‘Velvet’ or ‘colourful’ revolutions Iran

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Iran_election_Reformists/2009/06/11/224025.html

This was written a day before the elections in Iran by Kenneth R. Timmerman (a journalist, political writer, and conservative Republican activist who in 2000 was a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator from Maryland), and Timmerman is executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, an organization that works to support democratic movements in Iran. Timmerman authored Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson. He has also written on the spread of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. (according to Wikipedia.

....And then, there’s the talk of a “green revolution” in Tehran, named for the omnipresent green scarves and banners that fill the air at Mousavi campaign events.

The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting “color” revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.....


http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts220609.htm

A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.

The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick..........

........Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.

On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “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.”

On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”

A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “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.”

The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine.
It requires total blindness not to see this...........

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20090621_battle_for_the_islamic_republic/

” ‘Velvet’ or ‘colourful’ revolutions ... are methods of exchanging power for social unrest. Colourful and ‘velvet’ revolutions occurred in post-communist societies of central and Eastern Europe and central Asia. Colourful revolutions have always been initiated during an election and its methods are as follows:

“1. Complete despair in the attitude of people when they are certain to lose an election ...

“2. Choosing one particular colour which is selected solely for the Western media to identify (for their readers or viewers).” Mousavi used green as his campaign colour and his supporters still wear this colour on wristbands, scarves and bandannas.

“3. Announcing that there has been advance cheating before an election and repeating it non-stop afterwards ... allowing exaggeration by the Western media, especially in the US.

“4. Writing letters to officials in the government, claiming vote-rigging in the election. It’s interesting to note that in all such ‘colourful’ projects – for example, in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan—the Western-backed movements have warned of fraud before elections by writing to the incumbent governments. In Islamic Iran, these letters had already been written to the Supreme Leader.”

Another leaflet maintained that a study—which Khamenei’s advisers have obviously undertaken, however inaccurately—demonstrated that vote-rigging will be alleged on the very day of the election and that victory will be claimed by the opposition hours before the counting is finished and before their own defeat is announced. The results, says the document, will therefore already have a “background” of fraud. “In the final stages ... supporters gather in front of the regime’s official offices, holding colourful banners and protesting against vote-rigging.” This part of the demonstration, the leaflet says, “is run by the foreign media who are the opposition movement’s supporters so that they make good pictures and mislead the international community”.

All this shows a unique and obsessive concern among the Supreme Leader’s disciples about just how popular Mousavi’s post-election campaign has become. Even the cutting of SMS and mobile communications—and in a sophisticated society such as Iran, this must have cost millions of dollars—did not prevent the calling of rallies which always assembled at the same moment and at the same place.

What we are now seeing is a regime which is far more worried than the Supreme Leader suggested when he threatened the opposition so baldly on Friday. Having refused any serious political dialogue with Mousavi and his opposition comrades—a few district recounts will produce no real change in the result—the Iranian regime, led by a Supreme Leader who is frightened and a president who speaks like a child, is now involved in the battle for control of the streets of Iran. It is a conflict which will need the kind of miracle in which Khamenei and Ahmadinejad both believe to avoid violence.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22898.htm

Highlighting the complexity of this crisis, Meir Dagan, the head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, reportedly voiced his hope that Iran’s embattled president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would remain in office. On the surface, that sounds absurd, since Ahmadinejad is Israel’s Great Satan.

But, according to Dagan, if Ahmadinejad’s supposedly "moderate" rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, came to power, it would be harder for Israel to keep up its propaganda war against Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Besides, added the Mossad chief, the devil you know is better.

Meanwhile, we have been watching an intensifying western propaganda campaign against Iran, mounted by the US and British governments. What we hear is commentary and analysis that comes from bitterly anti-regime Iranian exiles, "experts" with an ax to grind, and US pro-Israel neocons yearning for war with Iran.

In viewing the Muslim world, Westerners keep listening to those who tell them what they want to hear, rather than the facts. We are at it again in Iran.....

....n viewing the Muslim world, Westerners keep listening to those who tell them what they want to hear, rather than the facts. We are at it again in Iran.

President Barack Obama’s properly stated he would refrain from being seen to "meddle" in Iran’s internal affairs in spite of calls by hard-line Republicans for American action – whatever that might be. Obama did the right thing by apologizing for the US/British coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic Mossadegh government in 1953.

But that was not the whole story. Washington has been attempting to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government since the 1979 revolution and continues to do so in spite of pledges of neutrality in the current crisis.

The US has laid economic siege to Iran for 30 years, blocking desperately needed foreign investment, preventing technology transfers, and disrupting Iranian trade. In recent years, the US Congress voted $120 million for anti-regime media broadcasts into Iran, and $60-75 million funding opposition parties, violent underground Marxists like the Mujahidin-i-Khalq, and restive ethnic groups like Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs under the so-called "Iran Democracy Program."

The arm of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remains withered from a bomb planted by the US-backed Mujahidin-i-Khalq, who were once on the US terrorist list.

Pakistani intelligence sources put CIA’s recent spending on "black operations" to subvert Iran’s government at $400 million.......

....While the majority of protests we see in Tehran are genuine and spontaneous, Western intelligence agencies and media are playing a key role in sustaining the uprising and providing communications, including the newest electronic method, via Twitter. These are covert techniques developed by the US during recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that brought pro-US governments to power.

The Tehran government made things worse by limiting foreign news reports and arresting prominent politicians. Its leadership is increasingly – and dangerously – split over how to handle the protests.

We also hear lot of hypocrisy from Western capitals. Washington, Ottawa, London and Paris piously accused Iran of improper electoral procedures while utterly ignoring the total lack of democracy in their authoritarian Mideast allies such as Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, that never hold elections and throw political opponents into prison and torture them. Compared to them, Iran, for all its faults, is almost a model of democratic governance.

The US, France and Saudi Arabia just cooperated to rig Lebanon’s recent elections, dishing out millions in bribe money to ensure victory of the pro-US faction. France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy had the chutzpah to rebuke Iran for improper election procedures after returning from the funeral of Gabon’s dictator, Omar Bongo, who had ruled for 41 years and supplied France with cheap oil.

When Hamas won a fair and square democratic election in Gaza, the US and Israel swiftly moved to mount a coup against the new Palestinian government......

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=98844§ionid=351020101

The ousted Shah of Iran Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi's son urges Israel to support post-election riots in Iran to bring down the government of Tehran.

Reza Pahlavi told Maariv that Israel should back up recently sparked riots in Iran following the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the next president of the country.

The very existence of the ruling government in Iran could lead to a nuclear Holocaust, the former crown prince said but warned against an Israeli attack on the country.

Under the accusation that Iran poses an 'existential threat' to Israel, Tel Aviv, the Middle East's sole possessor of nuclear warheads, has repeatedly threatened Tehran with a military attack over its nuclear work.

Reza Pahlavi said that any military attack against Tehran could prompt the Iranians to stand by the government instead and therefore it would shatter hopes of any resumption of ties between Iran and Israel.