While I do not condone the violence being committed in the streets of Tehran, I cannot help but question what role Western intelligence agencies and their proxies are playing in the protests and chaos that has erupted since the election results were first announced. Obviously the United States and the British have said that they have nothing to do with the protests in Tehran but lying about clandestine activities would really be par for the course at this point.
If we summon the courage to look back at America's clandestine activities over the past century destabilizing and supplanting governments around the world (many of them democratically elected) I'm sure that at the time spokespeople said the same thing and pretended that the activities that were taking place in foreign capitals were organic movements with no help or direction from CIA agents and assets.
Sadly, violence in Iran is exactly what the CIA and the Western governments would love to see, and if it can look like angry students calling for democracy then all the better. Therefore it is completely understandable, while not pardonable, that the Iranian authorities would see the present demonstrations and protests as simply an arm of the American intelligence machine, seeking to destabilize their government in ways outlined by leaked memos over a year ago.
So while Ahmedinejad's government may be paranoid, that doesn't mean MI6 and the CIA aren't out to get him.
I'm still skeptical, I think that the last thing the United States wants in the midst of a world economic recession and two extremely unpopular wars on each side of a Iran is for an outgrowth of popular democratic sentiment. While the idiots on our TV's proclaim them as pro-western democratic uprisings I think the people in reality want US interference as much as a case of the hemorrhoids. Moreover the US's fragile peace in Iraq is dependent on paying off the Sunni resistance as well as tacit Iranian support of the occupation and establishment of a Shia majority gov't. While there is a chance that sowing instability in the Iranian regime could spin out in favor a pro-America puppet regime, given Iran's history with the US I don't think that's likely. What would be really bad for the US, would be a legitimate democratic uprising (if this is one) that is anti-imperialist (not using anti-imperialism to stoke nationalism as the gov't now does). The ramifications of this could be extremely bad for the US as it would be fairly symbolic across the repressive regimes, from Egypt to Iraq.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for the people of Iran what America needs and what her intelligence agencies accomplish have often been very divergent outcomes. With Osama Bin Laden still loose and Afghanistan turning into a quagmire back in 2003, America didn't need another armed conflict, or a destabilizing regime change in what was, for all its faults, a very stable country in an unstable region. But that's exactly what America's actions produced.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what the people want, and how they feed into the actions of agent provocateurs is also something that, if history is an teacher, can be chasms apart. Even though a bunch of people decide to march peacefully for a good cause, they can easily be excited into committing stupid and self-defeating acts (vandalism, rock throwing, etc) by a few instigators who are working against them.