June 30, 2009
Has the CIA Been Caught in Iran's Cookie Jar, Again?
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand
By ESAM AL-AMIN
Only weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Charles Krauthammer, the
Washington Post columnist and mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, revealed the
target list of the Bush administration as it set out on its post-9/11 war
footing. The list included six nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya,
and the Palestinian Authority. While the priority allotted to Afghanistan and
subsequently Iraq was not in dispute, the remaining order was in flux.
Israel was given a free hand in dealing with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
President George W. Bush completely shunned and isolated PA President Yasser
Arafat, until he died under siege in November 2004. Former Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon was allowed to use brutal military tactics to crush the
Al-Aqsa intifada, reoccupying much of the West Bank, and setting up hundreds of
military checkpoints devastating Palestinian life and what remained of the PA.
By January 2002, the Afghan campaign was over as far as Bush was concerned, and
preparations for the invasion of Iraq had begun in earnest. Dozens of books
have been written explaining in elaborate detail the schemes, plots and
deceptions by the neocons for regime change in Iraq. In fact, Washington Post
associate editor Bob Woodward documented the events and the roles of senior
administration officials in a series of books.
As Libyan Leader Muammar Qadhafi watched the toppling of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein
in the spring of 2003, he initiated contact with London and then Washington,
trying to identify the conditions needed, in an attempt to avoid Saddam’s fate.
By January 2004, Libya agreed to all their conditions: accepting responsibility
for the Lockerbie bombing, paying over $3 billion in reparations, signing the
Chemical Weapons Ban treaty, and perhaps most importantly, giving up its
nuclear program, including handing over all equipment purchased over two
decades to the U.S.
On the other hand, Syria faced economic pressure and diplomatic isolation,
coupled with veiled and direct threats. By April 2005, Syria withdrew its
troops from Lebanon after a 29-year presence. Although American pressure
succeeded in forcing Damascus to withdraw from Lebanon, Syria remained a target
for regime change within the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment. Its
alleged role in supporting the Iraqi resistance against the American
occupation, as well as hosting the headquarters of the major Palestinian
resistance groups represented its major “sins.”
But the toughest nut to crack among all these targets has always been Iran.
Ironically, Iran’s strategic situation vastly improved following the U.S.
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the overthrow of those regimes. By 2004,
Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq were in control of the government, even as the
country was still under American occupation. Further, Iran exercised tremendous
influence with Muqtada Sadr’s militia, the main Shiite opposition to the
occupation in the streets.
After Bush’s second inauguration in January 2005, the National Security Council
had an intense internal debate regarding Iran. The conflict did not center on
whether there should be a regime change in Iran, but rather, whether to employ
soft or hard power to achieve it. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advocated a series of escalating military strikes,
while former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair called for the use of soft power. Eventually, the
president’s military advisors ended the debate when they cautioned Bush that
with the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, engaging Iran militarily
would be highly risky and draining for the U.S. armed forces.
Between 2005-2009, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $400 million for
State Department programs designed to “promote democracy,” among other means of
employing soft power in Iran. This was implemented, in part, by funding the
activities of Iranian dissident groups. By 2008, Congress included money in the
budget that would specifically “go to software programmers to develop programs
that thwart internet firewalls erected by the government of Iran, ” and for a
program to “provide anti-censorship tools and services for the advancement of
information freedom in closed societies.”
On May 24, 2007, Brian Ross, ABC News’s Chief Investigative Correspondent broke
a story about the elements of soft power utilized by the CIA and authorized by
Bush. “Current and former intelligence officials told ABC News that the CIA has
received secret presidential approval to mount what is known as a black or
covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime, and it is underway,” he
reported. He then added, “Those officials describe the Iranian plan as
non-lethal involving a campaign of coordinated propaganda broadcasts, placement
of negative newspaper articles, the manipulation of Iran’s currency and
international banking transactions.” The ABC correspondent stated, “Propaganda
was one of the most important tools utilized by the CIA.”
Three days later, the British Daily Telegraph, detailed CIA plans for “a
propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually
topple” the regime. The report said that the presidential finding gave the U.S.
spy agency, for the first time, “the right to collect intelligence
domestically, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many
Iranian exiles and émigrés within the US.” In the report, an intelligence
official was quoted as saying, "Iranians in America have links with their
families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information. "
Part of the CIA program, as reported by ABC News and the Daily Telegraph, was
“supplying money and weapons, to the militant group, Jundullah, which has
conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan.” Since 2007, Iranian
officials have announced the capture of dozens of members of violent groups,
allegedly tied to the CIA, that carried out bombings around the nation
including one that killed 20 people only two weeks prior to the recent
elections, on May 30, 2009. The following day, another bombing took place at a
campaign office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Further, about two thousand militia members of the Mujahideen Khalq
Organization, a violent group seeking to forcibly topple the Iranian regime,
have been given sanctuary in Iraq by the American occupation authority,
although the group has appeared on the State Department’s list of international
terrorist organizations since 1997. The report also quoted Mark Fitzpatrick, a
former senior State Department official, now with the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies, as saying that industrial
sabotage was the strategy of choice to combat Iran's nuclear program "without
military action, without fingerprints on the operation."
The Telegraph report also stated that the CIA was allowed to supply
“communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work
together and bypass Internet censorship” by the regime. The use of this
equipment has surfaced prominently in the recent standoff between the
government and the opposition in Iran. It should be noted though that this
destabilization program by the CIA is totally separate from the State
Department’s $400 million program, and is being funded through the CIA budget.
Thus, since 2006, the total figure for Iran’s destabilization program could
have easily exceeded $1 billion.
During the 1980s, the U.S. Government, and particularly the CIA, was very
active in fomenting rebellions, mass unrest and protest movements in Eastern
Europe. These efforts have been documented in numerous books and biographies.
Former National Security Advisor during the Carter Administration, Dr. Zbigniew
Brzezinski, admitted as much in a CNN interview on June 21, 2009.
Commenting on the 1980 founding of the Solidarity movement during the Communist
era in Poland, he told his host, “I was up to my ears in dealing with it and
trying to steer it and manipulate it.” When asked about regime change in Iran,
Brzezinski answered that regime change is desired because it would provide a
“greater accommodation” to the U.S., but it requires, among other things,
“intelligent manipulation.”
On June 28, CNN program host Fareed Zakaria put a very telling question to Bob
Baer, a retired twenty-one year CIA veteran, who served as the top operative in
the Middle East for many years. He asked, “Isn’t it true that we do [try to
destabilize the regime]? Don’t we fund various groups inside and outside Iran
that do try to destabilize the government?” Baer answered, “ Oh absolutely,”
then added, “There is a covert action program against Iran where the [U.S.]
military is running; a covert action against Iran from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The overt involvement of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other
U.S. Government-funded NGOs in supporting many of the groups and dissidents
that led the colored and flowering “revolutions,” is also well documented. The
Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia), Tulip (Kyrgyzstan) , Cedar (Lebanon), Saffron
(Burma) and now Green (Iran) “revolutions” have involved mostly pro-Western
groups or Western-favored individuals against nationalists.
The Guardian claimed that USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the
International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for
International Affairs, and Freedom House were directly involved in supporting
these revolutions. The Washington Post and the New York Times also reported
substantial Western involvement in some of these events.
According to Saeed Behbahani, a fierce critic of the current Iranian regime,
and founder of Mihan TV outside Washington D.C., the American administration
exchanged messages with the campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi in early June. He
claims that, at that time, an unidentified Iranian-American businessman, who is
close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met with Mousavi’s campaign
manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai.
The following day, Khazali was prominently interviewed and hailed by the Voice
of America’s Persian language broadcast. The VOA claims that its broadcast
reaches 15 million Iranians. Other Iranian opposition groups complained that
the VOA had adopted a policy of supporting the reformist candidates, and had
disregarded those who called for a boycott of the elections to deny the regime
legitimacy.
The role of the Western media in the few weeks before and in the aftermath of
the elections is illuminating. These same outlets traditionally act as enablers
to Washington’s agenda, a role notoriously on display in the lead-up to the
Iraq war.
In November 2005, Egypt held elections for its parliament. The elections were
held in three stages so they could be easily managed by the regime. When the
opposition led by the Kefaya (Enough) Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood
scored impressive gains in the first stage, the government initiated a
crackdown by beating and arresting the opposition candidates and organizers.
Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in protest of the government’s
intimidation tactics and manipulation of the elections. Western TV networks
provided scant coverage of these events, and never covered the massive protests
or crackdown by government authorities.
Furthermore, earlier this year, during Israel’s 22-day onslaught on Gaza,
millions of people around the world, including tens of thousands in the U.S.,
protested daily the brutality of the Israeli military machine against the
defenseless civilians. Despite the fact that over 1,400 people were killed and
over 5,000 injured - one third of whom were children- there was hardly the
wall-to-wall coverage given to the protests in Iran.
The biased performance of the mainstream media in reporting the Iranian
elections can be illustrated through the coverage of the over-votes. Soon after
the elections, it was reported that a major proof of fraud was that the
participation rate exceeded 100 percent in many districts. The clear
implication was that the authorities were so sloppy in their election tampering
that they simply stuffed the ballot boxes.
Had media outlets consulted any experts on Iranian elections, they would have
discovered the simple explanation. In Iran, there is no requirement to vote in
a designated district. People do not carry a voter registration card like
American citizens. Each voter has a voting book allowing him or her to vote
anywhere in the country. After voting, the book is stamped and the index finger
is inked to ensure that no one can vote more than once. This fact was not
unique to this election. In many previous elections, many districts had a high
turnout when compared to the number of registered voters in that district
because many Iranians had voted there while traveling or during their summer
vacations.
The example of the over-votes, not only demonstrates gross negligence by the
media, but also deliberate deception. On June 22, Abbas Kadkhodaei, a
spokesperson for Iran’s Guidance Council (GC), the official body in charge of
investigating all 646 complaints filed by the defeated candidates, held a press
conference. He gave details about the complaints under investigation by the
Council.
Kadkhodaei explained that the main complaint filed by Mousavi related to the
elections was that the number of over-votes existed in as many as 170 cities,
potentially affecting more votes than the margin between the top two
candidates. Kadkhodaei then presented the GC’s preliminary findings, which
showed that such over-votes existed (as they had existed in previous
elections), but in no more than 50 cities across Iran, affecting no more than
three million votes. In other words, there were no more than three million
voters who had voted outside their districts. He emphasized that, with 11
million votes between the top two candidates, even if all three million votes
were to be excluded (although there is no valid reason to do that), clearly the
outcome of the elections would not be affected.
But within minutes the German News Agency followed by Reuters, reported that
the GC “admitted” that there were an excess of three million votes in 50
cities, leaving the listener and reader with the impression that these were
fraudulent votes, rather than valid votes for people voting outside their
districts like the spokesman explained. This report was instantly placed on the
front pages of every major Western news media websites. The deception continued
and made the front page of every major Western paper the following day.
Opposition groups have relied on Internet communication technology such as text
messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and political blogs during their
protests. In fact, Secretary Clinton took the unusual step in asking Twitter to
change its maintenance schedule to accommodate Iran’s time zone and allow
opposition groups the ability to utilize it. What is striking is that most of
the postings were in English, not Persian, begging the question: who was the
target audience of these tweets? Similarly, why were the protesters holding
signs saying, “Where is my vote?” in English, rather than the language spoken
by the voters of Iran?
But a study by the website, www.chartingstocks. net, concluded that during
three days after the election, the overwhelming majority of Tweets (over
30,000), were manipulated through a handful of accounts; all created within one
day of the elections on June 13. It is interesting to note that only 0.6
percent of Twitter accounts are used by Iranians (as compared to 44 percent by
Americans).
In a recent interview with the BBC on June 19, former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, the foreign policy icon and ultimate insider, exposed Washington’s
deep involvement in the Iranian affair.
Dr. Kissinger said, “If it turns out that it is not possible for a government
to emerge in Iran that can deal with itself as a nation rather than as a cause,
then we have a different situation.” Translation: if our preferred candidate
did not emerge a winner after using all our soft power… He continued, “Then we
may conclude that we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside,”
Translation: then the U.S. (or perhaps Israel) may have to resort to hard
power, meaning military strikes.
He then added, “But if I understand the president correctly, he does not want
to do this as a visible intervention in the current crisis.” Translation:
Whatever President Barack Obama is doing in Iran, he wants to make sure that
Washington’s hand is invisible.
Esam Al-Amin can be reached at: alamin1...@gmail. com
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