Also see Pressure and Aggression No Longer Guarantee the Achievement of our Goals -- We Must Consider 'Culture-Building' by Matt Armstrong at MountainRunner.
So says the Iranian Intelligence Ministry through its new public service announcement promoting Iranians to report suspicious activity. MEMRI has the transcript and the PSA that ran last week.
The video intends to scare Iranians of American soft power to undermine the regime from within using cultural warfare, which has been "on the back burner in Iran for years." The U.S. cabal, headed by a CGI John McCain, a "senior White House official" who "orchestrates numerous conspiracies" against Iran, is told a plan to make use of leading cultural figures and that a lot has already been achieved through international scientific conferences...
Comments
Does anyone besides me <i>wish</i> this were actually true? I mean besides the ridiculousness of a full on partisan like George Soros sitting down with John McCain, (heir apparent to the rule of the seventh level of hell, or whatever Soros thinks of the Republican party). I really wish that we could get such a disparate group to have a serious conversation about how to advance our national interests without violent overthrow of governments. Moreover, I wish <u>we could keep that conversation a secret</u>. If such a conversation across party and interest lines ever did occur it would be on the front page of the Washington Post or the NYT before the end of the day!
One consolation prize is that the Iranians are apparently as ignorant of <i>our</i> political system as <i>our</i> government is about <i>theirs</i>. John McCain as a member of the White House staff is as laughable as the idea that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is of any consequence in the government. I guess we both view the other country through the lens of our.
Obviously, the recent intensification of the US-Iran cold war has the Iranians security conscious. Consider this PSA analogous to British and American posters distributed during the Second World War, warning of German agents, or later, American public warnings of communist infiltration, particularly during the height of mass anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. It is a familiar theme for any nation experiencing external pressures, whether real or imagined. In the current case of Iran, any objective observer would find the external pressure to be very real, given the large sum allocated by congress for efforts toward "democracy" in Iran, the economic sanctions imposed by the US and the UNSC, and the bold US military presence in neighboring Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
Regarding the reference of the comment above, you'll remember that the focus of Sadaam's invasion of Iran in 1980 was the capture of Khuzistan. His forces, which included the original RG, were able to take Khoramshar and encircle Abadan, but were driven out after nearly a year of hard, bitter fighting.
I just noticed that this PSA was ran on Khozestan TV. I think that is instructive. The Neocon battle cry for years has been "real men go to Khozestan". Khozestan is the province next to Basra and it is where all the oil is. It analogous to Kosovo. Where Kosovo is a security enclave, Khozestan is an energy enclave. You dont have to defeat all of Iran to get the oil, you just have to carve out Khozestan, much like BP did with Kuwait.
So Iran's "problem" in Khozestan is very significant these days.
John McCain makes the cut because he is on the board of the International Republican Institute (IRI) branch of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Soros is there because of his Open Society Institute (OSI) and Gene Sharp is there because of his Albert Einstein Institute and association with Robert Helvey. Serbia's Otpor , Georgia's Kmara, Ukraine's Pora, Kyrgyzstan's KelKel and Belarus' Zubr were directly trained by the Albert Einstein Institute.I am surprised that the left out Peter Ackerman and Freedom House with Frank Gaffney and James Woolsey.
I think the "Velvet Revolution" has run it's course. These are engineered revolutions of which the world is very aware . In fact some of the "revolutions" are beginning to unravel. Boris Berezovsky recently demanded his money back from the OSI. The internet is full of research on the matter. Eva Golinger is the latest to publish, but there are many, many others.
Russia uses Nashi, Myanmar uses brute force against "The Saffron Revolution", Venezuela uses "leaked CIA memos", Laos throws out NGO's, and now we have PSA's from Iran.
Vietnam is the latest government to start innoculating itself against the velvet revolution.
Actually, I think Obama's campaign looks alot like a velvet revolution - lots of politically naive young people swarming, lots of symbology, etc. Now that's something that Noah Pollack at Commentary could use.
from the <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1678.htm">transcript</a>
<b>...For many years, he (Bill Smith ed.) has maintained close ties with Iranian opposition groups.</b>
"Maintained ties" and not directed by or led by the US. The Iranian government admits that there is an INDEPENDENT Iranian opposition movement in Iran that is NOT controlled by the US.
<b>Bill Smith: We must contact authors, intellectuals, and influential people in society, who have common interests with us.
George Soros: We should cooperate closely with the NGO's that share our goals.</b>
Contacting these regime opponents (and influencing it) is portrayed as something to start doing, not something that has been going on.
Again, another acknowledgment by the Iranian government that there are Iranian opponents inside of Iran which are not led or created by the outside. And that this opposition to the government isn't being anti-Islamic, decadent, disloyal, or idiotic/misguided puppets of the US/Zionists.
The danger only is that opponents can be used as a tool to undermine the regime by 'outsiders'. But opposing the Iranian government isn't disloyal or illegal by itself.
What are the Iranians really trying to communicate to their people?
1. If this current White house official becomes President, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry is effective and credible since they discovered this 'official' when he was in the background. Therefore, future Ministry declarations can be seen as credible and reliable.
2. With a McCain presidency, the danger against Iran is escalating.
Are the Iranians anxiously anticipating an overly aggressive attitude from a McCain presidency and beginning to counter it now? Is that an attitude that should be encourage or discourage?
Are they actually fearful of outside agents infiltrating into Iran? and is that an attitude that should be encourage or discourage?
Do the Iranians see themselves to McCain as Iraq was to George W. Bush? and is that an attitude that should be encourage or discourage?