Tag Iran

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Another theory on Iran’s presidential election

Jun 21, ’09 7:08 PM

I was sur­prised today to find one of my favour­ite tech­no­logy com­ment­at­ors, John Gruber of Dar­ing Fire­ball, declar­ing that no doubt remains as to whether the elec­tion was fraud­u­lent. Really, because a theo­cratic gov­ern­ment is crack­ing down on dissidents?

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my exper­i­ences in the Middle East it is that all is not what it seems when West­ern gov­ern­ments and the Eng­lish news media are telling the story.

It … has been curi­ous to see the U.S. news organ­iz­a­tions sud­denly care about legit­im­ate elec­tions when most of them ignored, ridiculed, or covered-up evid­ence that George W. Bush stole the U.S. pres­id­en­tial elec­tion in 2000 and pos­sibly in 2004 as well.

–Robert Parry, Invest­ig­at­ive Journalist

While I wouldn’t be at all sur­prised if the elec­tion was fraud­u­lent — in the same way that I wouldn’t be sur­prised if the 2000 and 2004 U.S. pres­id­en­tial elec­tions were fraud­u­lent — there’s just not enough evid­ence to be in no doubt. At least in the case of Iran an invest­ig­a­tion has actu­ally been ordered.

The truth is we just don’t know. The only way to remove doubt would be another elec­tion involving neut­ral inter­na­tional observ­ers. Not on the hori­zon it seems.

Here’s another the­ory on Iran’s recent pres­id­en­tial election:

First, a few facts:

  • The U.S. and Bri­tain have a his­tory of med­dling in the polit­ics of other coun­tries, includ­ing lead­ing the 1953 Ira­nian coup d’état that deposed the democratically-elected gov­ern­ment of Ira­nian Prime Min­is­ter Mohammed Mosad­deq, to ensure West­ern con­trol of Iran’s pet­ro­leum resources.
  • The U.S. is repor­ted to cov­ertly sup­port Ira­nian dissidents.
  • Iraq was invaded on the premise of a nuc­lear weapons threat, which never existed.
  • Iraq was invaded because it has large stra­tegic energy reserves and Sad­dam Hus­sein wouldn’t do as he was told.
  • The Ira­nian gov­ern­ment is in the same boat.
  • When no evid­ence of nuc­lear weapons could be pro­duced Saddam’s dic­tat­or­ship was rolled out as the revi­sion­ist jus­ti­fic­a­tion for invasion.
  • The U.S. and Israel (both of which have a his­tory of launch­ing wars of aggres­sion) have talked openly of attack­ing Iran on the premise of a nuc­lear weapons threat.
  • Iran has never attacked another coun­try in aggression.
  • Iran may not have a nuc­lear weapons pro­gramme either.

The the­ory:

  • A large minor­ity of dis­sid­ent Ira­ni­ans believed they were going to win the election.
  • Ira­nian elec­tion was not fraud­u­lent.1
  • Many West­ern­ers (some of whom helped elect the invaders of Iraq and con­tinue to vote today) are lead to believe the Ira­nian elec­tion was fraudulent.
  • Due to this belief the U.S., Israeli and Brit­ish gov­ern­ments get to label the Ira­nian pres­id­ent a dic­tator. Some­thing to keep the West­ern lib­er­als happy while they attempt another coup d’état or invasion.
Notes:
  1. There is evid­ence that it may not have been, such as reports from Robert Fisk and a pub­lic opin­ion poll three weeks before the elec­tion repor­ted to show “Ahmad­ine­jad lead­ing by a more than 2 to 1 mar­gin.” [↩]
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Iran may not want the bomb

May 24, ’09 9:25 PM

Fareed Zakaria writ­ing for New­s­week:

… over the last five years, senior Ira­nian offi­cials at every level have repeatedly asser­ted that they do not intend to build nuc­lear weapons. Pres­id­ent Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad has quoted the regime’s found­ing father, Ayatol­lah Ruhol­lah Khomeini, who asser­ted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatol­lah Ali Khame­nei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describ­ing the use of nuc­lear weapons as immoral. In a sub­sequent ser­mon, he declared that “devel­op­ing, pro­du­cing or stock­pil­ing nuc­lear weapons is for­bid­den under Islam.” Last year Khame­nei reit­er­ated all these points after meet­ing with the head of the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legit­im­acy from its fidel­ity to Islam to declare con­stantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop remind­ing people of Khomeini’s state­ments and stop issu­ing new fat­was against nukes.

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I can’t believe he said that

Apr 22, ’09 8:40 PM

Groups of people all over the world call­ing them­selves “news organ­isa­tions,” such as The Times, con­tinue to spread myths about Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad, such as that he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” or that he denies the Nazi Holocaust.

In the mean time the Israeli Deputy Prime Min­is­ter has been quoted as say­ing “What Iran is try­ing to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jew­ish people just 65 years ago.”

Sorry, what the fuck?

So on one hand you have an oil-rich nation — Iran — that has never attacked another, let alone with nuc­lear weapons, and has just had its oil-rich neigh­bour invaded and occupied.

On the other you have a nation that has invaded and occu­pied Iran’s neigh­bour and is the only nation in the world to have attacked another with ther­mo­nuc­lear weapons, along with another nuclear-armed quasi-nation — Israel — which can’t stop get­ting into wars with its neigh­bours, bru­tally represses those in its midst who don’t belong to the right race or reli­gion, and openly dis­cusses attack­ing Iran, along with its part­ners in the crime the U.S. and a group of European nations, all of whom helped cre­ate the racist state in the first place.

If you believe Iran is the bel­li­ger­ent party in all of this and is about to pull an Adolf Hitler on us, then you are a stu­pid fuck.

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Good news: UK turns to Keynesian economics

Oct 19, ’08 9:08 PM

With New Labour’s neo-liberal agenda and long record of social­ising costs and privat­ising profits it comes as a sur­prise to me that Alistair Darling has turned to Keynes in the face of reces­sion. I had assumed until now that they’d use this reces­sion and the recent handout to bankers as an oppor­tun­ity to cut back on social spend­ing. Maybe we have the absence of Tony Blair to thank?

While I’ve increas­ingly been hear­ing news of archi­tects being laid off over the past few weeks, the firm I’m employed by works nearly exclus­ively in the social hous­ing sec­tor, so it’s cer­tainly good eco­nomic news for me:

The chan­cel­lor said hous­ing, energy and small busi­nesses would bene­fit in his new spend­ing plans.

And I couldn’t agree more with Darling on this statement:

This is a time when you have to sup­port the eco­nomy. You will see us switch­ing our spend­ing pri­or­it­ies to areas which make a difference.

It’s just a shame he includes in this the entrench­ment of the military-industrial com­plex and the myopic decision to upgrade Britain’s nuc­lear weapons.

… plans for two air­craft car­ri­ers and a new nuc­lear deterrent would go ahead.

I might add that a decision to upgrade Britain’s nuc­lear weapons is a dir­ect viol­a­tion of the Nuc­lear Non-Proliferation Treaty, some­thing the UK and U.S. gov­ern­ments have been falsely accus­ing Iran of over the past year or so.

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Bush regime drops preconditions to talks with Iran

Jul 17, ’08 10:29 AM

It appears as if someone sens­ible finally has Bush’s ear.

Maybe Tom Engel­hardt is right.

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Why the U.S. won’t attack Iran

Jul 10, ’08 11:01 PM

The pro­spect of an attack on Iran has been on my mind since the attack on Iraq, not in the least because it would prob­ably pre­cip­it­ate a great depres­sion and turn much of the world into a fireball.

Tom Engel­hardt has a thought­ful piece on why he thinks the U.S./Israel won’t attack Iran, des­pite some of the nut­ters run­ning around the halls of power in those countries.

Let’s hope he’s right.

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Iran is not the belligerent party

Jul 2, ’08 8:08 AM

The media in the West has a lot of blood on its hands already. Is it going to have more blood on its hands in Iran? Iran is not the bel­li­ger­ent party:

When it comes to demon­ising Iran, the US, Israel and Bri­tain have a uni­fied mes­sage and a com­pli­ant media, which has learned noth­ing from its mis­takes dur­ing the run-up to the inva­sion of Iraq, and seems happy to con­tinue to act as a gov­ern­ment pro­pa­ganda arm in some cases.

Thanks to the duti­ful cor­por­ate mouth­pieces, most Amer­ic­ans and Bri­tons have no idea that Tehran is act­ing within its rights under the NPT.

They don’t know that in Decem­ber, a US intel­li­gence estim­ate stated cat­egor­ic­ally that Iran is not cur­rently devel­op­ing nukes or that the nuc­lear watch­dog, the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which mon­it­ors Ira­nian facil­it­ies, has no proof it seeks to do so.

The West’s pro­pa­ganda cam­paign is so effect­ive that the major­ity of West­ern­ers believe that Iran is the bel­li­ger­ent even though the facts sup­port the con­trary argument.

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Chomsky on U.S. policy toward Iran

Nov 26, ’07 9:40 AM

Paul Jay inter­views Noam Chomksy on U.S. policy toward Iran:

Sup­pose it was true that Iran is help­ing insur­gents in Iraq. I mean, wasn’t the United States help­ing insur­gents when the Rus­si­ans invaded Afgh­anistan? Did we think there was any­thing wrong with that? I mean, Iraq’s a coun­try that was invaded and is under mil­it­ary occu­pa­tion. You can’t have a ser­i­ous dis­cus­sion about whether someone else is inter­fer­ing in it. The basic assump­tion under­ly­ing the dis­cus­sion is that we own the world.”

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The propaganda war against Iran

Mar 13, ’06 12:12 AM

A few points to keep in mind if you’re both­er­ing to fol­low the cur­rent pro­pa­ganda cam­paign being waged against Iran.

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Armchair tough talk

Oct 7, ’05 12:22 AM

State­ments from your favour­ite arm­chair war criminals.

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