{"id":4978,"date":"2014-10-26T09:19:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-26T07:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=4978"},"modified":"2014-10-26T09:19:54","modified_gmt":"2014-10-26T07:19:54","slug":"old-recipe-to-cook-new-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2014\/10\/old-recipe-to-cook-new-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Recipe To Cook New \u2018Iran\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: Human Wrongs Watch<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Fareed Mahdy* |<\/span>\u00a0<\/a>Human Wrongs Watch<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

ISTANBUL-The recipe for pushing Egyptians and Arabs toward extremism is simple and has been tasted for decades. Its ingredients are easy to prepare and digest; they are already pre-cooked and the kitchens of both Western mainstream media and foreign ministries are full of them. No problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Just pick up the old menu of the \u201cfree world against communist devil\u201d. It has three main dishes:<\/p>\n

\u2013 Starters elaborated with a climax of obsession (taking away the sweet dreams of politicians and media lords, and inducing stressed citizens to panic), against the dangers of those communist monsters that eat children;<\/p>\n

\u2013 First course made of political hyperactivity, \u201csummits\u201d included, to save humanity from communists lurking everywhere, and whose only reason for being is to destroy the free world. This course is accompanied by tasty \u201cinformative\u201d campaigns, which do not explain anything about such evils nor their threat, but avidly justify the urgent need to be alert \u2013and well-armed\u2013 to avoid the coming of the communist reckoning day;<\/p>\n

\u2013 Second course prepared with a mix of newly elaborated wars against terrorism, military mobilisations, invasions and arms sales.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, Palestinian and Lebanese homemade desserts.<\/p>\n

Then take this menu and change the names of the dishes (\u201ccommunist\u201d with \u201cIslamist\u201d) and you will understand such an alarm \u2014 and readiness for action \u2014 against \u201cIslamism.\u201d The computer can do this job for you.<\/p>\n

American Kitchen!<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. has already done so: the chair of the influential House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said on February 11, 2011 that the Brotherhood should be excluded from the process, according to an IPS report by Jim Lobe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must \u2026 urge the unequivocal rejection of any involvement by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremists who may seek to exploit and hijack these events to gain power, oppress the Egyptian people, and do great harm to Egypt\u2019s relationship with the United States, Israel, and other free nations,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in his weekly op-ed in the Washington Post (also on February 11), Charles Krauthammer, a neo-conservative hard-liner who coined the phrase \u201cthe Unipolar Moment\u201d in celebration of Washington\u2019s global hegemony after the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse, warned that \u201cIslamism\u201d had taken the place of Communism in the \u201clong twilight struggle\u201d for freedom.<\/p>\n

Now Islam Is Communism!<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, just as during the Cold War the United States helped keep European communist parties out of power (to see them ultimately wither away),\u201d he wrote, \u201cit will be U.S. policy to oppose the inclusion of totalitarian parties \u2013 the Muslim Brotherhood or, for that matter, communists \u2014 in any government, whether provisional or elected, in newly liberated Arab states.\u201d<\/p>\n

European politicians and media immediately hung the \u2018corrected\u2019 menu cooked in Washington.<\/p>\n

Think what you like, of course. Repeat to yourself and to the others, if you wish, all the \u2018arguments\u2019 that you have been reading, hearing and watching on television lastly about the eventual \u2018terrifying Muslim threat\u2019 that might hypothetically come from Egypt\u2013it is your legitimate right to do so.<\/p>\n

Please Know That\u2026.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But first, you may wish to know that the Muslim Brothers have been repeating, over and over again after Mubarak\u2019s departure \u2014 and even on the pages of the Washington Post and New York Times\u2013 that they do not pretend to present any candidate to the transitional government nor the upcoming presidential elections.<\/p>\n

Please also note that a first survey carried out among Egyptian demonstrators in Tahrir Square immediately after Mubarak was removed from power, revealed that the Muslim Brothers would get 18% of the vote. U.S. analysts raised the forecast to 30%.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that the Muslim Brothers cannot eventually obtain, sooner or later, more electoral margins. For now, the Egyptians have demonstrated exemplary citizenship and wisdom.<\/p>\n

They know that an \u201cIslamist\u201d regime would bring to them the wrath of the \u2018free world\u2019.<\/p>\n

They remember when in1992 the Algerians \u2014 under external pressure \u2014 held free elections, choosing the Islamic Salvation Front to rule their country. And that the world\u2019s immediate response was blunt: \u201cYes, but you have not chosen what we wanted you to choose!\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the results of the Algerian free choice were annulled and a civil war claimed the lives of 150,000 \u2018wrong\u2019 voters,<\/p>\n

The Egyptians know that in the 2006 Palestinian elections, which were monitored and certified as clean and transparent by observers from the U.S., the EU and the UN, the Palestinians chose HAMAS by majority. And that the world\u2019s immediate response was identical: \u201cYes, but you have not chosen what we wanted you to chose!.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Iranian Hammer<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The free world lives with a mounting, hysterical obsession with the \u201cislamist enemy.\u201d Sociologists will have much to say and to asses whether too much emphasis conditioning people on whom they should or should not choose to rule their countries, could have a reverse effect.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Arab peoples are fully aware that their oppressive dictatorships have been immortalised thanks to the formidable support of that very same free world that now dictates whom they should choose or not choose as their own rulers.<\/p>\n

Another psychological pressure that risks pushing the peoples to desperation is to compare their spontaneous uprising for their legitimate claims, with the \u201cIslamic revolution\u201d in Iran.<\/p>\n

A comparison rather difficult, very difficult to digest! Just consider that the Iranian revolution was all organised and implemented by to religious leadership, which is not what happened in Tunisia or Egypt.<\/p>\n

Also please remember that Iranian \u201cIslamic revolution\u201d was seized by U.S. and allies to come closer to the then Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and to celebrate a war of mutual annihilation between Iran and Iraq.<\/p>\n

The Benefits of Cooking New\u201d Iran\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Still, new \u201cIrans\u201d will always be welcome by the Western world because of their high commercial and electoral returns.<\/p>\n

Easy to understand: further tensions in the oil-producing area would serve to reinforce the \u201cwars on terrorism\u201d; endow giant multinationals with strong profit margins thanks to a more expensive oil \u2014 and high priced petrol would help weaken the \u201cpetro-dependent\u201d economies of China, Europe and Japan, thus opening more doors to the U.S., the biggest economy on earth.<\/p>\n

Tensions would also help justify military interventions and revive the \u201cfree world\u2019s\u201d side wars against \u201caxis of devil\u201d, such as Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, in addition to fetching other political and trade benefits.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s Perfect Storm<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indeed did not need to speak about a \u201cperfect storm\u201d to come in the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. The Middle East will witness strong waves of change that will end up being exploited by the \u2018free world\u2019 at the service of the famous \u201ccrusade\u201d launched by George W. Bush and the \u201ccreative chaos\u201d doctrine, which was coined in his era.)<\/p>\n

Note that the simple stirring of the Iranian nuclear ghost helped the U.S. to sell to Saudi Arabia a military arsenal of 60,000 million dollars to defend themselves . . . from whom? The oil-Gulf is more than defended by Western military bases and U.S. nuclear umbrella. Can you imagine how many weapons deals would be sealed with new \u201cIrans\u201d?<\/p>\n

There are abundant reasons for the \u2018free world\u2019 to welcome more and more \u201cIrans\u201d. Isn\u2019t that so?<\/p>\n

*Fareed Mahdy, Middle East and Noth of Africa analyst. This article was published in IDN-InDepthNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recipe for pushing Egyptians and Arabs toward extremism is simple and has been tasted for decades. Its ingredients are easy to prepare and digest; they are already pre-cooked and the kitchens of both Western mainstream media and foreign ministries are full of them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,7,122,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor-selection","category-iran","category-politics","category-slider","country-iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4980,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4978\/revisions\/4980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}