Fertile ground for Iranian paranoia

The Times' Lede blog, noting that the Russian Government's English Language satellite news channel Russia Today creates "balance" in coverage of U.S. affairs by interviewing Americans on the extreme left and extreme right, relays this bit of fuel for Iranian (and Russian) paranoia featured on a video report released by the station:

Craig Roberts, a former member of the Reagan administration, said that the C.I.A. was behind the whole thing. Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist, agreed with the Russia Today anchor that Mir Hussein Moussavi’s green movement had “all the hallmarks” of an American-orchestrated “color revolution.” Mr. Madsen added that, given the heavy coverage of what is happening in Iran by American news organizations, “it seems like there is a coordinated and concerted effort to try to stir things up using the Western media.”

The old Soviet-bloc counter-narrative, in which U.S. aggression foments repressive counterrevolutions worldwide, maintains a vigorous half-life. Both the Russian and the Iranian powers that be view the color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgystan as CIA-fomented coups designed to extend Western hegemony.

While blaming the West for the mass protests in Iran may this time prove to be an old trick played once too often, Khamenei and co. can find plenty of genuine fuel for paranoia -- not only in the CIA's toppling of Mossadegh in 1953 and its quarter century of propping up the Shah, but in the very real U.S covert action to destabilize the regime that was operative at least up to Obama's inauguration. It was only last August that Seymour Hersh reported:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Coming even nearer to the Iranian government allegations were these actions, reported by ABC News in May 2007:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

Of course,such action was at least partly in response to U.S. commanders' claims of constant Iranian support for insurgent groups in Iraq that were killing U.S. soldiers and destabilizing the government. It was also authorized in the context of -- and perhaps, as time ran out for the Cheney faction in the Bush Administration, as a substitute for -- contemplated bombing of Iranian nuclear installations. The point is that most Iranians doubtless have no trouble believing that the U.S. would try to destabilize their government. Most just don't believe that U.S. influence destabilized this election. Their own government for the moment has less credibility than Obama's.

Gary Sick's pre-election call

As the world wonders whether the post-election unrest will delegitimize the Iranian regime that's been headed for the past twenty years by Ayatollah Khamenei, it's worth stepping to recognize that election contest prior to the vote laid the groundwork.

Back on June 10, Gary Sick noted that Ahmadinejad's debate performances must have triggered cognitive dissonance for millions of Iranians on several fronts -- most notably in his implicit indictment of his own purported puppet master:

[Ahmadinejad] broke crockery left and right by associating his opponents with what he claimed was a history of corruption and catastrophic errors dating back to the earliest days of the Islamic Republic. That, of course, is the system that he represents and that he extolls in every public appearance.

The 40 million Iranian voters who watched this astonishing spectacle, and who had never heard a serious word of criticism about the Islamic government on national TV, scarcely knew what to think. His accusations, if true, cast doubt on the very legitimacy of the revolutionary state.

Although Ahmadinejad’s barbs were aimed primarily at former president Rafsanjani, whom he suspects of orchestrating the opposition, these charges also apply even more directly to the Leader, Ayatollah Khamene`i, who has had supreme authority over the Islamic Republic since at least 1989. If Iran is this wasteland of corruption, inefficiency and strategic mistakes, what does that say about the wizard who has been guiding this process almost since its inception?

Indeed, Sick's June 10 post highlights the deep fissure within the Iranian regime that pointed toward a rigged election. Its prescience about the likely rigging -- and Khamenei's likely acquiesence -- lends authority to Sick's conclusion:

No one in Iran appears to be fully in control of events that have a potential to mark a turning point in the history of the Islamic revolution.

Of course, the unlikelihood that the status quo in Iran can be restored does not rule out the possibility that the crisis will produce a more repressive regime.