's borders.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.Comment
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