|
Commentary
by
U.S. Alliance for Democratic Iran
The
Message in Iran Slogans
For years, despite all the tell-tale signs of a
growing opposition in Iran, many pundits
depicted the ruling government as
well-entrenched and enjoying significant popular
legitimacy. This served as a seemingly solid,
albeit unfounded, rational for them to advocate
the status-quo.
Then came the tsunami of popular dissent
resulting from thirty some years of ayatollahs’
plunder and murder, unleashed by the appearance
of massive fissures at the top of the ruling
establishment following the last June’s sham
elections.
Still, these pundits, although astonished by the
size and ferocity of the nation-wide uprisings,
ominously heralded the quick demise of the
movement, at the first sight of the state-sanctioned
crackdown. They still kept on insisting that
diplomatic engagement with Tehran
should be pressed on.
Six months later, the relentless Iranian
protesters, in millions and with their awesome
tenacity and bravery, have proved these
“Iran experts” and their interlocutors among
Western policymakers wrong. Not only the
dissidents have survived a viscous suppression
of the rulers’ multi-layered security apparatus,
they have, with chants of “Down with Khamenei,
Down with the dictator,” and with their
bludgeoned heads and bloodied bodies, shown that
they desire nothing less than the end of the
entire regime of mullahs' fascist dictatorship.
They want their country back, they envisions a
democratic Iran. They are not anti-Islam, but
they strive for a secular government where
the popular will, and not that of a demagogue
clergy, claiming to be the regent of God on
earth, drives their nation.
With each uprising, they have also shown that
they have a great awareness of the world around
them and of those capitals that still, for a
variety of political and economical benefits,
shamelessly hang their hats on the murderous
regime in Tehran or seek negotiations with them.
They chant “No Ghaza, No Lebanon, my life for
Iran, “Down with Russia,” and “Obama, Obama,
either you are with us (people) or them (the
ruling establishment).”
They are surely monitoring the European Union
where a Parliamentary delegation was due to
travel to Tehran this week despite strong
criticism from lawmakers in the United States,
the United Kingdom, and several other European
countries. They are also watching Senator John
Kerry who intended to go to Tehran for an
official visit.
Both plans were reportedly rejected by the
Tehran regime, which is in a definitive fight
for its survival. Evidently the
Khamenei-Ahmadinejad gang and their
paid-with-the-oil-money thugs are too busy with
cracking heads and murdering and raping arrested
protesters to have time for diplomatic
breakthroughs, even for long-distance friends
such as Sen. Kerry and a handful of European
MPs.
Meanwhile, as President Obama’s year-end nuclear
deadline for Iran falls flat, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton has given a new meaning to the
term “deadline." On Monday, she said that there
is no hard-and-fast deadline for Iran to respond
and that the US wants to “keep the door open to
dialogue.”
With the speed and ferocity things are moving
toward a regime change in Iran, there is a good
chance that, unlike the strategically disastrous
policy flap of the United States over Mossadeq’s
nationalist government in 1953, the current
administration will find itself apologizing to
the Iranians long before its term is over.
(USADI)
Iran's desperate regime
Editorial
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, January 3, 2010
What's happening in Iran looks more and
more like a civil war.
Since the enormous Dec. 27 protests in Tehran
and other cities, the regime has arrested more
than a thousand people. It has declared that it
will no longer "tolerate" dissent. It has killed
the relatives of opposition leaders, jailed
thousands of protesters, raped and tortured
dissidents, called the protests a foreign plot,
and ordered rallies of its own, which brought
out hundreds of thousands of people.
And still the unrest continues. Six months after
the disputed presidential election, Iran's
leadership still doesn't have legitimacy. And no
amount of ruthlessness and brutality will grant
it. It's the worst internal crisis in the 30
years of the Islamic regime, and it couldn't
have come at a worse time.
With stronger foreign sanctions widely expected
in 2010, the regime desperately needs the united
support of its people. But the crackdown, brutal
as it is, has failed to quell the opposition,
and government officials are fighting among
themselves about what to do next... The
protesters are brave to put their lives on the
line. But what they're really showing the regime
is what its own death will look like...
Full Story
In
protesters' fight for justice in Iran,
U.S. stands on the sidelines
By William Kristol
The Washington Post
Friday, January 1, 2010
"Along with all free nations, the United
States stands with those who seek their
universal rights."
That was President Obama on Monday, expressing
solidarity with the people of Iran -- and also
acknowledging that the world is crucially
divided into free nations and unfree ones.
The free nations tend to acknowledge the
existence of universal rights. Those rights
include the right of the governed to consent to
their government. And from this it follows "that
whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their safety and happiness."
As Obama said Monday, the Iranian regime is
engaged in "the violent and unjust suppression
of innocent Iranian citizens," using the "iron
fist of brutality, even on solemn occasions and
holy days" when "the Iranian people have sought
nothing more than to exercise their universal
rights." It governs "through fear and tyranny."
It follows, then, that the government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran has become destructive
of the just ends of government...
The United States has not even begun to do what
it could -- rhetorically and concretely,
diplomatically and economically, publicly and
covertly, multilaterally and unilaterally -- to
try to help the Iranian people change the regime
of fear and tyranny that denies them justice.
Regime change in Iran in 2010 -- now that would
be change to believe in...
Full Story
Change at hand in Iran
The Baltimore Sun
By Alireza Jafarzadeh
January 5, 2010
With the people rising up, now is the time
for tough measures, not concessions
In streets across Iran, on rooftops late at
night and city walls, the cry now is "Death to
Khamenei!" and "Death to the dictator!" There is
no question that the nationwide uprisings target
nothing less than the foundation of Iran's
ruling theocracy.
After seven months of murder, rape and torture,
the arrests of hundreds of dissidents, and a
brutal crackdown in the streets, the theocratic
regime has failed to turn back the movement.
Both the opposition and the regime are on an
irreversible path that can only lead to the
latter's downfall. As the opposition deepens and
spreads, the political fissures at the top,
including within the clergy, will also expand.
There is no going back.
The increasingly desperate regime will resort to
more violence in coming weeks. The trend was
evident in the scale of brutality displayed by
the regime's security forces last week on the
Shiite holy day of Ashura. Hundreds of
protesters were wounded and at least 11 killed
when storm troopers opened fire. But the brute
force is no longer decisive or even effective. A
video on YouTube shows a young woman shouting
back at a government agent filming her: "Take my
picture, film my face - you can't silence me."
The wheels of change ending the reign of the
mullahs' regime are rolling, and it is a matter
of when, not if. As one protester recently told
an American newspaper, "At the end, this
government must go." ...
Full Story
USADI
Commentary reflects the viewpoints of the US Alliance
for Democratic Iran in respect to issues and events
which directly or indirectly impact the US policy toward
Iran |