by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright June 22, 2009
All Rights Reserved.

        Crushing protests over a disputed June 12 election, Iran’s cult of mullah dictatorship, tear-gassed and opened fire on reform-minded marchers.  When 26-year-old protester Neda Sotani took an assassin’s bullet uncensored on YouTube, the world watched a beautiful face bleed to death on global TV.  Whatever happens to Iran’s fledgling protest movement, Neda lives on, giving the Iranian government a humiliating black eye in world opinion.  Despite Iran’s news blackout, the mullahs face a losing battle against a global communication revolution, where digital age records, transmits and shares disturbing images.  Bleeding to death on the world stage, Neda became the face of Iran’s growing youth movement, where roughly 70% of the population is under 30.  Grand Ayatollah Ali Khaenei believes he can put the genie back in the bottle by violent repression.

            Aside from the disputed election, Iran’s theocracy faces daunting challenges suppressing the natural instinct for freedom and change.  Iran’ s reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rubber-stamps the conservative religious philosophy of Iran’s ruling mullahs.  Young people are sick of persecution by the plainclothes Basij militia, whose paramilitary goons routinely persecute, beat and arrest youths for wearing makeup, showing skin, listening or watching Western music or TV or simply donning European-style clothing.  Neda’s up-close martyrdom reminds disenfranchised youth that the ruling mullahs only care about power, not the plight of youth seeking a bright future.  Tehran’s police stepped up violent tactics, firing tear-gas and bullets to disperse crowds.  While the mullahs posses enough lethal force to set down the rebellion, they can’t stop the yearnings of unbridled youth.

            President Barack Obama tried his best to restrain judgment, drawing ire from his conservative critics.  He’s trying fruitlessly to maintain a dialogue with one of the planet’s most repressive regimes.  Both the U.S. House and Senate have condemned Iran’s crackdown, while the White House sits on the fence.  Responding to the criticism, President Barack Obama hasn’t caught up with the reality that he won’t dialogue or win concessions on Iran’s nuclear enrichment anytime soon.  Barack claims his restraint helped the protest movement, keeping the mullah’s from blaming the U.S. or lashing out at protesters.  Both counts haven’t panned out, inviting criticism and a drop in Obama’s approval ratings.  Responding to his critics, Barack called a Rose Garden press conference for noon, June 23.  No matter how your spin it, the news hasn’t been kind to the president.

            Putting more pressure on Barack to take a stand, European officials condemned Tehran’s Gestapo-like tactics.  Neda’s bloody face gasping her last breaths hurt the mullahs’cause.  British Foreign Secretary David Millband rejected Iran’s Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki’s suggestion that the U.K. was behind Iran’s unrest.  French officials, usually reticent to criticize a major energy supplier, rejected Iran’s contention that the West had anything to do with political unrest.  Obama was forced to the microphones to explain his noncommittal response.  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called Obama’s responses “timid” and “feckless,” prompting tomorrow’s news conference.  Regardless of the West’s frustrations about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, Obama must decisively condemn Tehran’s violent crackdown, offering hope to all seeking self-determination.

            Tehran has a despicable record of manipulating the press, preferring, instead, to allow state-run broadcast and print to tell a one-sided story.  Cutting off Internet service, restricting phone access, incarcerating and expelling journalists and asserting control of the airwaves, displays Iran’s Stalin or Maoist-like control of the airwaves, necessary to brainwashing average citizens.  Expelling the British Broadcasting Corporation and Dubai-based Al-Arabiya correspondents reveal the extremes to which government will go to control the airwaves.  “Meddling by Western powers and international media is unacceptable,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi,” accusing the foreign press of “a racial mentality that Iranians belong to the Third World,” blaming the West for Iran’s current strife.  When Obama faces the press tomorrow, he needs to set the record straight.

            Iran’s ruling elite hides behind Islamic extremism to justify actions against individual and human rights.  Since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has manipulated the airwaves asserting totalitarian-like control of Persian society.  Focusing on Israel, the mullahs’ pander to the street and divert attention from their brutal repression of individual and civil rights.  “I don’t thank their willingness to crack down was ever in doubt.  They won’t let these protests grow—this was the way the Shah was brought down in 1979,” said Ali Nader, an Iranian expert with Rand Corporation.  Opposition candidate Mir-Hossain Mousavi reminded his supporters to “keep protesting lies and fraud is your right,” urging protestors to avoid violence.  World governments see firsthand what motivates Iran’s ruling mullahs:  To control and dominate Persian society.

 About the Author

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.