thegipples/iran

Iranian opinion of US/Obama.

From the page: "They are part of Yemen's intensified drive to crush Shiite Muslim insurgents, whom it says are backed by Iran. Iran is Saudi Arabia's main regional rival; Yemen is a Saudi ally.

At the same time, al-Qaeda is using bases in Yemen to launch terror strikes at Saudi Arabia and last month tried to assassinate the country's top anti-terrorist official, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef bin Abdel Aziz. President Barack Obama promised to help boost Yemen's security earlier this week.

Saudi King Abdullah may decide to intervene militarily if the conflict on his border threatens to spread to the country's own disaffected Shiite minority in the eastern oil-producing region"

From the page: "intelligence services had reported "beyond doubt" that the Lockerbie bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group contracted by Tehran as a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990, the ship's captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer"."

From the page: "The State Department asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, helping to mobilize protesters.2 The New York Times reported: "An article published by the Web site True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers: that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so)." 3

In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and "educating" Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran, kidnaping Iranian diplomats in Iraq, kidnaping Iranian military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq, continually spying and recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran's currency and international financial transactions, and imposing various economic and political sanctions against the country.

...Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's main opponent in the election and very much supported by the protesters, while prime minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the attacks on the US embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which took the lives of more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck bombing of a US Navy installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons. Remarkably, a search of US newspaper and broadcast sources shows no mention of this during the current protests."

From the page: "Obama is implementing an increase in military aid to Israel for an unprecedented 10 years into the future. Also of significance is the rapid expansion of US hi-tech investment in Israel, notably a huge Intel plant intended to carry out a revolution in chip manufacture. There is, typically, a close relation between government and corporate policy, for obvious reasons, and there are other close ties, particularly military and intelligence, that are well-known and stable."

From the page: "we should be clear on the role Washington has tried to play in fomenting a color revolution in Iran. It hasn't been a secret. Consider the headlines. "Bush plans huge propaganda campaign in Iran. Congress asked for $75m to fund program." [11] "US plotting Velvet Revolution in Iran?" [12] "A bid to foment democracy in Iran. The Bush team unveils a plan to push for Iranian-led reform. Can it really yield a �regime change�?"� [13] �oeUS to sharpen focus on Iran. The US State Department is creating a special office to…promote a democratic transition in the Islamic republic.” [14] �oeUS and UK develop democracy strategy for Iran.” [15] �oeIranians Speak Out on Regime Change Slush Fund”. [16]

Washington�s regime change funding has been used to broadcast US propaganda into Iran; build dissident networks; [17] and to train non-violent, pro-democracy activists to lead street demonstrations in the wake of contested elections."

Wait: there's no evidence, at all, of any fraud in Iran's election, and no evidence has ever been put forward by anyone? And the only independent poll, by a rightwing US thinktank, predicted the outcome almost exactly? And the US has been carrying out covert operations inside of Iran for years?

From the page: "Plus, there's evidence that Ahmadinejad "simply won a commanding victory." Flynt Leverett of the New American Foundation, a US ruling class think-tank, says Ahmadinejad is "a really good campaigner" who seemed to have slowed Mousavi's momentum in their final debate.

More tellingly, a May 11-20 telephone poll co-sponsored by the New American Foundation, and by another ruling class think-thank, Terror Free Tomorrow, "showed Ahmadinejad with a 2 to 1 lead over Mousavi," consistent with the official outcome of the election."