Anonymous Iran

ConciousGood

Everyone is looking for something to say about Iran. The neoconservatives are predictably hailing the march of democracy on the streets of Tehran for reasons of their own, while hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham are calling on the Obama Administration to do something to help anyone tagged as a reformer. More moderate voices are generally supporting President Barack Obama’s initial show of restraint, avoiding any open support of either side, and only condemning the violence because it is disproportionate and due to the suffering it has caused. Still others are calling on the United States to avoid any interference of any kind. The non-interventionists themselves fall into two camps: the constitutionalists and libertarians believe that interfering in other people’s quarrels is intrinsically problematical because as John Quincy Adams said, "America does not need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Realists argue that interventions by the United States rarely turn out well, citing the cases of Vietnam, Bosnia, Lebanon, Iraq, and Somalia and more.

Having spent much of my working life as an intelligence officer on the street in places like Istanbul, I am astonished at what passes for expertise in the debate over what to do about Iran. It is clear that even the few genuine experts on Iran don’t really know what is going on there because they are slaves to their sources of information, which tend to reflect their own philosophical viewpoints and are, in any event, narrowly based. It is conventional wisdom in most of the US media that the Iranian election was stolen, the result of massive fraud. But was it? Opinion polls conducted by a US-based organization several weeks before the polling predicted an Ahmadinejad victory. The president is hugely popular among poor rural Iranians and also enjoys overwhelming support for his defense of Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. Elections are very complex affairs and how a talking head sitting in Washington, breathlessly interpreting grainy texting images, can even pretend to understand what is going on in Iran and why defies all logic, particularly if the expert in question speaks no Farsi and probably would have difficulty in locating Isfahan on a map.

Mir Hossein Mousavi is a reformer and modernist, isn’t he? Perhaps not. He has always been extremely conservative in his political alignments. As Prime Minister in 1981–9, he was regarded as a hardliner. He started Iran’s nuclear program, helped found Hezbollah and may have directed the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. He is, in reality, a defender of extremely corrupt vested interests. That he has attracted the support of the so-called "Gucci crowd" of twentyish twitterers does not mean that he has embraced western values. As president, he would not abandon nuclear energy and would not immediately begin to talk nice to Barack Obama. His reformer credentials are pretty much non-existent, the creation of a media and an engaged punditry that wants to explain the Iran crisis in terms that a European or American audience would find comfortable.

And then there is the corruption issue, Iran’s six-hundred-pound gorilla. Mousavi is heir to the corrupt Iran of the post-revolutionary period when the country was looted by the senior clerics cooperating with the business class, the bazaaris. Some intelligence sources believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been demonized by the western media, is actually the reformer in that he has taken on the country’s pervasive corruption with the full support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Massive corruption has been business as usual in Iran, frequently managed by politicians who have called themselves reformers. Another so-called reformer, who is the money man behind Mousavi, is former Iranian Majlis speaker Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, nicknamed "the Shark." Rafsanjani is a billionaire who controls large sectors of the country’s economy, to include a chain of private universities which became the source of the young organizers who brought the twitterers out on the street.

If there was one thing I learned from twenty years of experience as a military intelligence and CIA officer it is that nothing is ever what it seems. If a situation appears to be clear-cut, with good guys and bad guys arrayed against each other it is probably anything but. So maybe black and white comes out gray. All the more reason to step back. The interventionists from both left and right do not make it clear what the United States should do to help the "reformers." Perhaps that is just as well as the only options would be to hurl empty threats, start bombing, or initiate yet another CIA covert action to destabilize the regime, ignoring the lessons of the CIA’s 1953 debacle, and with the predictable and contrary result of actually strengthening the clerics and their rule.

Change by evolution is better than by revolution. Both metamorphoses are underway in Iran: one is immediate and reactionary and, perhaps necessarily, more graphic and even grim. The other suggests the possibility that long-lasting change might happen in Tehran – if outside influences do not upset the sensitive process of transformation. As is frequently the case, those who would do nothing probably have it right, whether arguing for constitutional reasons or as realists. Iran and its elections is an issue that we do not and cannot understand and it is ultimately an issue that has to be decided by the Iranian people. Rightly or wrongly, outside interference in what is taking place on the streets of Tehran will be exploited by the regime to deflect any legitimate criticism, making any change even less likely. The old Hippocratic advice to doctors to "do no harm" should perhaps be the best advice for the American political chattering classes and the media. Doing no harm regarding events in Iran is to stay out of it.

Unregistered

better written than the usual disinformation. very trustworthy disinfo.

Jeff Barea

Jane, you ignorant slut.

Fuck off anyone who makes their living through commentary or government.

Since I make my living off collecting aluminum cans this does not apply to me.

Here's the point:

If people needed brains then I would say help them to the table. Since the Iranian people have brains in each of their heads I say let them think for themselves. Keeps the internets open my precioussssss.

Unregistered

Wow, we've seen this "overwhelming support" of Ahmadinejad haven't we? How about we let the very vocal masses speak for themselves instead of a former CIA agent, who pretty much by his own admission, knows sweet f**k all about the "real" situation.

Sam @Samtagious
Samtagious!

atmasabr

The guy makes a fairly convincing argument on the surface, but doesn't cite much evidence.

He doesn't really add much.

Unregistered

ROFLMBooty off. Yes, well written disinformation!

Unregistered

Former CIA. The keyword here is "former." The moment he got out of the intelligence service he became outdated and obsolete.

Unregistered

http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files...ection0609.pdf

Executive Summary
Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005
results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior on the Farsi pages of their
website shortly after the election, and from the 2006 census as published by
the official Statistical Centre of Iran, the following observations about the
official data and the debates surrounding it can be made.
· In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of
more than 100% was recorded.
· If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory was primarily caused by the
increase in voter turnout, one would expect the data to show that the
provinces with the greatest increase in voter turnout would also show
the greatest 'swing' in support towards Ahmadinejad. This is not the
case.
· In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that
Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former
centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former
reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two
groups.
·
In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and
Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas.
That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim
that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces
flies in the face of these trends.........

continue to read... He wrote that Ahamadino is very popular in rural area's , not true according to people who are analyzing NOW!

This paper is published by Chatham House and
the Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St
Andrews
Preliminary Analysis of the Voting
Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential
Election
Editor:
Professor Ali Ansari, Director, Institute of Iranian Studies,
University of St Andrews; Associate Fellow, Middle East and
North Africa Programme, Chatham House; author, ‘Iran,
Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change’
Research and Analysis:
Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, Institute of Iranian
Studies, University of St Andrews
21 June 2009
Chatham House

A

LibertyHawk

Note that the OP is quoting lewrockwell.com, a known pro-theocracy website that tries to pass itself off as libertarian. Destroying the Islamic theocratic tyranny of Iran would, at the very least, set a precedent for destroying the Christian theocratic tyranny that the people at lewrockwell.com desire to create.

Unregistered

American Conservative Defense Alliance is on the extreme far-right of U.S. politics. Their tendency is towards isolationism -- they also are virulently anti-Semitic, leaning towards the Neo-Nazi side of the equation (e.g. both Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul who have ties to the group have somewhat checkered histories in this regard). Anti-Semitism is used too liberally in many cases, but in this case it's an appropriate adjective.

It's interesting though how some former CIA case officers with no experience in political polling keep bringing up a discredited poll that was conducted several weeks before the election. There is also the old canard about how Ahmadinejad has a strong rural support base -- when even the low-turnout 2005 election demonstrated the exact opposite case.

Interesting that Giraldi is also associated with Vincent Cannistraro -- a player in the Iran-Contra scandal.

I agree with the above commentators that this is above average propaganda. It's still propaganda.