Posted on 01/05/2010 4:23:18 PM PST by DGHoodini
It's being tweeted that the Iranian Amb to Norway has resigned and is seeking asylum in Oslo. So far I have not seen it in the MSM. It's beeing tweeted that it is been published in a Norwegian paper. Anyone read the language?
Things must be gettin real bad if Ambassadors are cutting and running, as one person posted.
Looks like a positive development. Free and Secular Persia! I like the sound of it already!
Iransk diplomat sier opp (from Norwegian TV)
Now if someone could just translate this, maybe we could figure it all out. All I can make of it is “Iran diplomat”, but I don’t know what he did.
This is excellent news. Step by step the Tehran dictatorship will eventually crumble.
Thanks for the ping!
Decided to Google a little history. Checked out the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddeq by the US CIA and British MI6 in 1953, at the beginning of the Eisenhower Admin with Allen Dulles (CIA) and John Foster Dulles, (State). Apparently the British who had controlled IRanian oil since 1913 were not willing to do a 50/50 share deal as Aramco had agreed to with the Saudis.
Mosaddeq was elected PM in parliament by 79 to 12. Apparently the Shah was afraid of his popularity, and the clerics did not like that he was a secularist. So what would have happened if we had not interfered with what was then a lot more of a Free and Secular Persia? See detailed story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh
The Shi’ite is hitting the fan!
Wikipedia is written up by Mossadegh supporters not his opponents so perhaps you should read the following articles found on AntiMullah to get the full and ACCURATE picture:
In the search box on http://antimullah.com I typed in “Mossadegh” and got a bunch of articles. Here are the most pertinent AND informative ones. GOOD READS if you want to learn the real facts.
In direct response to your question, here is:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2008/03/bilingual-what-if-mossadegh-had.html
AND as background read this:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2009/05/crash-burn-of-royal-iran-part-two.html
and related:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2007/12/truth-behind-cia-coup-against-mossadegh.html
some more insight:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2008/02/soviet-putin-inching-closer-to.html
and this:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2008/04/russian-troops-in-iran-gog-magog.html
also:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2008/02/did-it-my-way.html
and this: (includes Farsi video with English subtitles).
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2008/02/democratic-islam-is-idiotic-impossible.html
and:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2007/04/wake-up-america-stop-your-islamic-enemy.html
lol
I think there are several dimensions to the "Mossadegh situation" - I'm neither a fan nor an opponent of Mossadegh. Although, so far, I believe he initially, back then, was supported by certain Muslim clerics & Communists in Iran, and then rejected. In fairness, I'd add: being a good person does not make a good or clever Politician.
I'll read your links. Thanks for info.
had a chance to read the latest Stratfor analysis of the Iranian protests? They don’t seem to think the opposition is moving to co-opt the necessary security forces to topple the regime -
Posted for fair use from Stratfor via Real Clear World.....
http://www.realclearworld.com/articl...ion_97463.html
January 5, 2010
Tehran Imbroglio: No Green Revolution
By Stratfor
THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT LASHED OUT today against the West’s perceived support of anti-government protests by arresting foreign nationals allegedly involved in the Dec. 27 Ashura protests, and publishing a list of 60 organizations waging “soft war” against Tehran. Meanwhile, Shirin Ebadi - an Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner - argued in her interview Monday with CNN that the Iranian government’s efforts to suppress demonstrations were failing and would only increase and radicalize the opposition, thus sowing seeds for the government’s downfall. This largely conforms to the analysis of most Western media and policy analysts, who see the ingredients for the downfall of the clerical regime in Iran as clearly arrayed; most believe it is only a matter of time before Tehran sees a regime change.
The picture painted by Western media and governments is, however, one that STRATFOR has refused to complacently accept.
The imbroglio on the ground in Tehran is perceived as a continuation of the “color revolutions” that began in the former Soviet Union, of which the Ukrainian 2004 “Orange Revolution” is a prime example. All the elements of a “color revolution” seem to be in play in Iran: a pariah regime maintains power despite what appears to be voter fraud while a supposedly liberal/pro-Western opposition launches a series of protests and marches that only accentuate the regime’s instability and unpopularity. Keeping with the latest fashion, the Iranian movement has even picked a color: green.
Western commentators who think they are witnessing regime change in Tehran could make an even more prescient parallel with the toppling of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the so-called “Bulldozer Revolution” in October 2000. In late 2000, Milosevic’s Serbia was a pariah state that refused to budge over its crackdown in Kosovo in much the same way that Tehran refuses to budge on the issue of its nuclear program.
But if Iran today is to be compared to Serbia in 2000, then the regime change would have happened immediately following the June elections when protests reached their greatest numbers and the government was caught off guard by the virulence of the disturbance. Instead, a much more realistic (and poignant) analogy would be Serbia in 1991, when Milosevic faced his first serious threat - one he deftly avoided with a mix of brutality and co-option.
“The Western media confused liberal, educated, pro-Western university students in the streets of Belgrade for a mass movement against Milosevic...much like they do with Iran today.”
The March 1991 protests against Milosevic focused on the regime’s control of the country’s media. Opposition leader Vuk Draskovic - a moderate nationalist writer turned politician - was still smarting over his defeat in the presidential elections in December 1990, in which his party received no media access to Milosevic-controlled television. The March 9 protests quickly took on a life of their own. The assembly of nearly 150,000 people in Belgrade’s main square turned into a full-scale anti-Milosevic riot, prompting a brutal police crackdown that led to the Serbian military being called to secure the city’s streets. The next day Belgrade university students took their turn, but were again suppressed by the police.
Milosevic’s crackdown dampened enthusiasm for further violent challenges to his rule. Each time he was challenged, Milosevic retained power through a mix of restrictions (which were most severe in 1991) and piecemeal concessions that only marginally eroded his power. Meanwhile, Western media throughout the 1990s confused liberal, educated, pro-Western university students in the streets of Belgrade for a mass movement against Milosevic, much like they did with the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and with Iran today.
But ultimately Milosevic stayed in power for two main reasons: he had ample domestic, popular support in Serbia outside of Belgrade, and he had the full loyalty of security forces in Serbia at the time: interior ministry troops and their various paramilitary organizations.
Serbian opposition eventually employed two strategies that toppled Milosevic: co-option and compromise with elements of Milosevic’s regime. Co-option meant convincing the industrial workers and miners of Central Serbia, as well as ardent Serbian nationalists, that protesting against Milosevic meant more than being a university student who discussed Plato in the morning and marched against the government in the evening. Highly organized student opposition group Otpor (”Resistance” in Serb) made it their central mission to co-opt everyone from labor union members to nationalist soccer hooligans to the cause. This also meant fielding a candidate in 2000 elections - firmly nationalist Vojislav Kostunica - that could appeal to more than just liberal Belgrade and European-oriented northern Serbia (the Vojvodina region).
Meanwhile, compromise meant negotiating with pseudo security forces - essentially organized crime elements running Milosevic’s paramilitaries such as the notorious “Red Brigades” - and promising them a place in the future pro-Democratic and pro-Western Serbia. These compromises ultimately came to haunt the nascent pro-Western Belgrade, but they worked in October 2000.
These Serbian opposition successes stand in stark contrast to Iran today. In Iran, we have seen no concrete evidence that the opposition is willing or able to co-opt Iranians of different ideological leanings. As long as this aspect is missing, security elements will refuse to negotiate with the opposition since they will perceive the regime as still having an upper hand. Furthermore, security elements will ultimately not switch sides if they don’t have assurances that in the post-clerical Iran they will retain their prominent place or at least will escape persecution. This was the “deal with the Devil” that the Serbian opposition was ready to make in October 2000. But in Iran, at this moment, a deal with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their paramilitary Basij forces is not possible.
Ultimately, Serbia in 2000 was also surrounded by a different geopolitical situation. Isolated in the Balkans with no allies - not even Russia, which at the time was weak and dealing with the aftershocks of the 1998 economic crisis - Western pressure exerted on Belgrade was inordinately greater than the pressure the United States and its allies can exert on Iran today. It is further highly unlikely that a military strike against Iran would have the same effect that NATO’s three-month air campaign against Serbia did in 1999. The scale of the two efforts is vastly different. Serbia was an easy target surrounded by NATO states, while Iran can retaliate in a number of ways against the United States and its allies, particularly by threatening global energy trade.
Evidence from the ground in Iran indicates that the ruling regime may undergo a certain level of calibration - especially as different factions within the clerical regime maneuver to profit from the imbroglio - but it is hardly near its end. The continuation of protests is not evidence of their success, much as the continuation of protests against Milosevic throughout the 1990s was not evidence that he was losing power. Milosevic not only held out for nearly 10 years after the initial 1991 protests, but he also managed to be quite a thorn in the side of the West, taking charge in numerous regional conflicts and going toe-to-toe with NATO.
We may later come to see in the Iranian protests of June and December 2009 the seeds of what might eventually topple the regime. But if we learn anything from the Serbian example, it is that a regime that survives a challenge - as Milosevic did in 1991 - lives to tough out a number of fights down the road.
A Stratfor Intelligence Report.
Syrian? You’re kidding, right? I want to see the Persianinfluence re-emerge in Iran. now *they* were some serious traders!
A free and peaceful country will be a difficult ride for what is now Iran, and that country, as such, might not survive intact.
http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iran_ethnoreligious_distribution_2004.jpg
(CIA Factbook data)
Population: 66,429,284
Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1%.
Of these, the problematic ethnic minorities are first, the Iranian Kurds, adjacent to Iraqi Kurdistan, who are itching to form a “Greater Kurdistan”, which would also want to tear a chunk out of both Syria and Turkey. This even makes the Turks nervous, so it is a serious possibility. Iraqi Kurdistan is currently undergoing major economic growth, which could pay for it.
Second are the Balochs, whose territory is divided between Iran and Persia, and are a pain in the rear end to both. Balochistan is also mineral rich, and Pakistani Balochistan has the strategic port of Gwadar. So it would not be unthinkable that Pakistan might make a grab for Iranian Balochistan if the opportunity presented itself.
Third is Iranian Arab Khuzestan. This is closer to Iraq, ethnically similar, and has most of Iran’s oil, as well as its strategic location on the Persian Gulf. The rest of the world would be more than happy for it to be part of a stable Iraq, than a restive Iran.
Then, just looking at Persia proper, as a subset of Iran, it also has its fair share of bitter schisms. The upper classes, the “old money”, used to be Zoroastrians, not Muslims, and the Muslims have been persecuting the hell out of them, and they want payback, and likely some still have the money to pay for it.
Then, among the Muslims, the split between the middle and upper classes, who are educated and sophisticated, and the working classes is pretty intense. The middle classes revel in Europeanism and European modernity, fashion and entertainment. And the working classes resent this and enjoy seeing it taken away from them.
Then there are some wild cards. For example, the parliament has a group of physicists, who are also religious extremists. The Mullahs and the Republican Guards have become little more than a criminal gang looting the country, except for Nutjob, whose little band of true believers want to destroy the world starting with Iran.
Put it all together, and it’s anybody’s guess what will happen. After the revolution, I remember Iranians flooding a major university here, then subdividing into a dozen bitter factions. Maintaining that much argument between themselves, on the far side of the world, takes a lot of divisiveness that does not bode well for Iran.
Get me off this Damn List!!!!!
I am not running any list you may think you’re on. Perhaps someone just added you to their own list of people who appear to be of like mind. I jhave nothing to do with it.
Do one of you have freeper “gitmogrunt” on a ping list? He has asked to be taken off, but he directed his reply to the OP.
Thanks.
Still good news.
Bill Krystol on FOX Sunday Morning predicted the fall of the Mullahs/Ahmadinejad regime. I pray he’s correct.
OY! It gives me a headache to see how messed up this country is.
Things are never as bad as they seem on the surface. Or good. Iran has a lot of powerful villains, and determined heroes. Much is based on who does what at the right time, if they have internal and external support, and more hidden variables than you could shake a stick at.
Look at the occupation of Iraq. At times, the US battles Sunnis, subsets of Shiites, Baathists, Gangsters and Smugglers, Iranian Quds Force, al-Qaeda from at least half a dozen countries, and possibly others.
Iran is facing much the same, but with its own variables, and without an all-powerful US military to keep the various factions in carrot and stick check.
Even if the Mullahs lose their nerve and bolt the country, to live off all the loot they have stolen for years, it will likely just leave a power vacuum that who knows who will try to fill. There are still lots of ex-patriot factions out there as well, who will want back in to the game.
We can but hope for the best, which means a peaceful, democratic Iran.
I have just read your first link re Mossadegh and want to give a preliminary response before I leave for work so as to promote more discussion to enjoy tonight before bedtime.
I pointed out in my Comment that one problem was that the British would not go for a 50/50 split on the oil as Aramco had done with the Saudi’s. This problem of British greed seems to be substantiated in FARS first link at anti-mullah. I was somewhat aware of a Communist problem, but did not know the extent. However, I am now reading Spy Catcher by Peter Wright, former Assistant Director of MI5. He goes into great detail about the Communist/Soviet penetration of British security/intelligence/research/diplomatic agencies. Now I will have to reread that with this additional input. I think that it is quite possible that Carter was duped by the British to support their own aims. There is a whole lot here to think about and question.
Some of my thoughts and questions: What might have happened in Iran if the British had been fairer in their oil dealings in the 50’s? To what degree might British intransigence in oil negotiations been influenced by Soviet influence in Britain to push Iran toward Russia? How much was Britain implicated in Carter’s behavior toward the Shah? Does anyone have any information on the degree to which the Shah’s land reforms would have gored the mullahs’ ox? Would it have been like when Henry VIII went Protestant and redistributed Catholic holdings to his chronies and supporters for political gain and power? I’ll probably think of more questions while at work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
