Over the last few days, anti-government protests have broken out across Iran. It’s reported the protests are focused on deteriorating economic conditions and corruption in the Islamic Republic. Demonstrators have gathered in a number of cities, including Tehran, the holy city of Qom, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Rasht, Sari, and Hamedan.
While average Iranians undoubtedly suffer as a result of the policies and actions of a highly centralized religious government, we must ask if the latest round of anti-government activity is part of a foreign effort to destabilize the country by exploiting discontent with the country’s leadership.
In June, we learned that the Trump administration is behind an effort by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to topple the government in Tehran. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Trump administration includes a number of hardliners on Iran, most notably Defense Secretary James Mattis, National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, and Trump’s CIA director, Mike Pompeo.
Prior to his appointment, Pompeo called for military attacks on Iran’s civilian nuclear program. He also said “Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.”
Additionally, he told Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in a letter that the United States will hold Iran responsible for attacks on US interest in Iraq regardless of the source.
In June, Michael D’Andrea—a CIA officer known as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike (for his conversion to Islam)—was appointed to run the agency’s Iran operations. He supposedly headed up the effort to capture Osama bin Laden, the former CIA groomed leader of al-Qaeda who died in Afghanistan back in December, 2001.
D’Andrea was involved in the use of torture during interrogations of suspected terrorists during the Bush administration. He also played a key role in the assassination of Imad Mugniyah, the international operations chief for Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah. The assassination was carried out with assistance from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Trump’s former Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC (he was ousted in January, reportedly by McMaster), told the administration he wanted to use covert activities to take down the government in Tehran.
The Saudi effort includes riling up dissident groups in Balochistan that cross over the border into the Iranian province of Sistan and carry out operations. For instance, in October 2009, Jundullah, a Balochi resistance group with alleged links to Al-Qaeda, launched a suicide bomb attack that killed a number of Iranian Revolutionary Guards on a bus in the city of Zahedan. Jundullah has also captured Iranian soldiers and border guards and executed them. [READ MORE]
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