[News] Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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 Iraq’s 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 
Saddam’s 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, Iran’s 
strategic situation vastly improved following the 
U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 
overthrow of those regimes. By 2004, Iran’s 
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 Sadr’s militia, 
the main Shiite opposition to the occupation in the streets.

After Bush’s 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 president’s 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 News’s 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 Iran’s 
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 Department’s 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 
Department’s $400 million program, and is being 
funded through the CIA budget. Thus, since 2006, 
the total figure for Iran’s 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, “Isn’t it true that we do [try to 
destabilize the regime]? Don’t 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 
Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai.

The following day, Khazali was prominently 
interviewed and hailed by the Voice of America’s 
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 Washington’s 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 government’s 
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 Israel’s 
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 Iran’s 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 GC’s 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 Iran’s 
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 
Washington’s 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 Washington’s hand is invisible.

Esam Al-Amin can be reached at: 
<mailto:alamin1919 at gmail.com>alamin1919 at gmail.com



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