T. Belman. This uprising was a long time in coming. I think it must have been instigated by the Mossad and the CIA. The announcement of the agreement between Israel and the US a week ago on how to confront Iran was the kick off point. Notice that this time around, all the minorities are participating and how quick Trump was to show the people his support.
Trump is no Obama and has voiced open support for the pro-freedom movement.
For Mansour Osanlou, the former head of the bus driver’s union in Tehran, a “new revolution” has begun in Iran.
The protests, which began on Thursday in Iran’s most religious cities and spread throughout the country within twenty four hours, now bring together workers and intellectuals, the unemployed, and the elites – a combination not seen since the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah.
On Saturday, security forces in Tehran used rubber bullets and truck-mounted water canon in an unsuccessful attempt to disperse protesters at Tehran University who were seeking to march on the Supreme Leader’s compound, Osanloo told me in a telephone interview.
They were chanting, “Death to the Dictator,” and “Khamenei should go.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been Iran’s Supreme Leader since 1989, and until now, he has been portrayed as unassailable by friend and foe alike.
“We thank President Trump for his support, and call on the United States to hold the Islamic regime accountable if they kill or beat protestors or conduct mass arrests, as they did in 2009,” he told me.
The last time the Iranian people rose up, in June 2009, President Obama kept a shameful silence, allowing the regime to kill protesters in silence.
President Trump has the opportunity to change history by using his bully pulpit, which he began to do late Friday night through twitter.
“Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad,” the President tweeted initially. “Iranian govt should respect people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching!”
And then he added the hashtag that has spread worldwide, #IranProtests.
The State Department followed with a more mildly-worded tweet on Saturday. “We are following reports of multiple peaceful reports by Iranian citizens. The United States condemns the arrest of peaceful protests in #Iran.”
States spokesperson Neather Nauert quickly upped the ante, not only condemning the arrest of peaceful protestors but urging “all nations to publicly support Iranian people.”
And Trump himself continued tweeting over the weekend. On New Year’s Eve, adding this:
“Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!
The BBC’s Persian service got in the game early, conducting triage of the thousands of cellphone videos posted to the Internet by protestors and posting those it could validate. The best of these can now be found on the pro-opposition website of the Islamic State of Iran Crime Research Center and their Facebook page.
After a slow start, the Persian service of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also used social media to rebroadcast selected cellphone videos.
But according to Osanloo, the U.S. government broadcast networks continue to impose a “boycott” on pro-freedom advocates such as himself, while allowing so-called moderate supporters of the Islamic regime free access to U.S.-taxpayer funded broadcasts.
This continued throughout the weekend, with Voice of America’s Farsi Service highlighting the economic grievances of the protestors, and giving equal play to counter-protests organized by the regime and to calls for calm from regime president, cleric Hassan Rouhani.
(The VOA’s English language flagship service was even worse, highlighting an Iranian regime claim that “foreign agents” were responsible for the deaths of protestors.)
I have been following anti-regime protests in Iran for the past thirty years. And while the 2009 Green movement protests involved much bigger crowds – so far at least – the protests of the past few days appear to be broader based, and more bitterly anti-regime in nature.
Early on, you heard calls of “Death to the Dictator,” not just in Tehran but around the country.
And most important of all, the protests erupted almost simultaneously in major cities in areas of the country dominated by Kurdish, Ahwaz, and Balouchi minority communities, who were pointedly absent in 2009.
For six years, until Obama flunkies fired me in 2016, I lectured on the Iranian opposition at the Pentagon’s Joint Counter Intelligence Training Academy (JCITA) in Quantico, Virginia.
I liked to tell my conferees, most of them from our military intelligence services, that if they took nothing away from my talk, to remember just two things: first, that Islamic Iran is not an ordinary country, like Belgium, but an ideological regime that enshrines Islamic supremacy and the export of its revolution in its constitution.
Second, that today’s Iran is no longer “Persia,” but a multi-national mosaic comprised of roughly fifty percent Persians and fifty percent Kurds, Balouchis, Azeris, Ahwazis, Lurs, Bakhtiaris and other minorities.
Many of these minority communities have been ostracized by the Tehran-centric, mullah-dominated regime and abstained from the 2009 uprising because the Green movement brushed off their demands of equal representation.
Today, that appears to have changed, with protests in Kurdish, Balouch, and Ahwazi cities.
Over the weekend, regime security forces drew first blood, gunning down protestors and vowing a brutal crackdown if the demonstrations continued.
Rumors are flying that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is planning a coup d’état to sideline the clerical leadership and impose an openly fascist military rule.
This is a time when the U.S. Treasury should exercise great vigilance to track down the billions of dollars stolen by regime leaders from the people as these corrupt dictators attempt to move their ill-gotten gains to financial safe havens.
But more importantly, this is a time when the White House needs to take control of the U.S. government, and use the Voice of America and Radio Farda as tools to enable protestors in Iran.
Phillip Gordon, a former Obama administration flunky, argued in the New York Times over the weekend that President Trump should “do nothing” to help the protestors.
Maybe Mr Gordon wasn’t aware that he was parotting Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous phrase during the 1979 revolution, when he said America could “do nothing” to stop the revolution. Or maybe he was. After all, Obama did more to enable the Islamic dictatorship than any U.S. president since Jimmy Carter.
A free Iran is in America’s best interest. Without the malevolent influence of the Iranian regime, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen would be very different places today.
Helping Iranians to win their freedom from the clerical dictators, and from the IRGC fascists, is a noble endeavor that goes to the heart of why Congress established the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
It’s time to use those tools to assist pro-freedom loving Iranians, and for the United States to call-out the clerical regime in Tehran for its bloody crackdown on the fundamental human and political rights of Iranian citizens.
IS BANNON AN AGENT PROVOCATEUR?
My internet not working yesterday and since the issue of Bannon and new book has broken fiercely, the fierceness reflects the critical situation.
On Iran there is no leadership to face what is a deeply Fascist and Prepared regime. Trump is not to be blamed for this. His tweets MUST be defended because all contact to the people has been blocked by the Media
Trump has proved himself to be too trusting, too lenient, with many of his associates. But in my opinion there is a danger that Bannon may have been and is a deep state agent. All revolutionary movements have had to face this factor. The Stalinists and Imperialists, the American learning from English, have a long history of this. The Stalinists infiltrated Trotskyism to MURDER Trotsky in August 1940 and this has had lasting effects. In spotting the agent it is necessary to follow what people do not just what they say.
Politically Bannon seems to be a limited person politically. He owns a spiel about Globalism as does Jones but not much more. I support these up to a point but see that they are limited. I see these websites including Jones Infowars as being IN ESSENCE entrepreneurial “protesters”
I had remarked on my Facebook that Breitbart was almost ignoring the Iran Revolutionary movement against the Mullahs. As Iran was getting really hot I counted from the top of their site and in 40 there was no post. I wondered at that.
So we have had this phenomenon…Bannon is sacked, then carries on this war on the Jewish son in law and the Jewish daughter. Underneath these posts are many, many of the most vile antisemtism comments, and this is the kicker in this NOT CHALLENGED.
there is the deeper issue of how Trump can win in the 2018 elections. As of now Bannon has caused or engineered a deep division which was not necessary. That is the essence of a provocateur at best, an agent provocateur at worst.
Again a strange thing…it is reported that Bannon was planning to attack this book until Trump attacked him…but that in itself is strange behaviour on the part of Bannon. Regardless of Trump attacking him it was necessary to disown this book within seconds by Bannon and he has not done that. Above all as of this moment Breitbart has not said a word. Now that is cowardly and reminiscent of Stalinism. But I am a Trotskyist and wish to have the fresh breeze of truth, that is knowledge, wafted into every thing on earth.
@ Felix Quigley:
Breitbart is being anti-swamp and anti-Democrat with Kushner. Javanka have given Trump some terrible advice.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Gee, I don’t know, seems like Trump talks exactly like Trotsky in the folowing interview:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/xx/interview.htm
Like Stalin in this one
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111stalin.html
and Lenin in this one
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/dec/23.htm
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Those with the guns in Iran will use them on other Iranians I believe for the most part. The IRGC and undercover police are regime loyalists. The police are also loyalists. Only military draftees are not regime loyalists.
For this to become a revolution that can become successful they will need an organizational aspect that will include arming the populace and bringing some of the opposition who is outside of Iran back. Arming these people and helping them (this Iranian Kurds, Sunni Persians, Arabs and other minorities) is where foreign intelligence agencies could help.
The central issue I think is that the Fascist regime in Iran is more like the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 onwards tot he end. We do not know what force they are already using given that we do not have a truthful media. We do not know their immediate plans. but their past shows they will go to any lengths and I do mean “any”. I think America, the Saudis and Israel must intervene, like yesterday. Declare your banner openly. Hide nothing. Eliminate this curse on humanity now. But I think they will not because they fear social revolution in Iran.
@ Bear Klein:
Turnabout is fairplay. Khomeini used cassette tapes of his speeches passed hand to hand in 1979.
But, I’m still holding my breath. The key moment, if it comes, will be when Government troops refuse to fire on their countrymen and start joining the protestors. And/or turn the guns around, which was the very effective Bolshevik slogan thoughout Europe.
@ Felix Quigley:
Felix,
Trump indeed is not Lenin or Trotsky. But it gladdens both my heart and my head to be able to say that he may well be a uniquely American Stalin.
Our American Stalin gets his program accomplished, while those of our Yankee versions of the Third and Fourth Internationals do little more than grumble verbal responses while sipping the tea of self-justification.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
In-spite of anti USA & Israeli propaganda being spread for now these protests all over Iran appear to be just protests and not yet a revolution. An Iranian reporter (in-exile) at first organized some of the protests on an app called “Telegram” and other Iranians also used this app which is widely used in Iran.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5224605/Protests-Iran-fanned-exiled-journalist-messaging-app.html
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/01/01/exiled-journalist-using-telegram-app-share-protest-info-iranians/
@ Bear Klein:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/foreign-intervention-behind-iran-protests-cia-instigated-street-violence/5624661
@ Felix Quigley:
Remember that Kushner did his best to get Bannon ousted from the WH.
@ Bear Klein:
I am not the only one who has alluded to this on both sides. The break out of protests all over the place and on the same day suggested to me that it wasn’t spontaneous.
Is Breitbart being antisemitic against Kushner?
In absence of America and Saudis there is no leadership in shape of rev party…this is so dangerous
They need help from outside…that is from America and the Saudis…Tweets are not enough or not sufficient so dangerous…this is their chance
But Trump as I have often said is no Trotsky or Lenin
Ted, First you do NOT know this. If you did then why would you post in a public forum as it would be detrimental as this is the Iranian propaganda at the moment.
Aware, as I am, that no revolution, to my knowledge, has ever succeeded without at least a section of the government’s military either going over to the rebels or, at least, refusing to fire on them at key junctures, I googled the question to see if that is what happened in Iran in 1979.
In so doing, I discovered an article about how President Carter’s incompetent intervention led to the paralysis of the Iranian military, which, in turn, led directly to Khomeini’s seizure of power. The article is based on recently declassified documents.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/feb/11/us-general-huysers-secret-iran-mission-declassified