By Elijah J. Magnier

 

An advisor to a Western European prime minister said privately: “When the Americans want the government officials to campaign for a particular narrative, we receive a piece of paper with instructions to follow. Normally, a prime minister or a minister would contest the US diktat. Decision-makers are instructed to avoid any headache and execute Washington’s will without delay. We do it and avoid any discussion or questioning even if the US suggestions are incompatible with our interests or foreign policy.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently criticized Iran for what he termed a “crackdown” on foreign-backed rioters. The European Union adopted a slew of sanctions linked to months-long riots. What is it all about? Why such a dangerous escalation against the Islamic Republic?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken interestingly campaigned for “freedom of expression”, a narrative that Washington uses only against its enemies or when some of its allies decide to contest or challenge its whims and fancies.

This is while Julian Assange is facing the “freedom” of 175 years in prison for doing his job as an independent, free, and fearless journalist.

Also, this is while the dot com domain of the 24-hour English-language news network Press TV is seized and the network and its senior office-bearers are slapped with sanctions simply because they dare to challenge and debunk the dominant West-backed narrative.

The key problem here is the deeply sinister plan to bring Iran to the “brand new nuclear deal” in a fragile state and to destabilize the country. It’s as simple as that.

The other long-term but the ambitious goal is to “overthrow” the Islamic Republic and replace it with a vassal state and to impose a US “marionette” (like the son of the Shah) to lead it.

From a Western perspective, Iran is becoming a “problem state” because of its unprecedented capability to defy and demolish the American and Israeli objectives in the region.

Moreover, it has the financial muscle and the massively popular ideology to support the “Axis of Resistance”, whose members act as one body, ready to defend the region against the vicious, diabolic plots and schemes of Western hegemonic powers.

Iran recently announced that it has built a hypersonic ballistic missile that cannot be intercepted by any missile defense system in the world. The Israeli regime and the dozens of US military bases spread across the Middle East, including the US fleet in Bahrain, are all sitting ducks for Iranian precision missiles. Let’s make no mistake about that.

It is not unnatural for Iran to challenge the US directly when its national security is at risk. We all know how Iran bombed the US Air Force base at Ain al-Assad base in Iraq in early 2020, and how 16 precision missiles hit the US premises and the runway.

Had Iran then used the capacity of these missiles to carry over 1,000 pounds of explosives warheads, they would have destroyed 20 to 30 aircraft and, as US General Frank McKenzie later said, would have killed 100 to 150 soldiers before the possibility of any evacuation.

Also, the coalition Iran is establishing with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the BRICS will help the Islamic Republic become self-reliant, and to render the draconian US sanctions null and void. For these reasons and more, Iran is the favorite Western target.

However, the attack on Iran didn’t come only from the West. It also came from oil-rich Arab countries who have fully cooperated with Western states in fueling the riots and used their wealth to support West-leaning Persian language media and social media networks against Iran.

What is happening in Iran is not detached from what Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said on the 3rd of May 2017: “We will not wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia, but rather we will work so that the battle for them is in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia.”

Riyadh, in collaboration with Western spy agencies as well as Mossad, will resort to any tactics to undermine security in Iran, similar to what it has done in the past employing Daesh cells

It is no secret that Saudis and Americans have been directly and indirectly involved in supporting the separatist movement in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province to divide the country and disrupt the harbor activity at the strategic Chabahar Port that links Iran to Central Asia.

Moreover, Mohammad bin Salman’s media is targeting Iranian youth, in parallel with demonizing Iran and giving a false impression that all Iranians are against their leaders and the Islamic system of governance. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

No wonder Saudi Arabia has now halted the tension-easing talks with Iran in Baghdad after five rounds that have been underway since April last year. The honest intent is missing.

This Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini-American carefully coordinated plan to destabilize Iran was officially inaugurated when US President Joe Biden was still a vice president.

Since thousands of sanctions imposed by the US failed to make Iran submit at the negotiating table, it became necessary to turn the Iranian society against its leaders with a “color revolution” that the US had already experimented with in other countries.

For many years, these countries have been united to build a public opinion hostile to Iranian policies, targeting audiences among non-Persian Iranian minorities. The mainstream corporate Western media think tanks and sections of the Iranian diaspora participated in this campaign.

Television and radio programs were financed along with websites in Arabic, English, and Persian to present the riots as an “uprising” all over the country. The media focused on foreign-backed rioters while ignoring the millions of Iranians who filled the streets in support of their leaders.

Social media platforms were formed to fuel misinformation and propaganda, a Center for Studies and Research on Iranian Affairs came into being for the same purpose and a Persian-speaking news channel was launched to broadcast 24-hour news targeting Iranian youth.

Western analysts miss no opportunity to talk about Iran’s “malignant activities in the Middle East” without specifying the kind of activities they refer to. It is, in fact, a reference to the “Axis of Resistance” that represents a defense line for Iran and a challenge to the US hegemony and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.

Many trends on social media recently have appeared to be highly organized for brainwashing public opinion. Campaigns like “Imagine if this is Iran” encouraged think tank activists and artists to participate with photos, videos, and text to raise awareness about the “future in Iran” and highlight the society’s readiness for “change” if the current government is “overthrown”.

It is not surprising to see many people worldwide, including Iranians, falling into this vicious trap of devastatingly powerful propaganda aimed to bring about “regime change” in Iran.

Even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fell for a false Western media-invented narrative about “Iran sentencing 15,000 protesters to death” on social media, only to delete his embarrassing impulsive tweet later.

Iran should expect even harsher sanctions (though few are left to impose following the US 3600 sanctions) and more aggressive attempts to topple the Islamic Republic since the latest attempt has fizzled out without any luck.

The attempts to demonize the Islamic Republic of Iran continue and are not expected to end as long as the country stands firm on its feet. Eventually, the right survives, and evil vanishes.

Elijah J. Magnier is a veteran war correspondent and a political risk analyst with decades of experience covering the West Asian region.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV or Education Monitor News.)

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