[News] Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jun 30 14:55:33 EDT 2009
June 30, 2009
<http://www.counterpunch.org/alamin06302009.html>http://www.counterpunch.org/alamin06302009.html
Has the CIA Been Caught in Iran's Cookie Jar, Again?
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand
By ESAM AL-AMIN
Only weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks,
Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post
columnist and mouthpiece of the neoconservatives,
revealed the target list of the Bush
administration as it set out on its post-9/11 war
footing. The list included six nations:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and the
Palestinian Authority. While the priority
allotted to Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq was
not in dispute, the remaining order was in flux.
Israel was given a free hand in dealing with the
Palestinian Authority (PA). President George W.
Bush completely shunned and isolated PA President
Yasser Arafat, until he died under siege in
November 2004. Former Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon was allowed to use brutal military
tactics to crush theAl-Aqsa intifada, reoccupying
much of the West Bank, and setting up hundreds of
military checkpoints devastating Palestinian life and what remained of the PA.
By January 2002, the Afghan campaign was over as
far as Bush was concerned, and preparations for
the invasion of Iraq had begun in earnest. Dozens
of books have been written explaining in
elaborate detail the schemes, plots and
deceptions by the neocons for regime change in
Iraq. In fact,Washington Post associate editor
Bob Woodward documented the events and the roles
of senior administration officials in a series of books.
As Libyan Leader Muammar Qadhafi watched the
toppling of Iraqs Saddam Hussein in the spring
of 2003, he initiated contact with London and
then Washington, trying to identify the
conditions needed, in an attempt to avoid
Saddams fate. By January 2004, Libya agreed to
all their conditions: accepting responsibility
for the Lockerbie bombing, paying over $3 billion
in reparations, signing the Chemical Weapons Ban
treaty, and perhaps most importantly, giving up
its nuclear program, including handing over all
equipment purchased over two decades to the U.S.
On the other hand, Syria faced economic pressure
and diplomatic isolation, coupled with veiled and
direct threats. By April 2005, Syria withdrew its
troops from Lebanon after a 29-year presence.
Although American pressure succeeded in forcing
Damascus to withdraw from Lebanon, Syria remained
a target for regime change within the U.S.
defense and intelligence establishment. Its
alleged role in supporting the Iraqi resistance
against the American occupation, as well as
hosting the headquarters of the major Palestinian
resistance groups represented its major sins.
But the toughest nut to crack among all these
targets has always been Iran. Ironically, Irans
strategic situation vastly improved following the
U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the
overthrow of those regimes. By 2004, Irans
Shiite allies in Iraq were in control of the
government, even as the country was still under
American occupation. Further, Iran exercised
tremendous influence with Muqtada Sadrs militia,
the main Shiite opposition to the occupation in the streets.
After Bushs second inauguration in January 2005,
the National Security Council had an intense
internal debate regarding Iran. The conflict did
not center on whether there should be a regime
change in Iran, but rather, whether to employ
soft or hard power to achieve it. Former Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld advocated a series of escalating
military strikes, while former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair called for the use of soft
power. Eventually, the presidents military
advisors ended the debate when they cautioned
Bush that with the deteriorating security
situation in Iraq, engaging Iran militarily would
be highly risky and draining for the U.S. armed forces.
Between 2005-2009, the U.S. Congress appropriated
more than $400 million for State Department
programs designed to promote democracy, among
other means of employing soft power in Iran. This
was implemented, in part, by funding the
activities of Iranian dissident groups. By 2008,
Congress included money in the budget that would
specifically go to software programmers to
develop programs that thwart internet firewalls
erected by the government of Iran, and for a
program to provide anti-censorship tools and
services for the advancement of information freedom in closed societies.
On May 24, 2007, Brian Ross, ABC Newss Chief
Investigative Correspondent broke a story about
the elements of soft power utilized by the CIA
and authorized by Bush. Current and former
intelligence officials told ABC News that the CIA
has received secret presidential approval to
mount what is known as a black or covert
operations to destabilize the Iranian regime, and
it is underway, he reported. He then added,
Those officials describe the Iranian plan as
non-lethal involving a campaign of coordinated
propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative
newspaper articles, the manipulation of Irans
currency and international banking transactions.
The ABC correspondent stated, Propaganda was one
of the most important tools utilized by the CIA.
Three days later, the British Daily Telegraph,
detailed CIA plans for a propaganda and
disinformation campaign intended to destabilize,
and eventually topple the regime. The report
said that the presidential finding gave the U.S.
spy agency, for the first time, the right to
collect intelligence domestically, an area that
is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many
Iranian exiles and émigrés within the US. In the
report, an intelligence official was quoted as
saying, "Iranians in America have links with
their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information."
Part of the CIA program, as reported by ABC News
and theDaily Telegraph, was supplying money and
weapons, to the militant group, Jundullah, which
has conducted raids into Iran from bases in
Pakistan. Since 2007, Iranian officials have
announced the capture of dozens of members of
violent groups, allegedly tied to the CIA, that
carried out bombings around the nation including
one that killed 20 people only two weeks prior to
the recent elections, on May 30, 2009. The
following day, another bombing took place at a
campaign office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Further, about two thousand militia members of
theMujahideen Khalq Organization, a violent group
seeking to forcibly topple the Iranian regime,
have been given sanctuary in Iraq by the American
occupation authority, although the group has
appeared on the State Departments list of
international terrorist organizations since 1997.
The report also quoted Mark Fitzpatrick, a former
senior State Department official, now with the
London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies, as saying that industrial
sabotage was the strategy of choice to combat
Iran's nuclear program "without military action,
without fingerprints on the operation."
The Telegraph report also stated that the CIA was
allowed to supply communications equipment which
would enable opposition groups in Iran to work
together and bypass Internet censorship by the
regime. The use of this equipment has surfaced
prominently in the recent standoff between the
government and the opposition in Iran. It should
be noted though that this destabilization program
by the CIA is totally separate from the State
Departments $400 million program, and is being
funded through the CIA budget. Thus, since 2006,
the total figure for Irans destabilization
program could have easily exceeded $1 billion.
During the 1980s, the U.S. Government, and
particularly the CIA, was very active in
fomenting rebellions, mass unrest and protest
movements in Eastern Europe. These efforts have
been documented in numerous books and
biographies. Former National Security Advisor
during the Carter Administration, Dr. Zbigniew
Brzezinski, admitted as much in a CNN interview on June 21, 2009.
Commenting on the 1980 founding of the Solidarity
movement during the Communist era in Poland, he
told his host, I was up to my ears in dealing
with it and trying to steer it and manipulate
it. When asked about regime change in Iran,
Brzezinski answered that regime change is desired
because it would provide a greater
accommodation to the U.S., but it requires,
among other things, intelligent manipulation.
On June 28, CNN program host Fareed Zakaria put a
very telling question to Bob Baer, a retired
twenty-one year CIA veteran, who served as the
top operative in the Middle East for many years.
He asked, Isnt it true that we do [try to
destabilize the regime]? Dont we fund various
groups inside and outside Iran that do try to
destabilize the government? Baer answered, Oh
absolutely, then added, There is a covert
action program against Iran where the [U.S.]
military is running; a covert action against Iran from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The overt involvement of the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED) and other U.S.
Government-funded NGOs in supporting many of the
groups and dissidents that led the colored and
flowering revolutions, is also well documented.
The Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia), Tulip
(Kyrgyzstan), Cedar (Lebanon), Saffron (Burma)
and now Green (Iran) revolutions have involved
mostly pro-Western groups or Western-favored individuals against nationalists.
The Guardian claimed that USAID, National
Endowment for Democracy, the International
Republican Institute, the National Democratic
Institute for International Affairs, and Freedom
House were directly involved in supporting these
revolutions. The Washington Post and the New York
Times also reported substantial Western involvement in some of these events.
According to Saeed Behbahani, a fierce critic of
the current Iranian regime, and founder of Mihan
TV outside Washington D.C., the American
administration exchanged messages with the
campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi in early June. He
claims that, at that time, an unidentified
Iranian-American businessman, who is close to
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met with
Mousavis campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai.
The following day, Khazali was prominently
interviewed and hailed by the Voice of Americas
Persian language broadcast. The VOA claims that
its broadcast reaches 15 million Iranians. Other
Iranian opposition groups complained that the
VOA had adopted a policy of supporting the
reformist candidates, and had disregarded those
who called for a boycott of the elections to deny the regime legitimacy.
The role of the Western media in the few weeks
before and in the aftermath of the elections is
illuminating. These same outlets traditionally
act as enablers to Washingtons agenda, a role
notoriously on display in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
In November 2005, Egypt held elections for its
parliament. The elections were held in three
stages so they could be easily managed by the
regime. When the opposition led by theKefaya
(Enough) Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood
scored impressive gains in the first stage, the
government initiated a crackdown by beating and
arresting the opposition candidates and
organizers. Thousands of Egyptians took to the
streets in protest of the governments
intimidation tactics and manipulation of the
elections. Western TV networks provided scant
coverage of these events, and never covered the
massive protests or crackdown by government authorities.
Furthermore, earlier this year, during Israels
22-day onslaught on Gaza, millions of people
around the world, including tens of thousands in
the U.S., protested daily the brutality of the
Israeli military machine against the defenseless
civilians. Despite the fact that over 1,400
people were killed and over 5,000 injured - one
third of whom were children- there was hardly the
wall-to-wall coverage given to the protests in Iran.
The biased performance of the mainstream media in
reporting the Iranian elections can be
illustrated through the coverage of the
over-votes. Soon after the elections, it was
reported that a major proof of fraud was that the
participation rate exceeded 100 percent in many
districts. The clear implication was that the
authorities were so sloppy in their election
tampering that they simply stuffed the ballot boxes.
Had media outlets consulted any experts on
Iranian elections, they would have discovered the
simple explanation. In Iran, there is no
requirement to vote in a designated district.
People do not carry a voter registration card
like American citizens. Each voter has a voting
book allowing him or her to vote anywhere in the
country. After voting, the book is stamped and
the index finger is inked to ensure that no one
can vote more than once. This fact was not unique
to this election. In many previous elections,
many districts had a high turnout when compared
to the number of registered voters in that
district because many Iranians had voted there
while traveling or during their summer vacations.
The example of the over-votes, not only
demonstrates gross negligence by the media, but
also deliberate deception. On June 22, Abbas
Kadkhodaei, a spokesperson for Irans Guidance
Council (GC), the official body in charge of
investigating all 646 complaints filed by the
defeated candidates, held a press conference. He
gave details about the complaints under investigation by the Council.
Kadkhodaei explained that the main complaint
filed by Mousavi related to the elections was
that the number of over-votes existed in as many
as 170 cities, potentially affecting more votes
than the margin between the top two candidates.
Kadkhodaei then presented the GCs preliminary
findings, which showed that such over-votes
existed (as they had existed in previous
elections), but in no more than 50 cities across
Iran, affecting no more than three million votes.
In other words, there were no more than three
million voters who had voted outside their
districts. He emphasized that, with 11 million
votes between the top two candidates, even if all
three million votes were to be excluded (although
there is no valid reason to do that), clearly the
outcome of the elections would not be affected.
But within minutes the German News Agency
followed by Reuters, reported that the GC
admitted that there were an excess of three
million votes in 50 cities, leaving the listener
and reader with the impression that these were
fraudulent votes, rather than valid votes for
people voting outside their districts like the
spokesman explained. This report was instantly
placed on the front pages of every major Western
news media websites. The deception continued and
made the front page of every major Western paper the following day.
Opposition groups have relied on Internet
communication technology such as text messaging,
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and political blogs
during their protests. In fact, Secretary Clinton
took the unusual step in asking Twitter to change
its maintenance schedule to accommodate Irans
time zone and allow opposition groups the ability
to utilize it. What is striking is that most of
the postings were in English, not Persian,
begging the question: who was the target audience
of these tweets? Similarly, why were the
protesters holding signs saying, Where is my
vote? in English, rather than the language spoken by the voters of Iran?
But a study by the website,
<http://www.chartingstocks.net/>www.chartingstocks.net,
concluded that during three days after the
election, the overwhelming majority of Tweets
(over 30,000), were manipulated through a handful
of accounts; all created within one day of the
elections on June 13. It is interesting to note
that only 0.6 percent of Twitter accounts are
used by Iranians (as compared to 44 percent by Americans).
In a recent interview with the BBC on June 19,
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the
foreign policy icon and ultimate insider, exposed
Washingtons deep involvement in the Iranian affair.
Dr. Kissinger said, If it turns out that it is
not possible for a government to emerge in Iran
that can deal with itself as a nation rather than
as a cause, then we have a different situation.
Translation: if our preferred candidate did not
emerge a winner after using all our soft power
He continued, Then we may conclude that we must
work for regime change in Iran from the outside,
Translation: then the U.S. (or perhaps Israel)
may have to resort to hard power, meaning military strikes.
He then added, But if I understand the president
correctly, he does not want to do this as a
visible intervention in the current crisis.
Translation: Whatever President Barack Obama is
doing in Iran, he wants to make sure that Washingtons hand is invisible.
Esam Al-Amin can be reached at:
<mailto:alamin1919 at gmail.com>alamin1919 at gmail.com
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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