UNREST IN IRAN

UNREST IN IRAN

Many of those who protest the Liberation of Iraq from an Evil Dictator say that we are squandering resources that could otherwise be used in the Global War on Terror. Many say that we wasted time, treasure, and lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They rightly point to Iran as the principal “bad actor” in the region as the fund Terrorist Organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and have been implicated in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/lock-j15.shtml ). Doomsayers have even opined that Tehran is infiltrating agents into Shiite Iraq in order to engineer a take over once the United Sates is gone.

But both the doomsayers and protesters ignore the fact that the Iranian borders with Iraq and Afghanistan work in two directions and having Special Operations troops and clandestine operatives from two nations, the US and Britain, puts Iran on the front line of the Global War on Terror. Having an US ally on it’s northern border, Turkey, helps a bit too.

Let’s examine some possibilities. One of the primary missions of US Army special Forces is to identify, train, and support indigenous forces in a combat zone to gather intelligence and foment rebellion. Since the end of the First gulf War, the United States has had both a significant Special Operations presence, and a good ally in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdistan, like most of the Arab ethnic groups, were fractured when France and Great Britain partitioned the Middle East after WW1. They have long sought to reunite their homeland. The US has been successful thus far in keeping Iraqi Kurds from joining with those in Turkey in order to preserve the alliance we have with them. We have no such qualms, however about alienating Iran by encouraging Kurdish Nationalism in Iran.

Similarly, much has been made of that fact that south eastern Iraq and Iran are both Shiite populations, but few who point this out mention that there is an ethnic barrier to unification. Iraqi Shiites are Arabic, and Iranian Sunnis are Persian. If we’ve learned anything about the Middle East, it’s that ethic AND religious differences are more than enough of a reason to start tossing high velocity metal towards one another.

So, while the MSM focuses on bad news coming from Iraq and Iran, and forecasts doom for our endeavors, much of the real situation gets unreported. For instance:

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=76956&d=28&m=1&y=2006


Iran: Threat of Ethnic DissentAmir Taheri
Anxious to cultivate his populist image, Iran’s new President Ahmadinejad has promised to hold the monthly sessions of his Cabinet in provincial capitals rather than Tehran. Now, however, it seems as if, for reasons of security, he may not be able to take his road show to all of Iran’s 30 provinces. A session scheduled to take place in the province of Kurdistan last month had to be rescheduled at the last minute, supposedly because the relevant documents were not ready in time. And last week the president was forced to cancel another session, due to take place in Ahvaz, capital of the Khuzistan province, ostensibly for bad weather.


In both cases, however, factors other than bureaucratic delay and bad weather may have been at work.


The article goes on to outline that there has been violence in Kurdistan since June, 2005 and in Iran's Khuzestan Province, mainly in the city of Ahfaz since April. To amplify:

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/04/ca90306f-22a2-4db7-947d-464ed56495c0.html

Washington, 18 April 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Rioting ethnic Arabs in the city of Ahvaz in southwestern Iran's Khuzestan Province clashed with security forces on 15 April.

There are conflicting reports on the number of casualties and the reason for the clashes. Regardless of the specifics in this case, all the country's minorities -- Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, or Turkmen -- have grievances that relate to the regime's policies. If allowed to fester, ethnic problems could have serious repercussions for the regime.

And cryptically notes:

The unrest apparently was caused by outside agitators. On 15 April, Al-Jazeera quoted the irredentist Democratic Popular Movement for the Arab People of Ahvaz (al-Harakah al-Dimuqratiyah al-Sha'biyah li al-Sha'b al-Arabi al-Ahwazi), which demanded an end to what it called the Iranian "occupation" of Khuzestan. The movement accused the Iranian government of wanting to forcibly relocate the province's Arabs to other parts of the country.

(snip)

The Democratic Popular Movement for the Arab People of Ahvaz, which allegedly contributed to the 15 April unrest, is not the only Arab irredentist organization. The Ahwaz Arab Renaissance Party issued a notice on the AlBasrah.net website (http://www.albasrah.net) in early April that it blew up an oil pipeline from Ahvaz to Tehran. It claimed that this is part of its strategy to stop the Iranian government's oppression of Ahvaz's residents. Another irredentist group is the Ahwaz-Arabistan Online Network (http://www.al-ahwaz.com).

All of these groups are the kind with which Special Operations and Clandestine operatives of both the US and Britain would organize and support in an effort to destabilize a government which funds terrorists and is seeking a nuclear weapon. Such an effort, if successful, would cost a good deal lees in American blood and treasure. If more offensive military action is required, an indigenous paramilitary force and combat intelligence net work would already exist in the border regions between Iraq and iran. Having troops in Iraq is looking to be a better idea for winning the Global War on Terror, unless of course, you don’t believe the Iranians are bad guys…which means you don’t read the news.

In fact, the violence in Ahafaz last April was so bad and scared the Iranian regime so much, they even went so far as to suspend operations of AL JEZEERA!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/18/world/main688992.shtml

Al Jazeera, which is popular among Iran's Arab-speaking minority, is believed to have been the first news outlet to broadcast news of the unrest. The station's commentators discussed the clashes on talk shows as well. Tehran on Monday ordered the station to cease operations until the network explains the motives behind its coverage, which Tehran believes inflamed the violence.


If rioting and blowing up oil pipelines is not bad enough news fro the Iranians (and it must be bad news, because when it happens to us in Iraq, it supposedly spells dooooooom) this most recent violence is what kept the Iranian President from going to Ahfaz:


http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060125/int/int5.html


IRAN: PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD CANCELS VISIT TO AHVAZ - Six killed in bombings published: Wednesday January 25, 2006
TEHRAN, Iran (AP):
TWO BOMBS killed six people and wounded 46 others yesterday in Ahvaz, a city in south-western Iran with a history of violence involving members of Iran's Arab minority, Iran's official news agency reported.
The bombs exploded inside a bank and outside a state environmental agency building in Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province which borders Iraq, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.
Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said the attacks were related to last year's bombings in the city and were foreign inspired.
Ahvaz suffered bomb attacks in June and October that killed eight and six people respectively. The Government blamed the blasts on Iranian Arab extremists, alleging they were trained abroad with foreign support.

Things have not been rosy among Iran’s Shiite Arab minority, could it be that rather than Iran using Iraq’s Shiites to take over in Iraq, the US and Britain are using Iran’s ARABS to destabilize Iran? The Iranians think so:

http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2006/01/28/ap2484012.html

Associated Press Iran Claims U.S., Britain Fomenting Unrest By ALI AKBAR DAREINI , 01.28.2006, 06:08 AM

A top Iranian commander accused U.S. and British intelligence agents of fomenting unrest in southwestern Iran and threatened to respond with missiles if attacked. Iran's improved version of the Shahab-3 missile can strike more than 1,300 miles from their launch site, putting Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East in easy range. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, the chief of the Revolutionary Guards, said the United States and Britain were behind bombings Jan 21 that killed at least nine people in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, near the southern border with Iraq where 8,500 British soldiers are based. "Foreign forces based in Iraq, especially southern Iraq, direct Iranian agents and give them bomb materials," he said in remarks carried by state-run television

The missiles mentioned are, of course, a concern, but troops in Iraq today have much improved version of the Patriot antimissile system that was used in the First Gulf War, and the Iranians should also be aware of the military repercussions of firing them at us. Amy capacity they have to defend against a full on US onslaught from the air and on the ground from Afghanistan, Southern Iraq, and Kurdistan.


And of course, the Anti-War people will tell you we’re ding a terrible thing:

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=5907

May 11, 2005

Neocons Exploiting Domestic Unrest in Iran?
by Jim Lobe
As recently noted by Richard Perle, an influential neoconservative hawk close to Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, military strikes would be a high-risk option that could prove counterproductive both by bolstering support for the Islamic regime and further isolating the U.S. from its allies.
Thus, the preferred option at this point, even if it is not officially endorsed, is regime change.
Under one plan released last year by the mainly neoconservative Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), Washington hopes to help mobilize a pro-democracy movement similar to Solidarity in Poland and to last year's Orange Revolution in Ukraine that would challenge the government in the streets. Congress has already cleared several million dollars for this purpose and last week the State Department, or U.S. foreign ministry, began soliciting bids from eligible groups.
A second option, backed by harder-line forces, calls for covert action designed to bring down the regime – through more active backing for the MEK and/or fomenting unrest, especially among minority groups such as the Khuzestan Arabs that together make up about half of Iran's 70 million people.
These include Turkmen in the northeast, Tajiks along the border with Afghanistan, Balochis near Pakistan, Azeris and Kurds in the northwest, and Awazi Arabs, who altogether number about two million, or roughly three percent of Iran's population. Disturbances have been reported in both Iranian Kurdistan and Balochistan, as well as in Khuzestan, in recent months.
"It's certainly the case that there are long-standing ethnic and regional disputes in Iran that come about in part because the Iranian plateau, whose inhabitants are Persian-speaking and Shi'ite, is surrounded by a periphery that is either not Persian or not Shi'ite," said Juan Cole, a regional specialist at the University of Michigan.
"The most recent incidents in Khuzestan certainly fit into a general pattern of uneasy relations between the center and periphery," Cole told IPS. "The question on everyone's mind is whether it is connected in any way to the situation in Iraq or U.S. policy, and about that, we can only speculate."

And what of Kurdistan, anyway? Things are just as bad there as well, maybe a bit worse:

http://www.pdk-iran.org/english/articles/Armed


Armed Kurds fomenting unrest in Iran pose security threat to Tehran
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Published: August 29 2005 03:00 Last updated: August 29 2005 03:00

The Iranian government is facing a new security challenge from a small, armed Iranian Kurdish group emboldened by the political gains of Kurds in neighbouring Iraq.

Pejak, the Party for a Free Life in Iranian Kurdistan, has emerged as behind recent unrest in the predominantly Kurdish north-west of the country, renewing a separatist armed struggle that halted a decade ago.

The doomsayers claim that it is naïve to think that toppling an Evil dictator and building a Democracy in Iran will have the effect of encouraging other s in the region to do the same. I think perhaps it is not so naïve after all. Things have been going from bad to worse up there since summer, 2005, too:

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/world/article.jsp?content=20050829_111245_111245

Media blackout
Are Kurdish lives somehow less valuable than Palestinian and Iraqi ones?
MICHAEL PETROU
Here's a story about an uprising in the Middle East you probably haven't heard of. For more than a month, riots and violent protests have swept through the Kurdish areas of northern Iran, resulting in a government crackdown that has killed up to 20 people and injured hundreds more. The unrest began on July 9, when Kurdish activist Shwane Ghaderi was killed by Iranian security forces in Mahabad. He was allegedly shot, dragged through the streets and tortured to death. Demonstrations against Iran's theocratic dictatorship erupted immediately and spread across the region.
Mr. Petrou hits the nail on the head here:
The bigger problem is an uglier one. Some causes, and some people, are fashionable to Western journalists and to the public at large, and some are not. Imagine for a moment that 20 unarmed Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers in the last month, with hundreds more injured and scores arrested. Is it even conceivable that this would not be front-page news? Already, photographers working in the Middle East have to work hard to avoid getting other photographers in their photos of stone-throwing Palestinian children. The only photos of the unrest in Iran come from local residents.
And what of the so-called "peace" protesters? Unarmed civilians are being shot down by government troops in helicopters. Where are Bianca Jagger and the rest of the celebrity activists? Where are the marching throngs with their "Free Iran!" and "Free Kurdistan!" banners? Are Kurdish lives somehow less valuable than Palestinian and Iraqi ones? Almost all Kurds are also Muslims. Where is the outrage? Or are the deaths of innocent Muslims only enraging when they are killed by Americans or Israelis?
Recently, an Iranian friend in London emailed me. "If only this Kurdish intifada had half the media coverage as the Palestinian one," he wrote. He's right. What's happening in Iranian Kurdistan is important. Iran's religious dictatorship is resented by many, perhaps most, Iranians. But it is particularly abhorrent to the country's Kurds.
So what’s been happening lately in Kurdistan?
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.237471682&par=0
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.244799172&par=0

But Tehran has even more to worry about than violent unrest in it’s border provinces. They may be able to convince the world that it’s the US and Britain interference (and they may be right, and I hope they are)
But one thing you should contemplate: as democracy takes hol in Iraq, as the Iraqis start turning in bad actors and shooting at al Queda, is it just a coincidence that violence is INCREASING in Iran?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2005/iran-050612-rferl02.htm

One Reported Killed In Tehran Bomb Blast
Prague, 12 June 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian officials say a bomb exploded in a busy square in the east of Tehran today, killing one person and injuring at least three others.
Maybe the Islamo-Fascists in charge in Iran, who have been financing and instigating terror for nearly 30 years are finally going to get a taste of their own medicine, now that there are two “haven states,” one on it’s east, and one on it’s west, that can provide financing, weapons, volunteers, and sanctuary to those fighting them.

It’s about time, doncha think?