The
Iranian drama was a good thing, because after years of
demonisation, Iranians looked
human to the Western audience. Even McCain
bewept the killed Iranian
girl, though yesterday he would gladly
“bomb, bomb, bomb” her and millions of her sisters into
oblivion. Glenn Greenwald
noted “the "Bomb Iran" contingent's newfound concern for
The Iranian People” saying: “Imagine how many of the people
protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing
advocates had their way! Hopefully, one of the principal
benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever
the latest Enemy is.”
The same view is
expressed by an
Israeli journalist: “Suddenly, there appears to be an
Iranian people. Not just nuclear technology, extremist
ayatollahs, the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad, and an axis
of evil. The grand enemy that was neatly packaged into a
nuclear, Shi'ite-religious
container has come apart at the seams. For goodness' sake,
who is left to bomb? Until one week ago, the path was
well-lit.
All the more so when one gets the sneaky suspicion that the
military challenge from a nuclear Iran does not pose as
menacing a threat as we were warned to believe. There is no
alternative but to explore the path that will weaken the
motivation to use a nuclear weapon. And that is to speak
with Iran through the Iranians.”
This humanisation
could not be quickly undone, and thus the bombing may
never occur, despite the pleas of
Netanyahu and Lieberman.
Although it was a
close call. A day or
two after the elections, Iran was poised at the edge of the
abyss, ready to go berserk with huge unruly crowds and a
well armed revolutionary guard facing each other with great
hatred. All Iran’s achievements could easily be undone in
the turmoil of unrest; a fledging regional power could be
thrown back fifty years. For a while, the future script was
unpredictable. Would Teheran follow
Kiev, Ukraine with authorities giving in to an
inexorable push of the rebels, calling another round of
elections and installing a pro-Western president,
privatising oil and gas, empowering oligarchs and
transnationals, joining NATO? Or
would it follow the script of Tiananmen, with tanks crushing
the stubborn students?
It ended well,
avoiding both extremes. Young professionals, sometimes
disparagingly called the ‘Gucci crowd’, anti-clerical
communists and liberals, many ordinary middle-class Iranians
used the chance to show that they wish a less austere
regime. They want to have a drink, to wear pretty clothes,
to celebrate lavish weddings without being roughed up. Some
of them want to limit the power of the state and the mosque
to interfere with their privileges. They do not want to be
constantly controlled by the security services. Some of
Mousavi’s supporters also
supported the Palestinian struggle; they are not CIA agents,
but good and sincere people. Many of them are involved in
the arts, in the glorious Iranian cinema and literature.
Iranians abroad supported Mousavi
by large margin, and they are a nice bunch, too.
The government of
the legitimately re-elected President Ahmadinejad will do
well to pay attention to their wishes, at least partly. One
may laugh at these westernised youths who called out “Ahmadi
bye-bye” in their cartoon-style teenager talk, but nobody
can rule well while totally alienating these budding elites,
and government is first of all an art of compromise.
Supporters of
Mousavi should not get upset
overmuch by their defeat – they were such a
disparate crowd, from Tudeh
communists to Rafsanjani privatisers,
from anti-clericals to mullahs and ayatollahs, that in no
way they could all be satisfied even in the case of their
victory. Mousavi is a too
complicated figure with thousands of executions and
friendship of the most corrupt elements of the Islamic
republic to his credit. Actually, a victory for
Mousavi would just begin an open
struggle for power, and probably the most vocal and visible
adepts of the change would find themselves losers. This
happened to Soviet dissidents. In the rather similar Russian
confrontation of August 1991 the opposition won – and vast
majority of the people who stood at the barricades for
Yeltsin came to regret it: they were cheated and robbed.
This happened to Iranian dissidents after the Shah’s fall:
Tudeh Communists found
themselves outlawed after the revolution they worked so hard
for.
The vast majority
of Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad, for he is a modest man
devoted to his people, he took care of the poor and had kept
Iran free from the imperialist clutches. His work over the
nuclear programme appears to be wildly popular, and even his
defeated opponent did not dare to utter a single word
against it. A younger man, from low classes, Ahmadinejad
received strong support all over the country, even in the
Azeri-populated North-West, though his opponent was an Azeri
(though it does not mean too much, as the Supreme Guide
Khamenei is also an Azeri).
He is also
popular all over the world as a symbol of the Third World
rebellion, on a par with Castro and Chavez. He maintains
good relationship with neighbouring Russia and China, even
with the US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ahmadinejad’s lightning visit to
Yekaterinburg to the SCO conference in the midst of the
upheaval has proved his statesmanship. In his well-received
fiery speech he never referred to the crisis back home, and
he was congratulated by his peers President
Medvedev and President
Hu Jintao
for his electoral victory. His stalwart anti-Zionist stand
endeared him to the Arab neighbours of Iran, even to the
annoyance of Arab rulers. His weapons saved Lebanon in 2006
from being devoured by Israel. Sometimes he goes too far,
but otherwise, how can he find out how far he can go?
Ahmadinejad
cannot improve much the ordinary Iranians’ day-to-day life,
but then, nobody can - because of sanctions and
confiscations. Just as I write, Britain
freezes $1.6 billion in Iranian assets, and this is not
the first confiscation of Iranian property and capital.
Previously, American courts
confiscated a lot of sovereign Iranian assets to
compensate Israeli victims of Palestinian or Lebanese
military actions. The sanctions won’t be lifted until Iran
capitulates and accepts Western terms of surrender (no
nuclear development, no support to Hezbollah and, more
importantly, ‘opening’ of Iranian oil and gas fields to the
Western companies and their takeover). In the case of
surrender, Iran will be robbed, and anyway Iranians’ lot
will just worsen.
The accusations
of electoral fraud are absolutely groundless, as our friend
James Petras has well
explained, while Thierry Meyssan
explicated the techniques employed to persuade Iranians
that they had been cheated. But beyond the sham of “fraud”
there was a genuine complaint: elites often do not agree
with democracy, with decisions made by the majority. The
rich, the educated and the powerful feel that their voices
can’t possibly have only the same weight as that of an
ordinary worker and peasant. They stand “for the government
by an elite, and voting graded by
each individual’s rating in that elite”, as an Ian Fleming’s
character (James Bond’s friend, and drunken Australian
sleuth) Henderson used to say in
You Live Only Twice.
Usually the
elites find a way to “direct” democracy, so that the
ordinary people eventually vote for representative elites.
This is the way it’s done from India to the US. However, in
critical moments this system does not work. Then the elites
tend to disregard the majority vote and act directly. This
was the case in Russia in 1993, when the new pro-Western
elites did not agree with the majority represented by the
Parliament and had sent tanks to shell the Parliament. On
its ruins, they installed the new system of direct rule.
This was the case in Belgrade, where the Serbs were made to
vote time and again until the elites’ candidate was finally
confirmed. So on the psychological level, supporters of
Mousavi felt they had been
cheated of the power they deserve. But elections in Iran are
not infrequent: they still can readjust their wishes, give
more consideration to the will of ordinary folk and wait for
the next election.
Beyond direct
participants and candidates, the Iranian drama had
two major protagonists whose
positive actions helped to avoid bloodshed and disaster. One
of them is the elderly Spiritual Guide Ali
Khamenei, a wise man and a
graduate of Moscow University. He was fully in control of
the events. Such a man was missing in Kiev and in Beijing.
His Friday sermon calmed the passions. He drew a clear
contradistinction between the hooligans and the CIA agents,
on one hand, and the sincere supporters of
Moussavi’s agenda, on the other.
After this separation of sheep from goats, civil peace could
proceed without delay. Khamenei
forgave and embraced the supporters of
Mousavi. Indeed, that was the end of the big
demonstrations – only small groups of born-again activists
defied his orders and were dispersed by non-lethal means.
Indeed the level
of protest after the sermon was so low that it was
observable only due to strong effort of the West to keep
fire on. Many of latest protesters keep demonstrating in
order to receive an American visa, I was told by the
participants. In short, Khamenei
managed to quell the unrest.
The second
protagonist was located in most unexpected place, in
Washington. President Obama is a true hero of the drama. He
refused to escalate the troubles despite
neocon demands. He never
called upon the Iranians to rise in arms against the evil
regime; he did not doubt legitimacy of elections, he did not
threaten Tehran with extinction. For a recently elected
president sandwiched between the old guard of Hilary Clinton
and Joe Biden and the young
guard of Rahm and
Axelrod, with a severe recession
on his hands, with his election coffers filled by Jewish
donations, this was an act of reckless heroism, of the
Iwo Jima
variety. I can imagine what Ronald Reagan or George Bush,
pere
et fils,
would say. Something like “We all
are Iranians now” at least.
The failed “green
revolution” was prepared by the Zionist-infiltrated CIA, a
hangover of Bush’s days. Paul Craig Roberts
quoted neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman who wrote the
day before the election of a ‘green revolution’ coming in
Tehran as “the National Endowment for Democracy (NED, a CIA
tool – ISH) has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘colour’
revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it
into the hands of pro-Mousavi
groups”. But President Obama was a very reluctant player in
this drama. Only after being pushed by
Biden did he express a very modest desire to see no
violence in Tehran. Thus, in my view, President Obama
honourably discharged his Cairo promise to recognize
elections and to avoid interfering in the internal affairs
of the Middle Eastern states. True, he could not stop the
CIA, but probably that was outside of his writ.
If one were to
turn it into a stage play, the prologue would be played in
the White House with arrival of the Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu. His part could be played by a mature leman used
to have things done her way.
-
I
want a new mink coat, - she’d ask, and the African would
rudely enquire whether she’d be pleased with two kicks
instead.
Only, in a
peculiar Salome-like twist, instead of the mink, Netanyahu
asked for so many chopped Persian heads. He found a Biblical
explanation: the Persians are
Amalek, the enemy tribe, and
so they have to be exterminated to their last cat.
Usually, when
encountering Israeli Prime Ministers, American presidents
would begin to argue like Abraham with the God of Old
Testament: oh no, not to the last cat. Let us leave some
Persian cats, please!
However, Barrack
Obama did not debate the topic: he demanded from the Israeli
instead that he freeze the expansion of Jewish colonies.
-
We
should discuss methods of bombing Iran, rather, -
objected
Netanyahu, but the superior Negro did not buy the soiled
merchandise of the Jew, as Ian Fleming would put it. He
insisted on dismantling some of the colonies, and brought it
into the agenda. In order to return Iran into the limelight,
and to make us forget about the settlements, the Zionist
infiltrators incited the trouble in Iran.
The developments
in Iran are part and parcel of the present struggle of the
American soul represented by their President Obama to cut
the excessive Zionist influence down to size. In the very
short time he has stood at the helm of the good ship America
he has taken a few daring steps:
-
He made the
Cairo speech and offered a palm branch to the Muslim
world.
-
He demanded
that Israel remove the colonies and lift the Gaza siege.
-
He refused to
support the Zionist plan to bomb and/or undermine Iran.
-
42 years
after the event, his Administration gave a
Silver Star medal to a USS Liberty survivor. The USS
Liberty was attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats,
and this dastardly deed was hidden from the American
eyes with connivance of all American presidents - until
Obama.
-
Inspired by
his victory, the
University of California at Santa Barbara
blocked the Zionist Lobby attempt to undermine and
expel Professor Robinson. Such things had never happened
before in America. This is comparable to first failures
of Senator McCarthy and his
HUAC, when the machine used to grate people suddenly
broke down.
You could not
expect that the Lobby would accept its defeat stoically.
They
counterattack Obama by all means, including silly blogs
that list what he has not done yet, instead of being happy
with what he already has accomplished. He has enough
enemies on the right, so the left should relent – until
safer days.
Iranians now have
the important task of mending the wear and tear caused by
the Zionist and CIA-inspired colour-coded campaign. They
should remember that very advanced techniques of social
psycho-engineering enable malefactors to use social networks
like Twitter in order to capture and destroy societies. The
ordinary Iranians who were captured by this form of mind
control are as innocent as if they had been poisoned. The
time for throwing stones is over, - now is the time to
gather them.