We should take this piece from the "Teheran Bureau" of PBS with a whole ocean of salt. It would be nice if what it says is true, but given the general distortion by the MSM of any and all events occurring in Iran, this seems highly unlikely. And given the already documented amount of meddling by NED and other organs of "soft" American intervention in the internal politics of Iran, not to mention the "hard" (that is, terroristic) intervention by the US-stooge Sunni organization, Jundullah, as well as the extremely intense sabre-rattling at Iran by Israel, Zionist interests, the whorish US and European media, and the lies and distortions on which this sabre-rattling is based, this piece is most likely nothing more than yet another salvo in the blitz of propaganda designed to make us malleable to a military attack if and when all these wonderful new developments in Iran are repressed by the mullahs. Sorry, but I'm not buying.

Ya know what would really help the cause of democracy? If Iran was not troubled by terrorism. National security would not automatically trump the commonwealth of the people.

Oh, look. The Iranians captured Abdulmalik Rigi, the leader of the dreaded Pakistan-based terrorist group Jundallah. This group can be found in the area where a mosque was blown up right before the last Iranian election.
Oh, look again. This terrorist group has ties to al-Qaeda and to the CIA.

Ah, America winning hearts and souls by blowing up houses of worship in order to frighten people and their government. What a great example of American hypocrisy in the DAFT war against terrorism.

It is heartwarming that Americans are so interested in the social changes in Iran. It is true that Iran is going through a profound demographic shift. There is a "baby boom" of younger Iranians with different life exeriences and expectations than their elders.

The reason they so outnumber the older generation is due, not only to Iran's growing prosperity, but also in part to America supplying Sadaam Hussein with satelite targeting data, poison gas and all matter of modern weapons to use on the labour intensive Iranian forces over the course of the eight year Iraqi attack on Iran.

That attack was facilitated by Donald Rumsfield and other US government officials who did more concrete things to kill Iranians than merely, as Hillory Clinton did, threaten to "obliterate Iran".

The author doesn't know whether there will be another Iranian revolution( is he aware they already had one? They overthrew the US backed dictator, remember?). But this doesn't stop him from hoping.

It seems to me that, obviously things are changing in Iran, faster than they appear to be in the US, a democracy of sorts, with a similar theocratic bent. The US religious fervour, unlike Iran's is not yet so formalized (give or take the odd ten commandments on court house steps), and where The mullahs appear to be waning, the fundamentalists in the US are on the rise.

I don't think Iranians want all their efforts to gain their freedom from the US to go to waste, I also think they like their creature comforts now too. I don't see why they can't have both. Let's hope the US border attacks and sanctions on them don't stop them from peacefully continuing to modernize, liberalize and develop.

clovis -

I have enormous respect for the New School, and retain a smidgen of hope that ever so often PBS programs like Frontline give cable viewers snippets of genuine independent journalism rather than intelligence community propaganda. Unfortunately, I share your basic perception about this particular offering from Danny Postel, coming to us courtesy of an entity called the Tehran Bureau.

The extended article name-drops twenty different diverse authorities from academe, think tanks, and the international media, all converging towards a general theme that something really big is brewing, with the forces of progressive liberal democracy percolating up inside Iran under a popular rainbow coalition nationalist banner calling itself the Green Movement. The Persian variant is not to be confused with the Orange Revolution, or the Velvet Revolution, the Cedar Revolution, or any of those other Revolutions that spontaneously arose among the middle class and the masses of eastern Europe, various former Soviet republics, the Middle East, and south central Asia during the last couple of decades.

What's going on in the streets of Tehran should be analogized to the grassroots social movements in places like Venezuela, Brazil, and Peru - or better yet, seen as akin to the indigenous upheaval that once toppled the Shah. Surely the CIA has absolutely nothing to do with it. The mullahs better be shaking in their boots.

Please pass the salt.

Here, you can borrow the pepper.

I wish it were true and real, and no disrespect to the author or to any of the learned authorities he references, but I'm withholding judgment for awhile longer too. Somewhere, I've heard this tune before.

Bill from Saginaw

Very smelly article

Considering that Bush made tens of millions of dollars available to support an uprising in Iran I'm very suspicious of the Green Movement.

Yesterday I read that a former Jundallah terrorist leader confessed to being paid by the CIA to help destabilize the country.

The article is here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24868.htm

I share the skepticism of ALL of the previous commenters (so far).

It's not a New York Times op-ed, but this article reminded me of a recent controversial NYT op-ed by a mysterious "graduate student" named Lara Dadkhah; Ms. Dadkhah urged a more ruthless attitude toward incurring civilian casualties in "Af-Pak".

Eventually the NYT further disclosed that this "graduate student" is now employed by Booz Allen, a diverse company that is major CIA contractor and a private intelligence service. Did you notice the word "company"?

The NYT further muddied the issue during their reluctant and belated disclosure by explaining that the editorial staff had been "looking" for someone to present the views advanced by this unknown and certainly undistinguished writer. WTF?

Whatever this author's pedigree and true purpose, the article is bogus infoganda.

· Yr Obd't Servant

PBS is "Judith Miller Light". I do not believe that they have ever interviewed an uncompromising strong opponent of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. Please correct me if I am wrong.
With regards to "Greens" in Iran, they will never be able to govern a country whose major income is derived from natural oil production and export. Young Iranians want to have fun for a change. Fun costs money. Money in Iran springs from oil wells. Greens hate drilling. If they want to govern Iran they must become "Blacks" as the color of oil. Case closed.

The "specter" as you put it, haunting Iran, is Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, and the First Strike Policy of Bush and now Obama.

The Military Industrial complex, urged on by a compliant and flag waving media, a war numbed and dumbed down populace, encouraged in spirit if not in fact by fundamentalist Christian groups anxious to see a nuclear holocaust in the area to hasten the return of their so called saviour, and a foreign policy controled by Zionists and various Israeli lobbies are the real specters here.

Iran has every right to have nuclear power and to protect itself. With nuclear weapons if necessary. As does Israel. But thanks to your policy of First Strike, the rules of the game, accepted as M.A.D. not that long ago, have changed completely. You are the ones putting us all- the whole world- at risk.

It is all a receipe for species extinction.

-Bill

Have any of you seen any mention by US media of Iran's capturing the leader of US Empire-sponsored terrorist organization Jundallah, Abdulmalik Rigi? It's recapped here, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LB26Ak01.html

According to Iran's PressTV, he's spilling the beans, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24868.htm

We have all seen how ruthless the US Empire is in its commission of massive War Crimes. The following describes a bit of history few will know about and is from the third part of Pepe Escobar's recent series on North Korea that I urge folks read, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB27Dg01.html

"The US air war on North Korea was an incredibly vicious bloodbath. Washington bombed the DPRK with more napalm than it used on Vietnam - with even more devastating effects, because the DPRK had many more large urban centers (18 out of 22 were almost completely wiped out) and urban industrial infrastructure than Vietnam. In only four months, from June 1950 to October, B-29s discharged more than 860,000 gallons of napalm over North Korea.

"Not surprisingly, and as in Iraq and AfPak decades later, the Pentagon hailed its "precision bombing". When China stepped into the war, Washington's air war went on overdrive, not only destroying most North Korean towns and cities but at the end of the war smashing huge dams that supplied water for no less than 75% of the DPRK's food production.

"With the Chinese allied to the DPRK in the battlefield, America's General Douglas MacArthur dictated that the whole area between the front and the Chinese border would become a wasteland; that meant in practice the destruction of every "installation, factory, city and village". MacArthur wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons ("The only passages leading from Manchuria and Vladivostok have many tunnels and bridges. I see here a unique use for the atomic bomb ... Sweeten up my B-29 force"). President Harry S Truman also threatened to use nuclear weapons, and almost did in April 1951.

"Later, in an interview to the New York Times on April 9, 1964, MacArthur said, "I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs ... strung across the neck of Manchuria"; then, "spread behind us - from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea - a belt of radioactive cobalt." In pure Dr Strangelove fashion, MacArthur was referring to cobalt 60 - which is more than 300 times more radioactive than radium.

"And that was not all. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency were busy exploring new avenues for the weapons of mass destruction of the time, via what was called "Operation Hudson Harbor", by dropping dummy atomic bombs in simulated runs. Civilian North Koreans feeling the thunder down there obviously didn't know if that was a real atomic bomb or not. The Pentagon also considered employing a barrage of chemical weapons.

"As Bruce Cumings, arguably the best American scholar on North Korea, observed, even "without the use of 'novel weapons' - although napalm was very new at the time - the air war nonetheless leveled North Korea and killed millions of civilians before the war ended. North Koreans will tell you that for three years they faced a daily threat of being burned with napalm ... By 1952, just about everything in northern and central Korea was completely leveled. What was left of the population survived in caves.""

As you read, little regarding US behavior has changed in 50+ years. It is surely the most evil, diabolical political entity on the planet, and not just for attacking its own people as the presence of the explosive nano-thermite in 9/11 WTC dust proves conclusively.

This is a very naive article. The "green" movemeent never had any real support in Iran and was quickly rejected by all. The Bahman 22 anniversary of the Iranian revolution quite clearly proved the massive support base of the government. The Zionist media is only deluding themselves if they think that Iran can be detabilized by a made in USA "velvet revolution". Even the Ukrainian orange "revolution" reversed itself in less than 3 years. Destabilizing Iran has ZERO chance of any success, even Pakistan's ISI handed Rigi over to Iran and dismantled the Jundollah terror network in Sistan va Balochistan.

When not being arrested for internet sex crimes, retired Iraq weapons inspector and Jarhead,Scott Ritter, is writing books and articles about the Middle East. One such book, entitled "Target Iran", made the case, a couple of years back, that a small cadre of Israeli military and intelligence officers are behind the public relations putsch to have Iran leveled as was Iraq. And, perhaps for the same reason as Iraq, namely, to further Israel's planned hegemony over a Middle East which is, by Israeli design and American money and might, ever less populated by those who might resist such plans. It does not seem likely or even plausible that such plans might ever be derailed, particularly in such a severely corrupted political environment as the one in which we currently find ourselves. Rather, such organized efforts would simply repair to that underground redoubt generally referred to as "beneath the radar" (no major effort required when the radar is turned off). In any event, the would-be Iran demolishers are seemingly winning what once seemed like an impossible public relations task, namely, to get the American public behind the murder of a million, pretty, dark haired girls in blue jeans. But, by golly, they seem to be succeeding against, what I naively thought,were heavy odds. Having not been punished as co-conspirators in the commission of war crimes in connection with their previous kill-Iraq promotional activities, they remained unabashed and undaunted in their efforts to prolong their winning streak by shamelessly announcing, before the Iraqi corpse is even cold, a call to action against another harmless Middle Eastern country which Israeli feels is casting too large a shadow over it's game plan. There is no limit to the evil that controls our governments and our largest institutions. None.

Perhaps it is too early and too optimistic to think in terms of a multi-polar world when one country, the USA, has seven to eight hundred military bases around the world. Perhaps the strategy of "congagement" is more appropriate at this juncture, to engage with USA and guide it along. Whether this USA hyperpower is on the ascent or in decline the symthoms are those of a manic-depressive patient. It behooves the rest of the world to engage with USA and help it through her difficulties. Regarding USA's obsession with Iran it is clearly better not to feed this American obsession but to alleviate her sufferings. EU, Russia and China should be sure to do the latter and not the former.

This article from Tehran is a classic case of stupid mental masturbation. All those cheering on the younger people in the large cities of Iran who want to believe the election was fixed need to get a life. A couple reliable surveys before the election showed that he would win. Most of his voters were the Iranian version of US stupid rural rednecks who voted for Bush. If you want some more bad news, read Ray McGovern's article, "Iran Captures a "Good" Terrorist"

Can any of the posters here explain how the CIA is able to get thousands of people to protest in the streets spontaneously? How is this possible?

I'm aware of Bush Era funding to destabilize Iran through military means, but how can you tie that funding to the Green Movement directly? How have the CIA operatives in the Green Movement been able to convince so many young people to protest their government?

"Danny Postel" look him up..As for the other "comments"...

Do you think that your hand-wringing means anything?

This article is so obviously "troll-talk", that perhaps you might wish to re-set your mental filters before you waste your time with a serious reply.