https://southfront.org/winter-protests-in-iran-2017-2018/
Today, the influence of the Iranian state and its set of values is growing in the Middle East and around the world.
In late December, anti-government protests sparked across the country. Over 20 people were killed, hundreds injured and thousands detained because of clashes between security forces and the protestors. The protests emerged due to internal economic factors and the activity of foreign adversaries of Iran. The main factors behind the protests were government imposed barriers to small businesses, a strict regulation of daily life by the government, corruption, high level of the social differentiation and economic variance within the population as well as the infiltration of patterns of the Western consumerist society into the country.
On December 28, protests broke out in the northern city of Mashhad. Over the next few days, these protests spread across the country and reached the Iranian capital, Teheran. In some areas, protestors attempted to storm police stations and government buildings. This became the main reason for the casualties. For example, six protesters were killed during an attack on the police station in Qahderijan. The protesters tried to steal guns from the station. According to reports, two protestors also died in the city of Khomeini Shahr, three in Shahin Shahr, six in Tuyserkan, two in Izeh and four in Doroud. A member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was also reportedly killed by a protestor with a hunting gun near Najafabad.
According to reports, the protests were initially caused by President Hassan Rouhani’s leak of a proposed government budget last month. The budget would have slashed cash subsidies for the poor and raised fuel prices to lower debt. The plan also included fees for car registration and a departure tax. Some groups of protesters also criticized Iran’s spending on foreign policy goals across the region.
Iranian authorities have temporarily blocked access to social media and messaging apps which could allow the protestors to organize. Habibollah Khojastehpour, the deputy governor of the Lorestan province, accused “foreign agents” for the deaths of two demonstrators that took place on December 30.
“No shots were fired by the police and security forces. We have found evidence of enemies of the revolution, Takfiri groups [militant groups] and foreign agents in this clash,” he said in an interview to the state-run TV station on December 31.
Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo accused the US of “grotesque” interference in the country’s affairs and of encouraging regime change in Iran after the US President Donald Trump had praised the riots “against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime” and warned that the US was closely watching the situation. US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley even vowed to call an “urgent” UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Iran.
Previously, such major protests took place in Iran 9 years ago, in 2009. The 2018 protest follows major foreign policy successes of Iran in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US and Israeli leadership made multiple statements that Tel Aviv and Washington are set to counter the growing Iranian influence.
According to experts, the US is actively using diplomacy and intelligence as means to further destabilize the situation in Iran. Kurds and Azeris living in Iran played an important role in escalating the protests. The US elites directly influence these communities.
At one point, Iran was close to the edge of losing control over the expanding protests. Currently, it looks like Teheran regained control of the situation. If the situation destabilizes further or if the Iranian government weakens enough, the chances for US-Israeli intervention in the country will grow. The formal reason for this aggression will be the so-called protection of “freedom and democracy”.
The recent events clearly indicate that foreign actors have and are able to use so-called soft power means to destabilize the internal situation in Iran and possibly later, within 2-3 months, in Russia.
I am afraid that what the US government sews abroad (destabilization) is coming home to haunt us all. The US itself is ripe for exactly this kind of destabilization. It wouldn’t take much to push this country into a full blown civil war at this point. How will the US government react when it is facing massive demonstrations in the street and huge sums of foreign money are flooding into the country to “support” the organizing of “resistance” groups?
People in glass houses…
That should be a worry,you are right. But it isn’t a worry.The US’s opponents aren’t even trying to stir up protests in the US. They believe it isn’t “legal” to interfere in other countries internal affairs. So while the US constantly meddles in their affairs.They stand aside and won’t return the favor.It’s the best present the US could ever get.Sad but true,that’s how it is.
Unfortunately, that is so. Furthermore, the super-wealthy U.S. Zionist Empire has a huge amount of money at its disposal to inject into other countries’ destabilisation, nurturing the fifth columnist movements and bribing the dissatisfied. Nothing speaks louder than $$$ to the corruptible, and there is no shortage of these anywhere. In that respect, the Empire has an enormous advantage indeed.
Unfortunately for the Empire, the time has come when countries do not wish to hold dollars which are printed in huge amounts backed by nothing. Also, people have seen the results of regime changes in other countries. Additional regime changes will not go so smoothly. Iran is proof of this.
What is legal or illegal should be irrelevant when dealing with the Rotten Empire. Everything should be used against it in order to bring it to its knees. For the sake of humanity and for the sake of this planet. As I said before, that is what Russia should focus on. Stirring the things within, exactly what the Rotten Empire has been doing fore decades in Russia and elswhere. Why being always in defensive mode and waiting for another blow coming from Washington? Morality should be put aside when deling with this beast.
By “stirring things in” I presume you are talking about the US. There is no point in Russia stirring things in the US, as it will achieve nothing, nor does it have to. While not all Americans believe what the corporate media tells them, most still do. Also, most do not have any interest in world affairs, concentrating on their personal issues. Russia really does not have to do anything as far as the US goes. The US is destroying it’s credibility with its foreign policy, while the gigantic US foreign and domestic debt, including the printing of the worthless dollar backed by nothing, is a time bomb waiting to go off. All the Russians have to do is sit back and wait.
Do you mean that the US will sew the same destabilization here as it does elsewhere? So the deep state can do a regime change here if it can further its interests better that way?
Or do I misunderstand you?
sow
How would the US react to protests? Did you not see how they attacked the protesters who occupied Wall Street?
@Bob. Inequality, corruption, religious conservatism and reduced living standards in the USA as in the above report on Iran; but one major difference will save the US from colour revolutions, Arab springs or Iranian winters: there is nothing in the USA that Rothschild does not already own; starting with the banks, the government, the news, the oil industry …. The victim countries — Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia, even the Ukraina — do not want “sauce for the gander” ie, revenge. They simply want to be left alone to get on with their lives without Liberal interventions, cash injections and Nudelman cookies. They have suffered enough from these evils; why wish them on the hapless Yanks?
An Iran/EEU trade agreement being implemented Jan 21st.
https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/77845/iran-eeu-trade-deal-to-come-into-effect-on-january-21
Boot’em! Don’t Spatter’em! Heinz Guderian.
The US had a lot of tactical victories using hybrid war/ colour revolutions, but they don’t work anymore because enemies adapt, whereas the US doesn’t adapt and the tactical victories turned into grand strategic losses, because the US will install a corrupt, incompetent dumbass as the leader. A pattern that goes back to Vietnam.
You are correct. You cannot use the same old trick continually. People have TV’s and the Internet at home, and people know what is going on. They have all seen the results of color revolutions. Look at Libya. Look at Ukraine. People in Ukraine are now cursing the day they had that coup d’etat against Yanukovich in 2014. The only ones who benefited by the coup were the oligarchs, amassing huge fortunes, while ordinary people are now facing poverty, unemployment and having trouble surviving. It’s questionable if Ukraine will survive in its present geographic form. It will most probably break up into three parts, if not more.
Yes, they never learn and the people of Ukraine and elsewhere pay the price.
China and Pakistan are extending the CPEC to Afghanistan and dumping the dollar for trade settlement. HeHe.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-12/26/c_136853623.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/03/news/economy/pakistan-china-trump-trade-yuan-dollar/index.html
I am very surprised with the contents of this article. Yes, there were some anti-Government demonstrations in Iran. So what. How many came out to demonstrate ? And what do their numbers mean in relation to Iran’s population of 81 million people ? To state that “at one point Iran was close to the edge of losing control” is questionable.
What happened was that demonstrations occurred due to economic problems. They were peaceful, and even the Iranian Government stated that people had the right to demonstrate. However, once they started, these demonstrations were infiltrated by individuals and groups of trouble makers, whose intention was to guide the demonstrators to acts of violence. leading to regime change, or a Soros style color revolution. There is no doubt that these acts of violence were directed by foreign factors, and we all know who they are. After that we had pro-Government demonstrations, and these demonstrations were larger in number. There is no way that regime change had any chance in Iran.
When it comes to Russia, this year we are having presidential elections in Russia. And we all know what is going to happen. Soros, the CIA and others will use these elections for their old tricks of trying to cause insurrection. For example: They will bus into Moscow “demonstrators” from all parts of Russia to give the impression that they all “reside” in Moscow. After that CNN, and others, will pop up and film these “demonstrations”, pointing their cameras into the center of the crowd and “forgetting” to film the flanks, and thus creating an image of “huge” “demonstrations”. During the actual voting, we shall again have staged incidents, like last time, when some clowns staged “voter fraud” inside one voting station (an election official was filmed filling out ballots, “without” realizing he was being filmed, the whole incident being staged in a highly unconvincing way, the official playacting, impersonating a third rate actor).
Foreign factors cannot destabilize Russia any more. That’s absurd. The reason Soros, the CIA and others will fail is because Russians still remember the Yeltsin years, when Russia was plundered of some 100 billion dollars a year by Western bankers, corporations and domestic oligarchs. Nobody sane wants to return to those years. Even so, the West will try, as this will be its last opportunity to remove President Putin and install a puppet, so that Russia can be broken up and plundered. The West will fail.
Now that this attempt at a color revolution/regime change has failed in Iran, I sincerely hope the US will not do anything foolish like attacking the country. Even during the two wars against Iraq the US lost more men and equipment it ever dared admit. Invading Iran, while theoretically not impossible, is next to impossible. For a successful invasion, the US would need complete air superiority. It cannot have it in Iran, due to its high tech defenses. This means the US would have to attack without air cover. Not a good idea.
B.F.
“To state that “at one point Iran was close to the edge of losing control” is questionable.”
Yeah, I noticed that as well. I didn’t see any reports that suggested it, but I didn’t read anything from the zionazi media, either. That could be the source of that claim.
Who would seriously believe that Donald Trump or any US administration really care about the Iranian people?
http://bit.ly/2m2poHm
The wolves continue to bay at Iran’s door, because both Russia and China refuse to grasp the danger of situation and do the right thing and let Iran in.
Why has Iran’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation SCO not been approved to date?
Yet India and Pakistan received membership.
The Indian government will be soon be rolling out the red carpet for an official visit by Netanyahu.
The same Netanyahu that clandestinely opposes everything emanating from Moscow or Beijing, and is one of the main instigators behind Washington’s hostile policies
towards Russia and China.
Iran securing membership in the SCO will help to cement its international standing and send a message to its enemies that the Islamic Republic is not to be messed with.
China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela are all on the Empire’s target list, so they must accept this fact and work together to defeat the Empire.
Selah
“… Why has Iran’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation SCO not been approved to date? …”
For exactly the same reason that Kremlin had been flip-flopping on the S-300 delivery to Iran for full 10 (ten) years already: the abject fear from the Zionist entity in Palestine’s tribe of ill repute. Simply put, Putin is terrified of repercussions of overtly displeasing the true rulers of the planet. Sycophants’ standard whine “What would you want, a WW III?” elegantly confirms this.
So why did India vote against Isreal/USA on the UN resolution on Jerusalem and for Russia and not for Isreal/USA on the UN resolution on human rights in Crimea?
And why did Modi phone Putin on January 3rd?
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56624
Center of gravity for the US is the US dollar; Russia & China have been attacking it for years by buying gold.
http://chinascope.org/archives/6458/76
“… the US dollar; Russia & China have been attacking it for years by buying gold …”
Yes, they have.
(1) Unfortunately, at the rate they are buying that gold, it might take many, many decades before (if ever) they manage to make even a small dent.
(2) Unfortunately, China’s current dependence on U.S. money is overwhelming. Practically everything>/i> one buys in the U.S. today is “Made in China”. That is a strange symbiotic relationship that cannot be untangled in any foreseeable future, all the Mickey Mouse Rubles-Yuans-etc. dollar-bypass-surgeries notwithstanding…
The point of dumping dollars for trade settlement and buying gold is to force the Fed to raise interest rates to defend the dollar. That will create an inverted yield curve before the end of 2018. Before the end of 2019, the MSM will be talking about a financial crisis in the US because the yield curve is getting steeper.
The exact same thing happened in 2007/2008. The yield curve went inverted in 2007 and in 2008 the financial crisis occurred because of malinvestment in the 2002-2007 period, creating unpayable loans.
The exact same thing will happen again because creating more debt to solve a too much debt relative to the size of the economy problem is kicking the can down the road and creating a bigger problem.
So, the end result will be that the stupidity of the Wall Street control fraudsters and the
American elite will wreck American financial hegemony.
The gold chart is in a bull market(breaking out of a multiyear base) and the US Dollar Index is in a bear market and I doubt it, if China considers kicking the US dollar under the bus, too be too high a price for a multipolar world.
Russia, China and the infinite stupidity of the American elite are going to Sun Tzu America into becoming a bankrupt ex-superpower.
What you have written is correct. The phrase “kicking the can down the road” has been used by a number of analysts. Both Russia and China are playing the waiting game, waiting for the US to implode, as it will. The US elite also knows this, trying to prevent it, which is the reason for the current political hot spots in the world. However, even the elite knows what will happen in the end. It has for years been buying up real estate, both in the US and outside it. George Bush Jr. bought himself an estate in Paraguay, just one example. Tasmania, too, is one of the popular spots for real estate buying.
Your statement is highly debatable. Both Russia and China have sent subtle warnings to the Western bankers. Russia has stated that it has 1801 tonnes of gold. The number is not only a number, but a date. In 1801 czar Alexander I took the throne in Russia. It was he who defeated Napoleon. What the Russians are saying is we have defeated Napoleon by military means, we shall defeat the bankers by monetary means. It is estimated that Russia has more than 30.000 tonnes of gold in the Kremlin, under Putin’s personal supervision.
China has stated that it has 1842 tonnes of gold. That, too, is a date (note the similarity with the Russian date). In the year 1842 China was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, by which it was forced to cede Hong Kong to Britain. What China is doing is also sending a subtle message to the West, saying we have not forgotten the humiliation of Nanking. It is estimated that China, too, has more than 30,000 tonnes of gold.
Both Russia and China have for years been buying up all the gold that is available on the worlds markets. They will at the right time introduce gold backed rubles and yuans. China has already stated it will introduce the petro-yuan.
When the US introduced sanctions against Russia, it did so in conjunction with the EU and Saudi Arabia, causing more damage to the EU and Saudi Arabia than it did to Russia, which turned to its own resources. By the second half of 2016, the EU had already lost 100 billion euros in trade. The lowering of oil prices has contributed to last years purge in Saudi Arabia, Prince Salman arresting a heap of princes and trying to grab 800 billion dollars in his “anti corruption” effort. And Russia ? It has continued selling oil and using profits to buy gold, not to mention the fact that it has its own gold mines. Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia in 2005 in its exports of oil, not mentioned by the Western media.
Finally, you may have noticed that countries are turning to the Chinese yuan. The US is printing between 120 billion and 1 trillion dollars a year backed by nothing. Now who really wants funny money ? And Wall Street ? Its picking a fight with both Russia, China and Iran, all in the hopes of breaking the Shanghai Cooperation Zone, the BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Union. It will fail.
I believe that back in 2017 Iran said something about joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2018. To state that Russia and China refuse to grasp the danger of the situation is mod-to note: inflammatory word replaced – try: “not sensible”.
You were right, at no stage of the protest was Iran government about to lose it. The authority did the right thing by allowing the protest to go on and called on the protesters to leave the street only when it is turning to riots aware that with what is going on in the region sincere economic protesters will sense the trap and avoid the street leaving a handful of infiltrators and real anti-regime citizens of Iran which no doubt exist in Iran as in any country, then the government started the mop up. And the security agency executed this meticulously without giving the US the excuses they needed to rally the international community. Clearly Iran is more prepared for this than we give them credit.
Glenn Greenwald on Iran Protests: Trump Tweets “Time for Change” While
Backing Dictators Worldwide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqj9Bv7c2c
Nikki Haley – UN Security Council emergency meeting on Iran Jan 5, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5WLYs8Q2kg
US abusing UN Security Council to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs – Russia
https://www.rt.com/news/415116-un-security-council-iran-abuse/
Iran’s Revolutionary Gard declares victory over unrest “caused by foreign enemies”
https://www.rt.com/news/415205-iran-revolutionary-guard-protests/
Yes, that little attempt at regime change in Iran failed, as I knew it would. A minority was used against the majority, Soros style methods. These methods, unfortunately, worked in Kiev in 2014. Four years have almost passed, and now the majority over there regrets what happened. Poroshenko will have a tough time holding the country together. I hope he does not do something foolish, like launching a war against the Donbas during the presidential elections in Russia. That would finish him off politically. Then again, he probably does not care, as he has US citizenship. His pal Yats is already in Canada, the Canadian Government bestowing upon him Canadian citizenship in record time.
re: “Porshenko… probably does not care, as he has US citizenship. His pal Yats is already in Canada, the Canadian Government bestowing upon him Canadian citizenship in record time.”
I did not know this. Both the ‘top-tier’ leader in Ukraine are able to do a ‘runner’ when things get bad? Is this correct. The country is broke and the people that put it there can get off scott free?
Its true. Yats fled to Canada, receiving Canadian citizenship overnight. Poroshenko has US citizenship, which is remarkable for a country which is ostensibly “sovereign”. What this means is that, theoretically, Poroshenko can be tried for treason before a US court if he does not obey the dictates of Washington, ie. US law. Ukraine is turning into a sad joke, being reduced to a banana republic.
Syrian and Iraqi kurdistan as a tool to get at Iran.
Birth Of An Insurgency: The US-Israeli “Secret Deal” To Manipulate Protests In Iran
http://www.mintpressnews.com/birth-insurgency-us-israeli-secret-deal-manipulate-protests-iran/236009/
“With the Trump and Netanyahu administrations now working in lockstep, U.S.-Israeli hostility towards Iran has now ripened into a plan to repeat what befell Syria over six years ago – the hijacking of minor protests and their transformation into the cover for a foreign-funded insurgency intent on toppling Iran’s elected government.
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 right before the widely covered but relatively small protests in Iran began in late December.
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.”
Indeed, Soleimani’s force in Syria has been instrumental in aiding the Syrian government in eliminating the largely foreign-funded Wahhabist insurgency that was intended to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power, a key strategic goal of both the U.S. and Israel in the region.
However, the U.S. has made it clear that it has no plans to leave Syria anytime soon.
The endgame of this U.S. operation is likely the exportation of insurgents from Northwestern Syria through Iraqi Kurdistan, where U.S. forces are still present, and into eastern Iran where the fomentation of an armed insurgency will be used to destabilize and hijack the protests currently taking place in Iran. Most of the recent growth in reported unrest has been concentrated in eastern Iran.
In order for such a program to achieve its goal, the U.S. 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.”
The article goes on to detail the israeloamerican strategy and their preparations for it, and their involvement in the Iranian protests, along with their support and use of their usual terrorist proxies as part of the regime change plan. While the protests have been winding down, the zionazi assets in place can artificially restart further protests, as needed.
US Plans to Recognize Kurdish Area in Syria 3x Size of Lebanon ‘Soon’ – Reports
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201801071060574215-us-recognition-kurdish-area-syria-reports/
“An unnamed senior Western official told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the plans are part of a new strategy for Syria currently being drafted by the Trump administration.
According to the official, US initiatives in the region include empowering local councils, backing reconstruction efforts, assisting in training of government agency workers, improving public services and infrastructure, protecting SDF areas and engaging in the upkeep of military bases, all of which will eventually lead to diplomatic recognition.
Last week, it was reported that a new ‘North Syrian Army’ which included SDF formations and backed by the US-led coalition, was being created to carry out ‘border security duties’ in territories under their control. Local media said that the militias would guard areas along the region’s northern border with Turkey.
The US and its coalition allies are expected to provide the new force with technical assistance, weapons and training.”
One can the israeloamerican preparations are moving right along.
With the western terror pocket in Idlib still in need of cleaning, along with several smaller regions still terrorist occupied, the Syrians still have their hands full dealing with these. Splitting their forces to simultaneously clean up the israeloamerican occupied northeast right now would be too much.
The kurdish occupied areas are not monolithic, nor is the region majority kurd, reconciliation negotiations are ongoing, and may prove successful. But if not, this is where the Turks could be of use…