California Senator, Diane Feinstein (D), was on CNN today and when asked about the situation in Iran, she said, “We can’t appear to have our fingerprints on this.” And she is absolutely right.
The United States has a long history of interfering in Iranian affairs and even if, and it’s a big if, we are actively doing something intent on further destabilizing the country, we can’t have our fingerprints on it.
Every Iranian school child knows that the United States was behind the overthrow of the duly elected Iranian government in 1953. The coup d’état we orchestrated installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the Shah and financed the dreaded Iranian secret police, SAVAK. Thus, the Islamic revolution of 1979 was about removing the government installed by the United States and Great Britain.
As long as the Iranian government is not able to say that the protesters are pawns of the United States, the uprising has a chance of succeeding. But as soon as we offer direct support and encouragement to the protesters, this potential revolt will fail because no Iranian wants to be proclaimed a “stooge” of the United States.
To be clear, Mousavi will not be better than Ahmadinejad, if by some miracle the election results are overturned (which is unlikely since the Ayatollah has proclaimed the results “an absolute victory”) . Both men are cut from the same cloth and the Iranian President reports to the country supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the fact that this protest is occurring on the scale that it is, speaks volumes about the future of Iran. One thing is certain, Iran will never forget the June 12, 2009 election. It will either mark the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning.
ETA: While I seriously doubt Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe reads this blog, he just repeated (won’t say quoted) most of this entry on his June 22, 2009 morning show. I think I’m honored.