By Dr. Elias Akleh
For the last three weeks the Western media had bombarded us with what they called the Iranian stolen election. They allege that the election was fraudulent and that the masses went into the streets of Tehran protesting the results and demanding new election. The Iranian government is described as fascist and oppressive and is responsible for the chaos in the streets. The opposition is described as reformists and democratic, who are peacefully demonstrating in the streets demanding justice and freedom.
This brings memories of similar previous Western media campaigns about elections in different countries around the world such as 2004 Georgia’s election, 2002 Venezuela’s election, 1992 Mongolias’s election, 1991 Albania’s election, and 1990 Bulgarian election just to name a few, where elections were described as stolen and the winning parties as oppressive of the, usually pro-American, alleged peaceful demonstrators in the streets demanding freedom and justice.
What is worth noting is the fact that none of the entire Western so-called Iran experts, who had strongly claimed that there was an obvious wide scale electoral fraud , had never provided any shred of evidence of such fraud. The lack of any evidence leads one to believe that such fraud accusations are only unsubstantiated accusations based on wishful thinking. They based their evaluation on what they claim the highly unlikely statistical probability that Ahmadinejad would have surpassed his opponents with almost 11 million votes (32%) margin. They denied the possibility of Ahmadinejad’s wide popularity and successful campaigning.
Many had ignored the fact that democratic election is not new in Iran. Iran has a history of three decades of continuous unimpeded elections despite its war with Iraq, the imposed economic embargo, and the attacks of Western-supported terror organizations, such as Mujahideen el-Khalq, Jundullah, and Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, who carried a campaign of assassination of dozens of Iranian lawmakers among many other terror attacks. Iran has established a tradition of peaceful electoral orderliness, where elections are organized, monitored and counted by professionals including university professors, civil servants, and retirees.
None of the last thirty Iranian nationwide elections has been criticized by the West until today for obvious reason. Iran, under Ahmadinejad’s leadership, has developed nuclear industry, strengthened its military forces, and confronted the American forces, who encircled Iran on all four directions as part of the American expansionist ambitions in the Middle East and South East Asia.
Ahmadinejad’s victory came as a surprise to the West especially to the American administration, who expected his defeat. This expectation was based on American covert interventions in the Iranian affairs. It is an undeniable fact that the US has a long history of interference in the Iranian affairs. President Obama admitted to such interference in his Cairo speech in June 4th. Such intervention came in different forms. One mechanism came through what is called National Endowment for Democracy. This is a quasi-governmental agency funded by both the Congress and private organizations, whose main purpose is purportedly spreading freedom and democracy (causing regime change) in other countries by financially supporting foreign organizations sympathetic to the American foreign policy goals. This financial support, in the form of millions of dollars and equipment, was given to oppositional groups in order to cause chaos and confrontation, especially in election time, to topple down the victorious, usually nationalist, parties, and to erect in their places pro-American governments. Such support was evident in Bulgaria, Albania, Mongolia, Haiti, Venezuela, and in Iran itself.
The National Endowment for Democracy has been active in Iran giving millions of American tax money to anti-governmental Iranian groups such as the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, who supports the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance, and hundreds of thousands of Dollars to the National Iranian American Council. Other money is used to cover the expenses of forming what is called scientific seminars, where Iranian figures are invited to attend, with all expenses paid. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, had accused the US of using these scientific seminars as a front cover for political meetings, whose goal was to execute a “velvet revolution” in Iran. Last November Zarif explained that “when the Iranians attend these sessions, they realize they have gathered to discuss measures to topple the Iranian government”.
In 2006 Condoleezza Rice, then the Secretary of State, requested $75 million fund to be spent on mounting the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Iranian government. The fund was used to pay for radio and television programs broadcasted into Iran, and to provide scholarships to Iranian students to study in the US. The State Department had also created the Office of Iranian Affairs, with a branch in Dubai, to reach out to Iranian dissidents in their Diaspora and to recruit them against the Iranian government. The implicit goal here is to indoctrinate Iranians to effect regime change from within.
With their decision to support terrorist Israel as the dominant nuclear (WMD) country in the Middle East the Western countries concentrated on depriving Iran from any nuclear technologies even a peaceful one. They directed all kinds of pressure, including political, economical and the threat of nuclear bombardment, on the Iranian government to shut down its nuclear facilities. The Iranian government, instead, hastened its nuclear program, bolstered its military, and improved its relationships with many other countries including the Gulf States.
Finally the American administration decided to follow Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.’s Operation Ajax example to effect regime change in Iran. Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. had financed, in 1953, two Iranian thug groups to create chaos in the streets of Tehran and fight each other in order to destabilize Mosaddeq’s government.
ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on May 23rd, 2007 that “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert black operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News”.
The London Telegraph, also, had reported on May 27th, 2007 that “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple the theocratic rule of the mullah”.
In the New Yorker, June 29th, 2008, Symour Hersh reported that “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership”.
President Obama had denied, though, any American interference into the Iranian election. Yet, without any harsh criticism to the Iranian government, he expressed his admiration of the courage of Iranian people, who took to the streets demanding freedom and justice. Obama’s administration knows very well that it will, eventually, have to deal with Ahmadinejad’s government.
Zionist Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona criticized Obama’s soft approach and demanded tougher actions. Following Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise, in his foreign policy speech June 4th, to form an international front against Iran, they called for tougher UN sanctions or other measures to put an “end to this tyrannical regime”.
Israel, European countries (specifically British, French, and German), and the US do not really care about those courageous Iranian demonstrators, who have legitimate grievances against their government and aspire for more civil rights yet misguided about how to achieve them. In the eyes of the Western leaders these Iranian demonstrators are “useful idiots”, who need to be sacrificed in order to achieve political gains.
All the Western politicians know very well that the Iranian government, similar to what all the Western countries had done throughout their history, will put an end to the chaos in the streets and maintain order. They also know very well that Iranian policies will not change, at least for now, whether Ahmadinejad, Moussavi, or any other leader forms the government. Similar to all the so-called democratic presidents of the world the Iranian President is a mere executer, rather than a drafter, of these policies.
The real goal of all this propaganda and disinformation war against Iran is to portray Ahmadinejad’s government as an “election stealing illegitimate” government that the free world should not deal or negotiate with as Obama has intended to do.
– Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
