INTL Iranian Opposition Implicates Russia in Contested Election

[Spirit Of Truth]

As reflected in my recent threads and posts regarding unrest in Iran, I'm rather suspicious of the origins of political unrest in Iran.

As noted in my 2006 article, "Is Iran Trying To Start World War Three?", Ahmadinejad's original election to president of Iran was a rigged sham:

Consider the following. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted with "no doubt" his June election victory, months in advance, at a time when polls gave him barely 1 percent support. After the June 17th, 2005 presidential election in Iran, as the votes were still being tallied, Ahmadinejad, who had hovered at the back of the field of candidates in pre-election opinion surveys, announced hours before the Interior Ministry issued its own results that he would be in the runoff. How is it Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was so certain that he would be elected Iran's new president when all the polls indicated he was not even in the running? An obvious explanation is that the election was rigged and the "certifiably insane" candidate knew the ultimate outcome ahead of time. Indeed, even moderates in Iran who usually don't speak out declared that the election was rigged. Iran's Guardian Council, a panel controlled by hard-line clerics that has the ultimate say over all government actions, was behind the vote counting that resulted in Ahmadinejad's win. As Russian dictator Stalin so aptly put it: “The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”

http://spiritoftruth.org/iraniannuclearbomb.htm

What's more, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the leading opposition figure, is a known loyalist of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

http://thespiritoftruth.blogspot.com/2009/06/unrest-in-iran.html

Thus, the unrest in the wake of the June 12th presidential election in Iran almost seems to have been intentionally fomented by Iran's clerical regime....the question being: "Why?"

Enter Russia.


-----------------

Iranian Opposition Implicates Russia in Contested Election

http://www.theotherrussia.org/2009/06/19/iranian-opposition-implicates-russia-in-contested-election/

June 19th, 2009

In an apparent effort to discredit Iranian authorities, the country’s opposition is making claims that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received backing from the Russian government.

Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, on behalf of opposition presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, accused Ahmadinejad of selling out Iran’s interests to Russia over the past four years. In part, Makhmalbaf charged that Ahmadinejad gave up Iran’s Caspian Sea rights, and gave concessions in other areas in exchange for support from Moscow.

Makhmalbaf also claimed to have information that Russia had provided high-ranking consultants to teach Iranian authorities effective ways to repress the opposition.

Russia was one of the first countries to congratulate Ahmadinejad of victory in Iran’s highly contested presidential elections. Observers noted irregularities during the vote, and Mousavi has called the June 12th election a “charade.”

As result of Russia’s quick support for Ahmadinejad, as well as Makhmalbaf’s accusations, supporters of the Iranian opposition staged a protest outside the Russian embassy in Toronto.

The activists were fueled by the fact that Ahmadinejad travelled to Yekaterinburg, Russia shortly after the election on June 16th, even as the country was facing its most severe political crisis since the 1979 revolution. Ahmadinejad, who had planned the trip before the election, attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security organization whose members include Russia, China and four Central Asian republics. Iran serves as an observer in the SCO.

Ahmadinejad was named the winner of the election on June 13th, with officials announcing he had taken 62.6% of the vote. In response, supporters of Mousavi took to the streets, alleging that the result had been falsified and that Mousavi had likely won more than 33.75% of the vote as officials claimed. As many at 100 thousand Mousavi supporters took part in the street demonstrations, which are scheduled to continue. Some reports indicated that police had opened fire on the crowds.

 

[TheSearcher]

That is very interesting, Mr. Adams.

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

That is very interesting, Mr. Adams.

I think the greater likelihood is that what we are seeing unfold is part of a global war plan....how exactly that will play out, I'm uncertain.

It is possible, although I think less likely, that Mousavi, Rafsanjani, etc., are seeking to overthrow Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei for real because they have had it with the extremism of the current ruling cabal. Mousavi's wife and daughters would have been key in this regard in liberalizing the former hardline loyalist of Khamenei over the years.

The problem, however, is if the latter were true, Mousavi would never have been allowed to run for president (and certainly not so at the Supreme Leader's urging) and, if he were fomenting a velvet revolution, he would have long since been arrested and/or restrained from stoking mass opposition protests.

Also bear in mind that the Iranian regime was likely brought to power by the Russians in the first place:

(Ayatollah) Khomeini's revolutionary movement was known as "Islamic Marxism," a movement begun from within the Russian Bolshevik Party in 1916. During the 1970s, the Soviet Union mobilized its resources to organize a revolution in Iran, with Khomeini as its official leader. Khomeini's brother was serving time in prison as a member of the Tudeh Party—the Communist Party of Iran; Khomeini's intimate advisor, Sadegh Ghothzadeh, was an affiliate of the French and Italian Communist Parties. Soon the Soviets were broadcasting pro-Khomeini propaganda into Iran, while they began publishing a well-funded revolutionary magazine entitled Navid, meaning "Good News." KGB agents working among the 4,000 Soviet personnel in Iran coordinated the protests and riots, and the Tudeh Party, acting on Soviet orders, openly backed the "Islamic" revolution and created a broad coalition of the Left to support Khomeini.

Moscow also mobilized the PLO to back Khomeini. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by self-proclaimed Marxist Leninist George Habash, supplied training and weapons to the Feda'iyin-e Khalq, the Iranian Islamic-Marxist terrorist group that began the revolution to overthrow the Shah. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization trained and armed the Mujahedin-e Khalq, another main pillar of Khomeini's revolution, and it trained future members of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, including the Minister of the Guards later appointed by Khomeini.

Once Khomeini seized power in Iran, Arafat brought a large delegation of PLO officials into the country, where "he was formally given the Israeli consulate building and, raising the Palestinian flag over it, opened the first PLO office, also appointing a PLO 'ambassador' to Iran." The Soviet Union and Communist China have since continued to arm Iran with weapons.

Khomeini immediately created Hezballah as an international terrorist wing of the PLO-trained Revolutionary Guards. Inside Iran, Hezbellah worked closely with Iranian Communist organizations in consolidating the regime's power. The terrorist training camps in Iran have been supervised by Mostafa Chamran Savehi, a follower of Trotskyite Communism who, as a student in Berkeley, California during the 1960s, founded such Islamic-Marxist groups as Red Shi'ism and the Muslim Students' Association of America. The instructors at the Iranian terrorist camps have been Communist experts from North Korea and Syria, as well as Iranians trained by the PLO and the Communist government of Iraq.

http://www.attacreport.com/ar_archives/art_iswr2_muslim.htm

 

[TheSearcher]

There is indeed a game in play, and we are being drawn back and forth to different events on purpose, IMHO. And, yes, it seems to me that Mousavi is part of the set up plan.

What I find interesting is that the story you've posted indicates the Iranian 'false revolution' may be spiraling out of the game's controls... and somebody might have just outed one of the game designers.

 

[FireDance]

Is it just me, or does Putin look like he's about to throw up in that photo? Can you imagine being around that little Iranian for more than 5 minutes?

I too think that what we're seeing is moving towards a global war. Or something very big that will make some people a lot of money. Same old story.

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

There is indeed a game in play, and we are being drawn back and forth to different events on purpose, IMHO. And, yes, it seems to me that Mousavi is part of the set up plan.

What I find interesting is that the story you've posted indicates the Iranian 'false revolution' may be spiraling out of the game's controls... and somebody might have just outed one of the game designers.

That's of course the big question in my mind as well....were revolutionary opposition sentiments in the population stoked and these forces turned out to be greater than had been anticipated?

At this point, I don't think so. A serious 'crackdown' is yet to occur. If and when this comes, it will likely be very bloody.

True trouble would be if police and military elements break with the mullahs:

http://enduringamerica.com/2009/06/...-sifting-information-from-rumours-on-twitter/

Then circumstances could get out of the hands of the ruling elite.

Keep in mind, while the core leadership, which very well could include Rafsanjani, Mousavi, etc., are aware of the 'plan', the police and military establishment at lower levels is unaware and may truly rebel when ordered to murder fellow Iranians.

Of course, if the ruling clerics are sufficiently in control, then this whole affair will ultimately result in the outing and elimination of all the 'weak' players in the state that have a potential for becoming opposition.

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

Is it just me, or does Putin look like he's about to throw up in that photo? Can you imagine being around that little Iranian for more than 5 minutes?

I too think that what we're seeing is moving towards a global war. Or something very big that will make some people a lot of money. Same old story.

This isn't the same old story and it's not about money, IMO.

This is about Russia and China acquiring world control at the West's expense.

 

[TheSearcher]

That's of course the big question in my mind as well....were revolutionary opposition sentiments in the population stoked and these forces turned out to be greater than had been anticipated?

At this point, I don't think so. A serious 'crackdown' is yet to occur. If and when this comes, it will likely be very bloody.

True trouble would be if police and military elements break with the mullahs:

http://enduringamerica.com/2009/06/...-sifting-information-from-rumours-on-twitter/

Then circumstances could get out of the hands of the ruling elite.

Keep in mind, while the core leadership, which very well could include Rafsanjani, Mousavi, etc., are aware of the 'plan', the police and military establishment at lower levels is unaware and may truly rebel when ordered to murder fellow Iranians.

Of course, if the ruling clerics are sufficiently in control, then this whole affair will ultimately result in the outing and elimination of all the 'weak' players in the state that have a potential for becoming opposition.

Suffice it to say, the situation is 'fluid'. Whatever it is going to become, they've already blamed us, and if it DOES go out of the expected boundaries, that will blowback on us.

Of course, that was probably the plan, but maybe on a longer timescale and more control on the part of the gamesters than what they may be left with.

 

[penumbra]

Very interesting.

That is a scary picture.

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

That is a scary picture.

It speaks volumes.

As does this one:

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

From - http://niacblog.wordpress.com/

12:17 pm: Iranbaan: (Translated by Ali S.) Mousavi, speaking among the people, has just announced that he has performed the ceremonial washing (ablutions) in preparation for martyrdom

موسوی دقایقی پیش در میان مردم اعلام کرد: من غسل شهادت کرده ا

Motorcycle riders are chasing protesters from alley to alley and are severely beating them.

11:37 am: Iranbaan: Mousavi is speaking among the people now at the beginning of Jeyhoon Street.

Well....if Mousavi is genuinely martyred, I have to believe he was not operating on behalf of Khamenei....although he may have been lured into his role (word is Khamenei asked Mousavi to run for president).

 

[gdpetti]

Well, here we go again. Perhaps this should be entitled "Making a War 101" as the same script is almost always used... with just some local 'flavor' added for local digestion of the same crap. Fair use all.

Analysis Last Updated: Jun 19th, 2009 - 00:56:44

Iran faces greater risks than it knows
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Jun 19, 2009, 00:22

Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.

The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the Cold War claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.

Today, the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: “Where Is My Vote?” The signs are intended for the Western media -- not for the Iranian government.

More evidence of orchestration is provided by the protesters’ chant, “Death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad.” Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed Westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator, as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.

The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.

On American TV, the protesters who are interviewed speak perfect English. They are either Westernized secular Iranians who were allied with the Shah and fled to the West during the 1978 Iranian revolution or they are the young Westernized residents of Tehran.

Many of the demonstrators may be sincere in their protest, hoping to free themselves from Islamic moral codes. But if reports of the US government’s plans to destabilize Iran are correct, paid troublemakers are in their ranks.

Some observers, such as George Friedman, believe that the American destabilization plan will fail. However, many ayatollahs feel animosity toward Ahmadinejad, who assaults the ayatollahs for corruption. Many in the Iranian countryside believe that the ayatollahs have too much wealth and power. Amadinejad’s attack on corruption resonates with the Iranian countryside, but not with the ayatollahs.

Amadinejad’s campaign against corruption has brought Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri out against him. Montazeri is a rival to ruling Ayatollah Khamenei. Montazeri sees in the street protests an opportunity to challenge Khamenei for the leadership role.

So, once again, as so many times in history, the ambitions of one person might seal the fate of the Iranian state.

Khamenei knows that the elected president is an underling. If he has to sacrifice Amadinejad’s election in order to fend off Montazeri, he might recount the vote and elect Mousavi, thinking that will bring an end to the controversy.

Khamenei, solving his personal problem, would play into the hands of the American-Israeli assault on his country.

On the surface, the departure of Ahmadinejad would cost Israel and the US the loss of their useful “anti-Semitic” boogeyman. But in fact it would play into the American-Israeli propaganda. The story would be that the remote, isolated, Iranian ruling ayatollah was forced by the Iranian people to admit the falsity of the rigged election, calling into question rule by ayatollahs who do not stand for election.

Mousavi and Ayatollah Montazeri are putting their besieged country at risk. Possibly they believe that ridding Iran of Amadinejad’s extreme image would gain Iran breathing room.

If Mousavi and Montazeri succeed in their ambitions, one likely result would be a loss in Iran’s independence. The new rulers would have to continually defend Iran’s new moderate and reformist image by giving in to American demands. If the government admits to a rigged election, the legitimacy of the Iranian Revolution would be called into question, setting up Iran for more US interference in its internal affairs.

For the American neoconservatives, democratic countries are those countries that submit to America’s will, regardless of their form of government. “Democracy” is achieved by America ruling through puppet officials.

The American public might never know whether the Iranian election was legitimate or stolen. The US media serves as a propaganda device, not as a purveyor of truth. Election fraud is certainly a possibility -- it happens even in America -- and signs of fraud have appeared. Large numbers of votes were swiftly counted, which raises the question whether votes were counted or merely a result was announced.

The US media’s response to the election was equally rapid. Having invested heavily in demonizing Ahmadinejad, the media are unwilling to accept election results that vindicate Ahmadinejad and declared fraud in advance of evidence, despite the pre-election poll results published in the June 15 Washington Post, which found Ahmadinejad to be the projected winner.

There are many American interest groups that have a vested interest in the charge that the election was rigged. What is important to many Americans is not whether the election was fair, but whether the winner’s rhetoric is allied with their goals.

For example, those numerous Americans who believe that both presidential and congressional elections were stolen during the Karl Rove Republican years are tempted to use the Iranian election protests to shame Americans for accepting the stolen Bush elections.

Feminists take the side of the “reformer” Mousavi.

Neoconservatives damn the election for suppressing the “peace candidate” who might acquiescent to Israel’s demands to halt the development of Iranian nuclear energy.

Ideological and emotional agendas result in people distancing themselves from factual and analytical information, preferring instead information that fits with their material interests and emotional disposition.

The primacy of emotion over fact bids ill for the future. The extraordinary attention given to the Iranian election suggests that many American interests and emotions have a stake in the outcome.
----

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4823.shtml

And here's another view of the situation from someone who's been over there for quite some time.

Robert Fisk’s World: In Tehran, fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows

It’s said that the cruel ‘Iranian’ cops aren’t Iranian at all. They’re Hizbollah militia

Saturday, 20 June 2009

At around 4.35 last Monday morning, my Beirut mobile phone rang in my Tehran hotel room. "Mr Fisk, I am a computer science student in Lebanon. I have just heard that students are being massacred in their dorms at Tehran University. Do you know about this?" The Fisk notebook is lifted wearily from the bedside table. "And can you tell me why," he continued, "the BBC and other media are not reporting that the Iranian authorities have closed down SMS calls and local mobile phones and have shut down the internet in Tehran? I am learning what is happening only from Twitters and Facebook."

When I arrived at the university, the students were shrieking abuse through the iron gates of the campus. "Massacre, massacre," they cried. Gunfire in the dorms. Correct. Blood on the floor. Correct. Seven dead? Ten dead, one student told me through the fence. We don't know. The cops arrived minutes later amid a shower of stones. Filtering truth out of Tehran these days is as frustrating as it is dangerous.

A day earlier, an Iranian woman muttered to me in an office lift that the first fatality of the street violence was a young student. Was she sure, I asked? "Yes," she said. "I have seen the photograph of his body. It is terrible." I never saw her again. Nor the photograph. Nor had anyone seen the body. It was a fantasy. Earnest reporters check this out – in fact, I have been spending at least a third of my working days in Tehran this past week not reporting what might prove to be true but disproving what is clearly untrue.

Take the call I had five hours before the early-hour phone call, from a radio station in California. Could I describe the street fighting I was witnessing at that moment? Now, it happened that I was standing on the roof of the al-Jazeera office in north Tehran, speaking in a late-night live interview with the Qatar television station. I could indeed describe the scene to California. What I could see were teenagers on motorcycles, whooping with delight as they set light to the contents of a litter bin on the corner of the highway.

Two policemen ran up to them with night-sticks and they raced away on their bikes with shouts of derision. Then the Tehran fire brigade turned up to put out – as one of the firemen later told me with infinite exhaustion – their 79th litter-bin fire of the night. I knew how he felt. A report that Basiji militia had taken over one of Mir-Hossein Mousavi's main election campaign office was a classic. Yes, there were uniformed men in the building – belonging to Mousavi's own hired security company.

Now for the very latest on the fantasy circuit. The cruel "Iranian" cops aren't Iranian at all. They are members of Lebanon's Hizbollah militia. I've had this one from two reporters, three phone callers (one from Lebanon) and a British politician. I've tried to talk to the cops. They cannot understand Arabic. They don't even look like Arabs, let alone Lebanese. The reality is that many of these street thugs have been brought in from Baluch areas and Zobal province, close to the Afghan border. Even more are Iranian Azeris. Their accents sound as strange to Tehranis as would a Belfast accent to a Cornishman hearing it for the first time.

Fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows, but once they are combined and spread with high-speed inaccuracy around the world, they are also lethal. Sham elections, the takeover of party offices, a massacre on a university campus, an imminent coup d'état, the possible overthrow of the whole 30-year old Islamic Republic, the isolation of an entire country as its communications are systematically shut down.

I am reminded of Eisenhower's comment to Foster Dulles when he sent him to London to close down Anthony Eden's crazed war in Suez. The secretary of state's job, Eisenhower instructed Dulles, was to say "Whoah, boy!" Good advice for those who believe in the Twitterers.

But the no-smoke-without-fire brigade has a point. Look at the extraordinary, million-strong march against the regime by Mousavi's supporters on Monday. Even the Iranian press was forced to report it, albeit on inside pages. Yes, the authorities have indeed closed down the local SMS service. Yes, they have slowed down – but not closed – the internet. My Beirut roaming phone now rarely reaches London, although incoming calls arrive – unfortunately for me – round the clock. The Iranian government is obviously trying to interfere with the communications of Mousavi supporters to prevent them from organising further marches. Outrageous in any normal country, perhaps. But this is not a normal country. It is a state as obsessed with the dangers of counter-revolution as the West is obsessed with Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Supreme Leader's speech yesterday was proof of that.

But then we had the famous instruction to journalists in Tehran from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance that they could no longer report opposition street demonstrations. I heard nothing of this. Indeed, the first clue came when I refused to be interviewed by CNN (because their coverage of the Middle East is so biased) and the woman calling me asked: "Why? Are you worried about your safety?" Fisk continued to spend 12 hours a day on the streets. I discovered there was a ban only when I read about it in The Independent. Maybe the Guidance lads and lassies couldn't get through on my mobile. But then, who had cut the phone lines?

We have, in fact, reported all the censorship – of local newspapers as well as communications. The footage of a brutal police force assaulting the political opposition on the streets of the capital has shocked the world. Rightly so, although no one has made comparison with police forces who batter demonstrators on the streets of Western Europe, who beat women with night-sticks, who have kicked over an innocent middle-aged man who immediately suffered a fatal heart attack, who have shot down an innocent passenger on the London Tube... There are special codes of morality to be applied to Middle East countries which definitely must not apply to us.

So let's take a look at those Iranian elections. A fraud, we believe. And I have the darkest doubts about those election figures which gave Mousavi a paltry 33.75 per cent of the vote. Indeed, I and a few Iranian friends calculated that if the government's polling-night statistics were correct, the Iranian election committee would have had to have counted five million votes in just two hours. But our coverage of this poll has been deeply flawed. Most visiting Western journalists stay in hotels in the wealthy, north Tehran suburbs, where tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters live, where it's easy to find educated translators who love Mousavi, where interviewees speak fluent English and readily denounce the spiritual and cultural and social stagnation of Iran's – let us speak frankly – semi-dictatorship.

But few news organisations have the facilities or the time or the money to travel around this 659,278 square-mile country – seven times the size of Britain – and interview even the tiniest fraction of its 71 million people. When I visited the slums of south Tehran on Friday, for example, I found that the number of Ahmadinejad supporters grew as Mousavi's support dribbled away. And I wondered whether, across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iran, a similar phenomenon might be discovered. A Channel 4 television crew, to its great credit, went down to Isfahan and the villages around that beautiful city and came back with a suspicion – unprovable, of course, anecdotal, but real – that Ahmadinejad just might have won the election.

This is also my suspicion: that Ahmadinejad might have scraped in, but not with the huge majority he was awarded. For with their usual, clumsy, autocratic behaviour, the clerics behind the Islamic Republic may have decreed that only a greater majority for the winner could decisively annihilate the reputation of its secular opponents. Perhaps Ahmadinejad got 51 per cent or 52 per cent and this was preposterously increased to 63 per cent. Perhaps Mousavi picked up 44 per cent or 45 per cent. I don't know. The Iranians will never know, even though the Supreme Leader told us yesterday that the incredible 63 per cent was credible. That is Iran's tragedy.

Yes, Ahmadinejad remains for me an outrageous president, one of those cracked political leaders – like Colonel Ghaddafi or Lebanon's General Michel Aoun – which this region sadly throws up, to the curses of its friends and to the delight of its enemies in the West. And the Islamic Republic itself – while it has understandable historical roots in the savagery of the Shah's regime which preceded it, not to mention the bravery of its people – is a dangerously contrived and inherently unfree state which was locked into immobility by an unworldly and now long-dead ayatollah.

And those nuclear arms? How many of us reported a blunt statement which the Supreme Leader and the man who ultimately controls all nuclear development in Iran made on 4 June, just eight days before the elections? "Nuclear weapons," he said in a speech in which he encouraged Iranians to vote, "are religiously forbidden (haram) in Islam and the Iranian people do not have such a weapon. But the Western countries and the US in particular, through false propaganda, claim that Iran seeks to build nuclear bombs – which is totally false..."

There are few provable assurances in the Middle East, often few facts and a lot of lies. Dangers are as thick as snakes in the desert. As I write, I have just received another call from Lebanon. "Mr Fisk, a girl has been shot in Iran. I have a video from the internet. You can see her body..." And you know what? I think he might be right.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-in-tehran-fantasy-and-reality-make-uneasy-bedfellows-1710762.html

There's always more going on than meets the eye. The pattern is repeating yet again and it always points to the forces of the Secret or Shadow Government that really rules the world, the rest is mere puppet show.

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

Mousavi's Twitter page:

http://twitter.com/mousavi1388

Mousavi's Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/mousavi

 

[Richard]

How the Russians can support this regime is beyond belief, but I bet this doesn't stop Obama.....

Bring back the Shah.....

 

[PeekyBooBoo]

How the Russians can support this regime is beyond belief,

Add to the mix the time Al-Zawahiri spent in Russian prisons some years ago.. and how he was 'suddenly set free''......

Just about the time AQ acquired some suitcase nukies... and AQ decided that the USA was their biggest enemy and needed to be wiped out...

Interesting indeed how Russia can support these people.....





So they can do Russia's dirty work..

 

[Red Baron]

Getting Ugly!

At least 19 people have died after a day of severe unrest in Tehran, hospital sources tell CNN. Unconfirmed reports put it as high as 150.

BULLETIN -- CNN: AT LEAST 19, UP TO 150 KILLED IN UNREST IN TEHRAN TODAY.

From the BNO Newsroom.
TILBURG, the Netherlands (BNO NEWS) -- "From the moment the polls opened as part of Iran's presidential election on June 12, 2009, BNO News has been covering the results and its aftermath non-stop.
From the first report, filed just 6 minutes after polls opened, to our alert announcing that polls had closed, to the first reports of unrest as election results were being announced, BNO News kept you up-to-date with continuing coverage from all sides of the story.
Eight days later, as we continue to cover this developing story, the fierce discussion over the results of the presidential vote seems far from over. Daily we see images of mass protests in the streets of Tehran and clashes between pro- and anti-government supporters.
A number of our readers have told us they feel we should not report on news released via either the government or Iranian media, mostly because they feel that, in their opinion, this is false information spread by the Iranian government. Others have encouraged us to report on vague "witness" reports which are often impossible or extremely difficult to independently confirm as we are not inside Iran. A lot of these "reports" are spreading over social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. While a portion of those reports turn out to be accurate, a large part of them turn out as to be simply false rumors.
BNO News believes the media is here to provide you the most accurate information as possible, from both sides of the story. We cannot afford to report on rumors without any credible information to back it up with. The government restrictions on the news media make it even more difficult for journalists to accurately report on the situation, with foreign journalists banned from reporting from the streets. Also, complex stories as this unleash a lot of emotions from both sides of the crisis, as we also saw during the Israel-Gaza conflict.
BNO News is doing all it can to provide its readers with the most accurate information as possible, both from the Iranian government as well as the anti-government supporters. We are not here to judge on who is right or who won the presidential elections: we present you with the most accurate information as soon as possible, around the clock.
Further, BNO News will continue to identify Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian President. Mir-Hossein Mousavi will be identified as either the Iranian opposition leader or as a former/defeated presidential candidate. This is not to pick any sides: the official results as released by the government show that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president on June 12. BNO News is not in the position to declare these official results (read: official) as invalid or simply ignore them.
We hope you will continue to enjoy our news service and understand that our policy is to report from both sides as objective as possible. BNO News has a team working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week to bring you the best news as possible.
We also welcome any comments you may have at comments@bnonews.com ."

Michael van Poppel​

Stay with bnonews.com and "BreakingNews" on Twitter for the latest up-to-the-minute news updates.

 

[Spirit Of Truth]

Very ugly...

*PERSONALLY CONFIRMED FROM #IRAN * Tanks have rolled in Tehran. In Azadi SQ

RT Report: Tanks Rolling In The City of Tehran Basij Going Door To Door Beating & Killing (Confirmed)

 

[gdpetti]

But it isn't 'new'... Hamas got started the same way.. with the founder 'released' from prison etc... another Mossad setup same as we here in the States are known for doing for many decades now... as we usually invade countries whose dictators we setup and supported for years... Saddam, Shah, Marcos, Noriega, Somoza.... etc, etc. All 'imperial' type governments do the same thing because the are all puppets to the same master... the SG types behind the scenes.

Here's another look by Fisk at this Iranian situation as it unfolds and if the pattern remains on course, the puppets in charge will never 'wake up' and realize they've been 'played'... fair use http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...-battle-for-the-islamic-republic-1711554.html

Robert Fisk: Battle for the Islamic Republic

Iran's Supreme Leader and its officially elected president are terrified by the spectre of counter-revolution

Sunday, 21 June 2009

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

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

Now that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has placed himself shoulder to shoulder with his officially elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the very existence of the Islamic regime may now be questioned openly in a nation ever more divided between reformists and those who insist on maintaining the integrity of the 1979 revolution. Had Khamenei chosen a middle ground, some small compromises towards the countless millions – for in the election, it appears, they were indeed uncounted – who oppose Ahmadinejad, then he might have remained a neutral father-figure. Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters had religiously – in the most literal sense of the word – refused to criticise the Supreme Leader or the existence of the Islamic Republic during last week's street demonstrations

But reacting as all revolutionaries do even decades after they have come to power – for the spectre of counter-revolution remains with them until death – Khamenei chose to paint Ahmadinejad's political opponents as potential mercenaries, spies and agents of foreign powers. Treason in the Islamic Republic is, of course, punishable by death. But Khamenei's political alliance with his very odd and hallucinatory president may have sprung from fear as much as anger.

During his Friday prayers address at Tehran University, the Supreme Leader mentioned the dangers of a "velvet" revolution and it is clear that the regime has been deeply concerned by the democratic overthrow of Eastern European and west Asian governments since the fall of the Soviet Union. People power – through which the 1979 revolution was ultimately successful – is a devastating weapon (albeit the only one) in the armoury of a serious but unarmed political opposition.

In the aftermath of the Ahmadinejad "success" at the polls, his supporters were handing out leaflets condemning the secular revolutions of Eastern Europe, and their content says much about the anxieties of Iran's clerical leadership. One of them was entitled: "The system of trying to topple an Islamic Republic in a 'velvet revolution'." It then described how it believes Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and other nations won their freedom.

"'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.

And here's a note from the sidelines in this farce...

CIA has Distributed 400 Million Dollars Inside Iran to Evoke a Revolution

Unknown
Pakalert Wordpress
Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:54 UTC

Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.

[YouTube video link]

In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran.

"The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election," he added.

Pakistan's former army chief of joint staff went on to say that the US wanted to disturb the situation in Iran and bring to power a pro-US government.

He congratulated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re- election for the second term in office, noting that Pakistan relationship with Iran has improved during his 4-year presidency.

"Ahmadinejad's re-election is a decisive point in regional policy and if Pakistan and Afghanistan unite with Iran, the US has to leave the area, especially the occupied Afghanistan," Beig added.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/1...ion-Dollars-Inside-Iran-to-Evoke-a-Revolution

$400 million? That's chump change these days. See the pattern? And this is just the distraction necessary to keep the political puppets and all us 'sheep' busy so we don't look behind that curtain in this land of Oz.. and never even consider taking a look at that Wicked Witch and her little helpers. It isn't called 'Purgatory' for nothing. We each have our little parts to play.