Iran is unraveling

I am going to murder the person who invented the term blowback.

That's also America's fault. The CIA coined the term following the 1953 Coup attempt in Iran when it backfired and The 1979 Revolution happened and the subsequent hostage crisis.
 
religious extremists in the middle east need to realize their idealistic crusades are producing nothing more than american blowback. none of the recent wars could have ever happened if the imperialist yanks didn't have justification in the form of terrorist attacks that terrorist cells give them.
 
That's also America's fault. The CIA coined the term following the 1953 Coup attempt in Iran when it backfired and The 1979 Revolution happened and the subsequent hostage crisis.
Use for similar situations leading to industrial accidents predates Musaddiq
 
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader accused the United States Tuesday of trying to use the Internet as a tool to confront the Islamic Republic, declaring that such a policy only showed Washington's frustration.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged Beijing and other governments to end Internet censorship, placing China in the company of Iran, Saudi Arabia and others as leading suppressors of on-line freedom.

The Internet has become a battleground during domestic turmoil in Iran after June's disputed election, with the authorities blocking access to some opposition websites and pro-reform Iranians using it to spread word of new protests.

Government officials have portrayed the opposition protests that erupted after the presidential poll as a foreign-backed bid to undermine Iran's Islamic system of government.

"The Americans have said that they have allocated a $45 million budget to help them to confront the Islamic Republic of Iran via the Internet," state television quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying in a speech.

"This decision shows the height of the enemy's frustration. They have spent tens of billions of dollars in the past (in confronting Iran), but have achieved no results," he said.

The U.S. Senate voted in July to adopt the Victims of Iranian Censorship Act which authorizes up to $50 million for expanding Farsi language broadcasts, supporting Iranian Internet and countering government efforts to block it.

Iran has accused the West of waging a "soft" war against the Islamic state with the help of intellectuals and others inside the country.

The United States cut ties with Iran after its 1979 Islamic revolution, which toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Tehran and Washington are now at odds over Iran's disputed nuclear work.

"FRUITLESS PLOTS"

Khamenei said the United States had been planning to orchestrate "riots" in Iran, an apparent reference to post-election unrest.

"America and Israel were and still are the most hostile of the enemies of the Islamic system and the Iranian nation," he said. "All America's plots and efforts during the past 30 years were fruitless and I'm surprised that they didn't learn a lesson from the past," Khamenei added.

The reformist opposition says the June poll was rigged to secure hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election. The authorities deny the charge of election fraud.

The vote plunged Iran into deep internal turmoil and exposed widening establishment divisions. Despite Khamenei's endorsement of Ahmadinejad's election victory, opposition supporters have continued to stage sporadic protests.

Underlining the authorities' tough stand on dissent, national police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam earlier this month warned the opposition against using text messages or emails to organize fresh anti-government protests.

Lacking newspapers, the opposition has used the Internet and other means of communication to spread the word about rallies. Internet messages have been circulating about protests on February 11, when Iran marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60P42620100126

I think the mullah-gods fear Feb. 11th

We shall see...
 
I think that if anything drastic was going to come about in Iran it would have happened last year following the elections.

Also, when was the last time (barring the US) that a revolution occurred in a nation that didn't result in the empowering of a despot?

Just curious.
 
I think that if anything drastic was going to come about in Iran it would have happened last year following the elections.

Also, when was the last time (barring the US) that a revolution occurred in a nation that didn't result in the empowering of a despot?

Just curious.

The Velvet Revolution in 1979 comes to mind. Or the Carnation Revolution, in 74.
 
The Velvet Revolution in 1979 comes to mind. Or the Carnation Revolution, in 74.

I was going to edit it to say violent revolution, but the Carnation Revolution was violent, so thank you!
 
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran put 16 opposition supporters detained during anti-government protests last month on trial Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring against the ruling system, Iran's state media reported.

The defendants face charges ranging from plotting against the establishment to violating security regulations, said the official IRNA news agency. Five of those on trial, including two women, were accused of "moharebeh," or defying God, a charge that could carry the death penalty, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.

The new prosecutions, coupled with the execution on Thursday of two men accused of involvement in anti-government groups, could mark an attempt by Iran's hard-line leaders to intimidate the opposition before a new round of street demonstrations expected in February.

Those who stood trial Saturday — including a follower of the Baha'i faith, an alleged communist and a student activist — were detained during anti-government demonstrations on Dec. 27. At least eight people were killed and hundreds more were arrested in those rallies, during which opposition activists and security forces clashed. The violence was the worst since authorities launched a harsh crackdown immediately after Iran's disputed presidential election in June.

The protesters have presented Iran's cleric-led establishment with its biggest challenge since the 1979 revolution despite a brutal crackdown that has left hundreds imprisoned.

IRNA quoted a prosecutor identified only by the last name of Farahani as saying in court that some of the defendants had confessed to spying, planning bomb attacks and damaging public and private property. He also said some of the defendants had sent videos of the clashes between protesters and Iranian police to "foreign hostile networks," IRNA reported.

Human rights groups have cautioned that such confessions are often made under duress in Iran.

The ISNA news agency quoted the student activist on trial, who was not named, as telling the court Saturday that he had given interviews to the foreign media about the protests since the "doors of the domestic media are closed to us."

Iranian authorities have banned many newspapers and news Web sites and detained many opposition journalists after the election.

Quashing opposition

The new trial comes amid a sweeping crackdown by Iran's clerical leaders against opposition activists in a bid to crush the challenge that has emerged to their rule in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in June. The opposition says Ahmadinejad's victory was fraudulent.

Iran's hard-line government has quashed opposition rallies and tried more than 100 political activists in a mass trial that started in August, sentencing 11 people to death and more than 80 people to prison terms ranging from six months to 15 years.

On Thursday, authorities hanged two men who had been convicted of belonging to "counterrevolutionary and monarchist groups," plotting to overthrow "the Islamic establishment" and planning assassinations and bombings.

The men were arrested months before the election. But they were brought before judges in the same mass trial that started in August in an attempt by the leadership to show that the political opposition is in league with violent armed groups in a foreign-backed plot to overthrow the Islamic system.

Iran's main opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, denounced the executions and said they were likely meant to scare people into staying away from the planned Feb. 11 demonstrations, according to the pro-reform Web site Sahamnews.

After meeting Saturday, the two opposition leaders — both of whom ran against Ahmadinejad in June — urged people to turn out for next month's rallies.

The planned demonstrations are meant to coincide with anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. A display of opposition numbers on the most hallowed day in the Iranian political calendar would mark a stinging symbolic challenge to the clerical leadership.

Authorities have vowed a punishing response.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35159752/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/


Feb. 11th should be pretty interesting.
 
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