Iran’s Green Movement is one year old this Sunday, the anniversary of its first massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. Greeted with great hope in much of the world, a year later it’s weaker, the country is more repressive, and its hardliners are in a far stronger position — and some of their success can be credited to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sanctions hawks in the Obama administration. [...] Above all, the ayatollahs benefited from Israeli intransigence and American hypocrisy on nuclear disarmament in the Middle East. – Prof. Juan Cole
It’s been a long year for Iran, but also for the Middle East. Since Pres. Obama’s important Cairo speech we’ve gone nowhere slowly.
Who can’t remember what happened this time last year?
Than came Neda’s murdered on the street.
No one knows what will come from harder sanctions and a tougher stance towards Iran. It’s clear the Iranian people will not benefit. Only the hardliners come out on top.
Not even our best and brightest have any answers, except to keep doing what’s not worked before.
[...] Iran’s case against Israel was bolstered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued enthusiasm for the Gaza blockade, and by Tel Aviv’s recent arrogant dismissal of a conference of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatories, which called on Israel to join a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Nor has President Obama’s push for stronger sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council hurt them. And then, on Memorial Day in the United States, Israel’s Likud government handed Tehran its greatest recent propaganda victory by sending its commandos against a peace flotilla in international waters and so landing its men, guns blazing, on the deck of the USS Sanctions. …
[...] A year later, it’s clear that the hardliners have won decisively through massive repression, deploying basij armed with clubs on motorcycles to curb crowds, jailing thousands of protesters, and torturing and executing some of them. The main arrow in the opposition’s quiver was flashmobs, relatively spontaneous mass urban demonstrations orchestrated through Twitter, cell phones, and Facebook. The regime gradually learned how to repress this tactic through the careful jamming of electronic media and domestic surveillance. (Apparently the Revolutionary Guards now even have a Facebook Espionage Division.) While the opposition can hope to keep itself alive as an underground civil rights movement, for the moment its chances for overt political change appear slim. (Prof. Juan Cole)
TM NOTE: This documentary is an exception to my rule of insisting entities pay for advertising if they want attention on this site for their products. Advertising and contributions from people who support the work I do pay for this site. But Neda’s murder is beyond normal business practice rules. It’s a rare exception.
That’s the irony of the neoconservative foreign policy- it ultimately is totally self destructive by undermining the long term interests of the U.S., Israel and our allies. And yet no one in Washington seems to think the neocons have been discredited at all- they still blanket the editorial pages and prattle on about the next war. If we really cared about the Green Movement we wouldn’t be so obsessed with sanctions, which will invariably hurt the average people more than the regime- it’s kind of similar to the blockade of Gaza in that it doesn’t seem narrowly tailored to achieve its objective but rather seems to be collective punishment for defying the West.
It’s a bit tedious to hear the neocons suddenly care about the average Iranian citizen whereas they never have before, just like they never cared about the average Iraqi citizen until the run-up to the Iraq War. In fact, prior to Iran’s elections, some of the neocon talking heads actually stated publicly that they hoped Mousavi lost because if he was elected and seen as even slightly more moderate then the campaign for regime change might be thwarted. In other words, it’s not about the people at all nor is it really about having a more moderate leader or even about legitimate elections- it’s about the neoconservative vision of the Middle East.
“The neoconservative vision of the Middle East”…….which more and more looks like Obama’s vision of the Middle East. Escalating the war in Afghanistan, harsher sanctions on Iran which include the boarding of Iranian vessels, no sanctions on Israel even though they repeatedly violate international law to include piracy and assassinations in third countries, remaining silent in the face of Saudi Arabia giving permission to Israel to use their airspace to bomb Iran, saying nothing about the ethnic cleansing occurring in Kyrgyzstan in order to keep the US air base at Manas open, and on and on. Obama is toast and the Left is the toaster. Peace
It so sad what happened to Neda. She is a hero !!! It seems the world is falling apart !! I can’t keep track of the stuff thats happening anymore !! I was watching CNN and this did a piece on this. It seems the regime has worked to stop the peaceful people wanting rights in Iran. How sad !!
Glad you brought up Kyrgyzstan Imhotep, another country in crisis.
This woman’s death was outrageous. HOWEVER, this entire exercise (the HBO documentary??) comes under the heading of whipping up the masses into an emotional frenzy. That is also outrageous. Peace
“…comes under the heading of whipping up the masses into an emotional frenzy.”
When have we on the left not done that? No disrespect to the current article, but this is our mode of operation. It always has been.