Foreign Hands Behind Iran Riots

Crescent International

Rabi' al-Thani 13, 1439 2018-01-01

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

Monday January 01, 2018

To ignore the foreign hands behind the riots in Iran would be to close one’s eyes to reality.

As President Hassan Rouhani said after a cabinet meeting on December 31: “The people are absolutely free in expressing their criticisms and even protests.” But he went on: “…criticism is different to violence and destroying public property.”

This is what the armed gangs have indulged in: attacking police stations and banks and burning public property. This is arson and no government would tolerate it.

The protests that started in the holy city of Mashhad on December 28 against rising prices and the government’s drift toward neoliberal economic policies that have caused hardships for people, have been hijacked by foreign agents supported by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

This is evident from the fact that protests were held in cities like Kermanshah, Khorramabad, Shahinshahr and Toyserkan in the west, and Zanjan in north Iran.

These are predominantly Kurdish areas where the Saudi regime has pumped millions of dollars. The Najdi Bedouins have also pumped money into in the Western parts of Iran as well as Sistan-Baluchistan bordering Pakistan’s Baluchistan province where India-backed insurgency is underway.

In the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, the Saudi regime has pumped millions of dollars in the last year into madrassas churning out sectarian extremists whose sole purpose in life is to kill innocent people, especially Shias. They believe this would earn them entry into Paradise!

Despite foreign support, protests in Iran have remained miniscule except for the arson attacks by some masked men. The authorities’ response has been quite restrained so far but rioters have been warned that they would be held accountable for their behavior.

“Those who damage public property, disrupt order and break the law must be responsible for their behavior and pay the price,” Interior Minister Abdolrahman Rahmani Fazli warned on December 31.

Donald Trump, the illegal occupation of the White House (referred to as the vagabond by some) has also waded into the fray clearly indicating that his regime is fomenting trouble in Iran.

Resorting to tweets, Trump wrote: “The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE.”

There are 44 million people living in absolute poverty in the US. That is more than half the total population of Iran. Perhaps, the billionaire thief with such fraudulent and failed ventures as ‘Trump (non)university’ and ‘Trump Air’ should cough up some of the loot and give it to the American people so that they can be fed instead of worrying about the Iranian people.

“Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever,” Trump further tweeted. He is right; it must start with the demise of his own oppressive regime that is universally despised including by large segments of the American people.

On December 22 and 23, there was a meeting in the White (Black) House attended by American and Israeli intelligence officials. Its specific purpose was to devise plans to undermine Iran both internally and in the region.

The meeting occurred in the aftermath of the successive defeats the US-Zionist-Saudi plots suffered in Syria, Iraq and now on the verge of defeat in Yemen despite the terrible suffering inflicted on the people there.

Islamic Iran will not only weather this foreign-instigated minor storm, it will come out much stronger.

There have been massive pro-government demonstrations that some Western media outlets have been forced to admit but with their usual insulting twist. Here is what the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported about on Iran on January 1:

“There have been reminders of the continued support for the regime (sic) among conservative sections of society, with pro-regime students staging sizeable counter-demonstrations at the University of Tehran over the weekend.”

One must note the continued reference to the legitimate government and system in Iran as “regime”. Even while admitting that there is massive support for the existing Islamic system, Western media outlets cannot refrain from using the insulting designation of “regime” to the Islamic Republic.

The word regime would more aptly apply to those in the US, Saudi Arabia and Zionist Israel but don’t expect to read that in the Western media. Only Crescent International calls a spade a spade.