Urgent Response Required...!
The ongoing drama of dissent among the religious and political elite of Iran is still playing out behind the scenes in that country. It is claimed by sources who claim to know that thousands of dissenters have been arrested, among them the brother-in-law of Mir Hossein Mousavi who contested the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.The regime's thugs are in the process of extracting confessions under torture from the regime's detractors affirming for public display that they are acting as minions of Great Britain or the Great Satan, the United States (or the Lesser Satan, Israel) in trying to undermine the legitimacy and union of Iran.
Instead of the 20 protesters who the state-controlled media in Iran has claimed to have been killed in the melees that erupted with the public protests, those in the know claim that the real number is well into the hundreds. Families hoping to find their missing children have been shown hundreds of bodies in cold-storage facilities, where they are allowed to search for their young family members.
And, as long as they agree to certify that their sons and daughters died through 'natural causes', they may be allowed to retrieve the bodies for burial.
Those languishing in prisons may continue to be stored there, awaiting interrogation, perhaps torture, perhaps death. Deserved by the irrefutable fact that their seditious activities were being directed by the international community in a singular foreign conspiracy to unseat the current religious-militaristic state.
Should the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei eventually be forced to recant and withdraw his support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and allow Mir Hossein Mousavi to become president, not too much will change. Iranians will have proved a point, however; that the public has the power to effect change.
The trouble is, far greater change must take place. The control of the ayatollahs must be challenged. The fanaticism of the theistic state with its tyrannical control of the population and its ruinous policies with respect to directing the state's finances toward nuclear-weapons building, robbing the country of needed upgrades in infrastructure will simply limp along as long as the public allows it to.
Until the Iranian people decide, finally, that the majority has an obligation to join the efforts of the courageous few, to attain true democracy for themselves, the current trajectory will continue.
The international community is appalled and fearful at the prospect of a fundamentalist state coming into possession of nuclear weaponry. Most of the other countries in the Middle East are in terror of Iran possessing nuclear weapons. The incendiary hatred between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam bespeak irreconcilable relations.
That is, as long as each is represented by such rigidly totalitarian religious regimes as Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Iran on the other. Each has been responsible for encouraging, training and arming violent jihadists, unleashing on the world the prospect of ongoing terror.
Civil societies are talking about impacting the Iranian economy to the extent that it will eventually fall into penury, destroying the hold of the ayatollahs through a popular uprising of Iranians demanding surcease from the current impasse. German, Swiss, Dutch, French, Finnish companies all do business with Iran, and those companies like Siemens and Nokia along with oil refineries, banking interests and the producers of hard goods are being pressed to halt their business dealings with the country.
Alternatively, countries like the United States and Canada, through initiatives from elected officials are being encouraged to boycott those companies who do business in North America and Iran - ensuring that a choice be made; one or the other.
U.S. law forbids commercial ties with Iran. Washington insists banks and financial institutions withhold giving Iran credit. Exerting this kind of economic pressure is supposed to bring Iran to its knees in a concerted international effort to force a change of either regime or programming.
Obviously the one country that stands most to gain from this concerted effort at constraining Iran's policies with respect to nuclear production and its determination to achieve nuclear weaponization is the very country in the Middle East that has been at the receiving end of Iran's promise of eradication. With nuclear devices, if need be - and what other reason conceivably for owning such weapons, since this is their stated purpose?
To that end, Israel has been busy on the diplomatic and propaganda front, asking nations to sever their relations with Iran, to impose sanctions, embargoes, reduction of commercial ties. Startlingly, a writer for Haaretz writes that international companies enjoying close commercial ties with Iran still operate in the Israeli marketplace.
Siemens having earned billions of shekels selling gas turbines to the Israel Electric Corporation. Siemens' tender to the Israeli airport authority is said to represent the sole company capable of meeting complex technical requirements. Israel still permits international banks with connections to Iran to work with Israeli banks.
Labels: Middle East, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 24, 2009
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