Saturday, July 10, 2010

Mr. Mosavi, I am going to be kind and only suggest that you have got it wrong!

Mr. Mir Hossein Mosavi, the leader of the Iranian Green Movement, has recently released a brief and expressed his view on new round of sanctions imposed against Iran by both the Security Council and the US. In it, he has given his view on the impact of such sanctions on the ordinary Iranians as well as the Taliban-like regime of Iran. He has also talked about the possibility of using military force as the last resort against the regime in Tehran.

Mr. Mosavi generally condemned the sanctions and suggested that they are only added salt on the wound of millions of already struggling Iranian families. In terms of troubling the regime itself, he suggested that those sanctions have no or little effects. However, this view contradicts the consequences of the austerity measures put in place by the regime to minimise the daily petrol consumption, Iran imports close to %40 of its daily petrol consumption and one of the major US sanctions against the regime is the imported petrol, in Iran over two years ago. At the time Iranian authorities were trying to gauge their vulnerability against such sanctions should they be ever imposed. That experience was a nightmare for the Iranian authorities. In an outburst, Iranians witnessed hundreds of cars queuing behind every single petrol station all around the country. As a result Iranian cities turned into a battle ground between the desperate people and the terrified authorities. Angry Iranians burned down many petrol stations in Iranian cities.

An interesting adding point to all of that is that it had happened a year before the presidential election in Iran. When there was no disputed election. There was no sign of millions of Iranians on streets protesting against the rigged election result. But today is different. For the past 12 months or so, we have seen millions of Iranians that used every occasion to come to streets and protest against the illegitimate Ahmadi Nejad government. We have also seen a terrified regime shuts the country down for days with funniest excuses, just recently because of the Tehran's Bazzar strike, the government announced a 3 days public holidays for hot weather, just to avoid streets protests. Now Mr. Mosavi should explain how he does not see the regime's vulnerability against the petroleum sanction. He only needs to imagine millions of Iranians on streets use the petrol shortage as an excuse to protest against the illegitimate government!

Mr. Mosavi, in his brief, also attacked the use-of-force idea as well. He gave the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as unsuccessful examples. He not only rejected the idea but also went further into the Iran's history and mentioned a so-called coup which had brought down the government of Dr Mohammad Mosadegh, the Prime Minister of Iran at the time, some 56 years ago. That coup has been attributed to the CIA. And the result was to bring back the late king of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, into power. Now Mr. Mosavi was somewhat suggesting the current military threat made against the regime in Tehran is a reminiscence of that coup. He was assuming that the US is trying to enforce a regime change in Iran.

Nonetheless, what Mr. Mosavi forgot to mention is a single fact that; it is the Taliban in Tehran that since last year election has declared war on the Iranian people and the civilized world. It is the regime that killed young Iranians. It is the regime that used rape as a political tool against young Iranians. It is the regime that tortured young Iranians. It is this regime that has been puring billions of dollars of the Iranian families' money into the belly of the most notorious terrorist organisations in the world for the last 31 years. The money that otherwise must have been spent on the well-being of the Iranian families and their children.

The important point Mr. Mosavi is missing is that the world correctly chose to stand with the people of Iran in their battle against the Taliban in Tehran. Taliban is unacceptable whether it be in Afghanistan Or Iran!