© Mohammad ALI MARIZAD / AFPPro-government demonstrators march in Iran's holy city of Qom on January 3, 2018
As hundreds of thousands of Iranians
take to the streets in
support of their government and against recent violent demonstrations in the country, the chief commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)
reports that the rioting seen in several Iranian cities over the last week is now under control. Claiming that "
the Iranian nation has been targeted due to its resistance against the US and its lackeys and for its support for oppressed nations worldwide," Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari also reported that "
a large number of the arrested trouble-makers at the center of the sedition had received training from counter-revolutionaries and the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization [MKO/MEK
- People's Mujahedin of Iran, aka National Council of Resistance of Iran]."
When President Rouhani spoke with French President Macron yesterday, he urged France to stop hosting the MEK, which has been based in Paris since its leaders fled Iran after the 1979 revolution. Macron didn't acknowledge his country's support for the MEK, but he did
call on the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel to cool their aggressive rhetoric. Much as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights spoon-feeds Western media with fake intel about what is going on there, and just as Turkey has to worry about the US-based fifth columnist Gulen network, Iran has to contend with a dodgy expatriate organization
that Hillary Clinton got de-listed from the US List of Terror Organizations in 2012.Undeterred by the sheer fantasy that a 'democratic revolution' could occur in a country that holds regular elections, it's all-systems go for the US media in its effort to 'catapult the propaganda' against the Iranian 'Islamic regime'. Fox News yesterday
gave a platform to Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the MEK, in which he urged the Trump government to impose crippling sanctions (additional, presumably, to the existing ones) and
to recognize his organization as the new government of Iran.The heroic story of a righteous underdog fighting for noble ideals against a tyrannical regime has galvanized the US polity - right
and left,
including some among the
ostensibly anti-globalist 'alt-media' - to proclaim their impassioned support for 'the Iranian opposition', whom they portray as democratic white knights against the theocratic despots ruling Iran. But a closer look at the 'better option' certain Westerners have deigned the 'saviors' of Iran reveals quite a different tale.
Comment: While the author makes some good points, as said, antidepressants may work for some. More on depression: