Iran Protests...CIA Fingerprints?

[Brian4Liberty]

Iran Protests...CIA Fingerprints?

Is it just a coincidence that the biggest protests since 2009 have hit Iran shortly after a secret agreement was revealed between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Riyadh to destabilize Iran? And shortly after a new Executive Order was issued by President Trump allowing him to seize US assets of anyone he deems a "human rights abuser" ...or anyone who aids a designated "human rights abuser"?

[AZJoe]

Drop these here as better thread for them.


From Moon of Alabama :

probably the first stage of a large "regime change" operation run by the U.S. and Israel with the help of Iranian terrorist group. … A delegation led by Israel's National Security Adviser met with senior American officials in the White House earlier this month for a joint discussion on strategy to counter Iran's aggression in the Middle East …

"[T]he U.S. and Israel see eye to eye the different developments in the region and especially those that are connected to Iran. We reached at understandings regarding the strategy and the policy needed to counter Iran. Our understandings deal with the overall strategy but also with concrete goals, way of action and the means which need to be used to get obtain those goals." …

[current “protests”] a result of the above meeting [?] …

My hunch is that the usual suspects are behind these protests. Note that these started in several cities at the same time. This was not some spontaneous local uproar in one city but had some form of coordination.

Then there is this:

A search in various languages finds exactly zero such "reports". Carl Bildt is a former Swedish prime minister. He was recruited in 1973 as a CIA informant and has since grown into a full blown U.S. asset. He was involved in the Ukraine coup and tried to personally profit from it. ….

Some of these protests have genuine economic reasons but get hijacked by other interests: In the central city of Isfahan, a resident said protesters joined a rally held by factory workers demanding back wages. “The slogans quickly changed from the economy to those against (President Hassan) Rouhani and the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei),” the resident said by telephone. …

Purely political protests are rare in Iran [...] but demonstrations are often held by workers over layoffs or non-payment of salaries …

“Some people had came to express their demands, but suddenly, in a crowd of hundreds, a small group that did not exceed 50 shouted deviant and horrendous slogans such as ‘Let go of Palestine’, ‘Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I’d give my life (only) for Iran’,” Alamolhoda said. …

Two videos posted by BBC Persian and others I have seen show only small active protest groups with a dozen or so people while many more are just standing by or film the people who are chanting slogans.

Videos published by the terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq [MEK], 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, also show mostly small protests … The MEK, or its "civilian" organization National Council of Resistance of Iran , seem to be most involved in the current protests. … Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, saluted the … chanting “… She said, “Yesterday Mashhad, today Kermanshah, and tomorrow throughout Iran; this uprising has tolled the death knell for the overthrow of the totally corrupt dictatorship of the mullahs” …

This very early engagement of the MEK … first report … is extremely suspicious. In 2012 it was reported that Israel had used the MEK terrorist organization to assassinate nuclear scientists in Iran … U.S. officials reportedly confirmed the link between Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), with one official saying: "All your inclinations are correct.” …

In October a CATO Institute paper analyzed (and rejected) several options for U.S. handling Iran. Under Option Three: “Regime Change from Within” it noted:

In this approach, the United States would pressure the Iranian regime and simultaneously back groups that oppose it-whether the exiled extremist National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), pro-democracy Green Revolution factions, or ethnic minorities within Iran-a strategy advocates often compare to Reagan’s support for civil society groups in the Soviet Union. … the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz, urged President Trump to “go on the offensive against the Iranian regime” by “weakening the Iranian regime’s finances” through “massive economic sanctions,” while also “undermin[ing] Iran’s rulers by strengthening pro-democracy forces” inside Iran. This option appears to be gaining traction in the Trump administration’s ongoing Iran policy review and has received public support from Tillerson. CIA Director Mike Pompeo also favored such an approach during his time in Congress. …

The White House and the Netanyahoo regime agreed on a strategy towards Iran. Major members of the Trump administration are in favor of "regime change" … A few weeks after an agreement was found, coordinated economic protests start in Iran which are soon hijacked by small groups of very active regime changers. … exile terrorists, well known for deadly collaboration with Israeli spies as well as for having operation cells in Iran, is highly engaged in the protest from very early on. …

----

More from Moon of Alabama:

Iran - Early U.S. Support For Rioters Hints At A Larger Plan
In Iran - Regime Change Agents Hijack Economic Protests we looked at the developing U.S.-Israeli operation to instigate a revolt in Iran. …

The protests on December 28 and 29 were about … economic issues. Such protests have regularly occurred in Iran throughout the decades. But the current ones were soon hijacked by small groups which chanted slogans against the Iranian system and against the strong Iranian engagement in Syria and Palestine. These are not majority positions of the 80 million inhabitants of Iran … The small groups that hijacked the protests … were heavily promoted by the usual suspects of U.S. influence operations. Avaaz, the RAND cooperation, Human Rights Watch and others immediately jumped onto the bandwagon. …

In June 2009, Brookings Institute published a manual on how to overthrow the Iranian government or to take control of the country. … The velvet "color revolution" failed in 2009 when the "green movement" could not convince the Iranian people that it was more than a foreign supported attempt to overthrow their republic. What we currently see in Iran is a combination of chapter 6 and 7 of the Brookings plan. Behind a somewhat popular movement that protests against the neo-liberal economic policies … a militant movement … is implementing an escalation strategy that could lead to a civil war. We have already seen a similar combination in Libya and at the beginning of the attack on Syria. (Tony Cartalucci at the Land Destroyer Report has written extensively on the Brookings paper as a "handbook for overthrowing nations".)

Last June the Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA had set up a special operation cell for such attacks on Iran:

The Central Intelligence Agency has established an organization focused exclusively on gathering and analyzing intelligence about Iran, reflecting the Trump administration’s decision to make that country a higher priority target … The Iran Mission Center will bring together analysts, operations personnel and specialists from across the CIA to bring to bear the range of the agency’s capabilities, including covert action.

Yesterday morning a Sunni terror group blew up a pipeline in south-west Iran near the Iraqi border … According to the U.S. military Combating Terrorism Center, Ansar al-Fruqan has grown out of the defeated Jundallah terrorist group which had killed hundreds of Iranian officials and civilians. Jundallah was a Baluch jihadi insurgency fighting for a "Free Baluchistan" in the area of south-west Pakistan and south-east Iran. Its leader was killed in 2010 and it has since split and evolved into Ansar al-Furqan and other groups. Some of these are under foreign influence. Mark Perry reported in 2012: A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.

Mossad agents hired Jundallah terrorists to kill nuclear experts in Iran. It should not be a surprise then that a Jundallah follow-up group is now attacking Iranian economic infrastructure in the very same moment that the Mossad and the CIA coordinate another campaign to overthrow the Iranian government. This points to a wider and well organized plan.

Last night groups of 20 to 50 young men appeared in some 20 cities and towns of Iran and started to vandalize (vid) the streets. … The groups, their appearance in some 20 cities and what they did was coordinated. …

Those U.S. politicians who had called to "bomb, bomb, bomb" Iran (John McCain) or had threatened to wage war against it (Hillary Clinton) issued statements in support of the "Iranian people"- i.e. the rioters in the streets. These are the same people who suffocate the Iranian people by pushing sanction round after sanction round onto them - hypocrites. Donald Trump and his State Department issued statements in support of the 'peaceful protesters' who vandalized their cities … The professed concerns for the Iranian people are nonsense. …

The official U.S. uttering comes very early and … exposes these protests as U.S. supported … Why is the U.S. doing this? The plan may well be … to instigate a sharp reaction by the Iranian government against the militant operations … That reaction can then be used to implement wider and stricter sanctions … another building block of a larger plan to suffocate the country and as an additional step on a larger escalation ladder.

[AZJoe]

Let's not forget that Secretary of State Tillerson in testimony before Congress in June of 2017 openly acknowledged that the US supports regime change in Iran, and further stated that “Our policy towards Iran is to work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government.”

From Counterpunch back in August of 2017:

"In other words, Tillerson said, the U.S. government was committed to overthrowing the current government in Iran by peaceful means. What they mean by “peaceful” should not be taken lightly. No regime-change operation is ever peaceful. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is conducting an inter-agency review of the sanctions on Iran and of the various options available to the U.S. for action against Iran. These options include military force. There is belligerence in the air.

"The President has made very clear that he thought this [Iran Treaty] was a bad deal” … Trump had wanted to refuse to certify the deal this time ... There is widespread enthusiasm in the White House to walk away from the deal and to use the full vitality of U.S. power to suffocate Iran. … and in July, at the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Trump asked his European allies to stop doing business with Iran. …

The U.S. already has military bases on the doorstep of Iran—in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere. There are at least 125,000 U.S. troops on the edge of Iran and thousands of warships and aircraft at the ready. …

From Duran:

Now that Syria has been lost, the United States is going straight for the main prize, an overthrow of the current government in Iran. All the chatter and demonization of Iran that has been making recent headlines serves a purpose.

This is standard American regime change 101.

• Demonize using mainstream media soft power.
• Ramp up economic sanctions.
• Cause internal strife.
• Foster, fund and promote protests.
• Rinse and repeat. ...

[Ender]

Let's not forget that Secretary of State Tillerson in testimony before Congress in June of 2017 openly acknowledged that the US supports regime change in Iran, and further stated that “Our policy towards Iran is to work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government.”

From Counterpunch back in August of 2017:

"In other words, Tillerson said, the U.S. government was committed to overthrowing the current government in Iran by peaceful means. What they mean by “peaceful” should not be taken lightly. No regime-change operation is ever peaceful. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is conducting an inter-agency review of the sanctions on Iran and of the various options available to the U.S. for action against Iran. These options include military force. There is belligerence in the air.

"The President has made very clear that he thought this [Iran Treaty] was a bad deal” … Trump had wanted to refuse to certify the deal this time ... There is widespread enthusiasm in the White House to walk away from the deal and to use the full vitality of U.S. power to suffocate Iran. … and in July, at the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Trump asked his European allies to stop doing business with Iran. …

The U.S. already has military bases on the doorstep of Iran—in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere. There are at least 125,000 U.S. troops on the edge of Iran and thousands of warships and aircraft at the ready. …

From Duran:

Now that Syria has been lost, the United States is going straight for the main prize, an overthrow of the current government in Iran. All the chatter and demonization of Iran that has been making recent headlines serves a purpose.

This is standard American regime change 101.

• Demonize using mainstream media soft power.
• Ramp up economic sanctions.
• Cause internal strife.
• Foster, fund and promote protests.
• Rinse and repeat. ...

Thank you!

Great info- I'd +rep you again, if I could!

[AZJoe]

From Activist Post:

A familiar sight is taking place across Iran … Protests are taking place in numerous cities citing grievances and demanding that the Ayatollah and Iranian President step down. … now violence has indeed flared up as protesters have laid waste to a number of government properties …

Neo-cons in the American media and the U.S. President are all demanding that Americans stand with the “Iranian people” and the “protesters” …

The reason this sight is familiar is because we have seen it in Egypt, Libya, and Syria in the past as well as in Iran itself in the late 2000s. Protests that turn violent, a subsequent crackdown that either is violent or is reported as such, and the weight of American propaganda against the target government … nothing more than the color revolution/destabilization apparatus that has been used by the West in countries all across the world for decades, particularly in the last twenty years. …

it should be remembered that the United States and Israel have openly stated a desire to see Iranian influence broken and as recently as 2009, the United States attempted to engineer a color revolution in the country. The first three days of the Green Movement in Iran looked very much like the first three days of this current movement. …

economic concerns are a major issue in Iran, a country whose economy has been suffering for years under Western sanctions … In addition, special attention must be paid to the concept of “government corruption,” a hallmark of color revolutions since government corruption is often more of a conceptual issue than anything concrete. … There are also more concerning demands that can be found in the slogans being chanted by the demonstrators. … they are calling for regime change. This is precisely what the United States, GCC, NATO, and Israel also want to see happen.

Second, numerous demonstrators are chanting “Let go of Palestine,” and “Not for Gaza, Not for Lebanon, I’d give my life (only) for Iran.” Again, protesters are now chanting foreign policy demands identical to that desired by the United States, NATO, GCC, and Israel. All this in a protest that is supposed to be about economic concerns. …

On Thursday and today the slogans of some protesters turned the call for economic relief into a call for regime change. …


the U.S. President immediately has latched on the protests, encouraging Americans to stand with the protesters … This is coming from a man who rarely sees a protest that isn’t directed at him. Meanwhile, Neo-Con organs like FOX News are also repeating calls for Americans to support the brave “freedom fighters” in Iran. … when Neo-Cons call for support to protests, eyebrows should be raised in skepticism. …

It is also important to question just how popular these protests are. While mainstream western media … paint them as involving tens of thousands at each demonstration, video and pictures tend to show only dozens to hundreds at the most while others wander about around them. …

The protests taking place in Iran are taking place only a month after the White House and Tel Aviv met to discuss a strategy on Iran. …

The idea that a color revolution could be attempted in Iran is no fantasy. It would be a repeat of history. Remember, in 2009, an attempt at a color revolution deemed the “Green Revolution” was launched but was quickly put down by the iron fist of the Iranian government. …

The plan for a Western or a Western/Israeli attack on Iran, along with the theatre of alleged US-Israeli tensions leading up to a strike and outright war, has been in the works for some time. … in 2009, the Brookings Institution … released a report entitled “Which Path To Persia? Options For A New American Strategy For Iran,” in which the authors mapped out a plan which leaves no doubt as to the ultimate desire from the Western financier, corporate, and governing classes. … The plan involves the description of a number of ways the Western oligarchy would be able to destroy Iran including outright military invasion and occupation … The plan included attempting to foment destabilization inside Iran via the color revolution apparatus, violent unrest, proxy terrorism, and “limited airstrikes” conducted by the US, Israel or both. …

The report states,

the most obvious and palatable method of bringing about its demise would be to help foster a popular revolution along the lines of the “velvet revolutions” … the United States should encourage the Iranian people to take power in their own name, and that this would be the most legitimate method of regime change. … it is the one policy option that holds out the prospect that the United States might eliminate all of the problems it faces from Iran, do so at a bearable cost, and do so in a manner that is acceptable to the Iranian people and most of the rest of the world. …

it appears that another color revolution is underway. … all signs are pointing toward Western treachery in an attempt to break Iran in the final domino to fall in the Middle East before an even bigger confrontation is ignited. … Whether or not it will succeed will depend on the level of subversion that has been possible by the United States intelligence apparatus since 2009 and the ability of Iran to squash the revolt. …

[Danke]

...

[AZJoe]

[AZJoe]

Another from Duran:

With 2018 not even a week old, we have a shiny, brand new western regime change operation unfolding in Iran. When it comes to western sponsored regime change operations, Iran may very well be the biggest prize of them all. You have to hand it to the Deep State on this one…they are aiming to wreak havoc on regional power Iran … this western fueled regime change operation lacks much creativity, dusting off the same old playbook used in regime change operations of the past decade. …

Two weeks ago a memo was leaked from inside the Trump administration showing how Secretary of State and DC neophyte Rex Tillerson was coached on how the US empire uses human rights as a pretense on which to attack and undermine noncompliant governments. … The May 17 memo reads like a crash course … that the U.S. should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. …

So we all know what this song and dance is code for. Any evil can be justified in the name of “human rights”.

In October we learned from a former Qatari prime minister that there was a massive push from the US and its allies to topple the Syrian government from the very beginning of the protests which began in that country in 2011 … This revelation came in the same week The Intercept finally released NSA documents confirming that foreign governments were in direct control of the “rebels” who began attacking Syria following those 2011 protests. The fretting over human rights has occurred throughout the entirety of the Syrian war, even as the governments publicly decrying human rights abuses were secretly arming and training terrorist factions to murder, rape and pillage their way across the country.

We’ve seen it over and over again. In Libya, western interventionism was justified under the pretense of defending human rights when the goal was actually regime change. In Ukraine, empire loyalists played cheerleader for the protests in Kiev when the goal was actually regime change. And who could ever forget the poor oppressed people of Iraq who will surely greet the invaders as liberators? …



the neocons have had Iran in their crosshairs for a good long time. … I would like to stress to [Trump supporters] that the group of intelligence veterans who authored this memo about Iran is the same group who released a memo dismantling the bogus Russiagate narrative …

This is the same exact script they run over and over and over again, and people are falling for it again like Charlie Brown and the football. It is nonsensical to believe things asserted by the US intelligence and defense agencies on blind faith at this point … keep your skepticism cranked up to eleven on this Iran stuff … and be very loudly vocal about it. …

[RonZeplin]

Iranians hold nationwide rallies to denounce riots, back Islamic establishment

Iranians from all walks of life have taken to the streets of several cities to renew their allegiance to the Islamic establishment and condemn the recent wave of deadly violence in some areas.

Holding banners and national flags, the demonstrators chanted pro-government slogans during the mass rallies which were held in different towns and cities, including Ahvaz, Kermanshah, Bushehr, Abadan, Gorgan and Qom.

Several other cities are slated to hold similar rallies on Thursday, while Tehrani residents will hold a rally following the Friday prayers.

Last week, a number of peaceful protests over economic grievances started in several cities, but those gatherings suspiciously changed color and turned ugly when groups of participants, some of them armed, launched attacks on public property, police stations and religious sites.

Over a dozen people have been killed in the ensuing violence, according to state media reports.

The participants further shouted slogans against the United States and the Israeli regime, which welcomed the turmoil and voiced support for the riots.

[timosman]

[AZJoe]

Birth of an Insurgency: US-Israeli Secret Deal to Manipulate Iran Protests

Using the recent protests as cover, the governments of the United States and Israel are advancing a much larger plan for covert regime change against the Iranian government, one born out of the “secret deal” negotiated and signed between the two countries …

That deal, negotiated between National Security Adviser and neocon darling H.R. McMaster and his Israeli counterpart Meir Ben-Shabbat, secured the full cooperation of the Trump and Netanyahu administrations in targeting Iran’s “threatening activities” through a series of “memorandums of understanding.” As the Times of Israel reported, such cooperation is ultimately expected to translate into “steps on the ground” — a vague way of implying that aggressive actions will soon target Iran, including potential military action. …

On Monday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that an “American-Israeli agreement” had been forged that determined that Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force active in fighting the Wahhabist insurgency in Syria, is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.” This understanding subsequently resulted in the U.S. government giving Israel the “green light” to assassinate Soleimani, a plan Israel had unsuccessfully attempted to carry out three years earlier. …

Soleimani’s force in Syria has been instrumental in aiding the Syrian government in eliminating the largely foreign-funded Wahhabist insurgency … with the disintegration of Daesh (ISIS) in Syria and, along with it, the disintegration of the US-led coalition’s excuse for its illegal presence in Syria — Soleimani delivered a forceful message to the US forces stationed in Northwest Syria. … that it best remove all US forces currently present in Syria …

However, the US has made it clear that it has no plans to leave Syria anytime soon. … James Mattis insisted that the “war is not over” … just days after reports surfaced alleging that US forces in Northwestern Syria are retraining Daesh fighters from areas “liberated” by US proxy forces.

The endgame of this US operation is likely the exportation of insurgents … into eastern Iran … In order for such a program to achieve its goal, the US must be able to continue illegally occupying northwestern Syria. With Soleimani out of the picture and the Quds Force in Syria thus weakened, that occupation would be significantly easier to prolong. …

regime-change plans specifically targeting Iran have included such strategies for toppling the Iranian government. … the Brookings Institution … manual in … titled “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.” … includes an entire section devoted to enacting regime change … which focus on “supporting a popular uprising” and “inspiring an insurgency” by “supporting Iranian minority and opposition groups.” …

Though the protests have been small in size, intentional misreporting from the corporate media and on social media has sought to combine these protests with regime-change aspirations while also exaggerating their size. Both neocons and their liberal counterparts have posted publicly their support for the protests …

Given the establishment of a new CIA “mission center” focused on “turning up the heat” in Iran last June — which has sought to make Iran “a higher priority target for American spies” — along with the US operation in Syria, the groundwork for such an insurgency has now been laid. … the CIA officer in charge of the center is Michael D’Andrea, a Wahhabist who has overseen the agency’s drone bombing program and was a key player in the CIA’s torture program. According to Moon of Alabama, he is believed to be the mastermind behind US cooperation with extreme Wahhabi groups in Libya, Iraq and Syria. …

Israel has openly worked with terrorist groups active in Iran in the past, namely the Jundallah terrorist group that Israeli Mossad hired to kill nuclear experts in Iran and for other tasks in its covert war against the Islamic Republic.

As the protests in Iran have unfolded … there has been a precipitous rise in the number of “armed protesters” … including a group of armed individuals that attempted to overtake government buildings and military bases. Others have killed police and participated in the wanton destruction of property. Others still have shot innocent bystanders, who were then threatened into saying that the police had been the shooters. Eyewitness reports have claimed that many of the more violent protesters are “non-native” …

However, the most telling evidence has been the emergence of terrorist activity in eastern Iran. As the protests were beginning, a Sunni jihadist group known as Ansar al-Furqan exploded an Iranian oil pipeline in the Khuzestan province. The group … has ties to al-Nusra Front in Syria — claimed that it carried out the attack in order to “inflict losses on the economy of the criminal Iranian regime.”

Both the US and Israel have close ties to al-Nusra Front in Syria. The US, for its part, funneled weapons to al-Nusra by continuing weapons shipments to Syrian opposition groups in Idlib even as they declared allegiance to al-Nusra en masse, and even took al-Nusra Front off the terror watch list after it changed its name. … Israel’s long-standing commitment to aiding and funding the terrorist group, while also treating their wounded, has been an open secret for years.

In addition, the terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, popularly known as MEK in the West, has been active in the current protests as well. Despite its record of killing innocent civilians, Western media has cited MEK spokespeople and members in its reporting on the protests … while ignoring the massive pro-government rallies … MEK fighters have been trained by the U.S. military in the past and share connections with Israeli Mossad.

[AZJoe]