Monday, June 29, 2009

Obama's strategies failing in Iran


By Mark LeVine, Middle East Historian
Al-Jazeera

"It took two weeks of intensified government repression against protesters in Iran before Barack Obama, the US president, moved from cautious commentary to describing the crackdown as "violent and unjust".

The acknowledged elephant in the room preventing a more robust US response to the Iranian crisis is the Anglo-American-organised coup in 1953, which overthrew Mohammed Mossadeqh, the nationalist prime minister, and brought the 33-year-old Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, back to the country as unchallenged ruler.

The coup was motivated by Mossadeqh's and the Iranian parliament's decision to nationalise the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951.....

Undemocratic election techniques

In Cairo, where Obama made only a fleeting allusion to democracy during his "historic" speech last month, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, won his most recent re-election bid by deploying the usual assortment of undemocratic techniques.

Then he jailed his main opponent, Ayman Nour, for more than three years for election fraud just to make sure everyone got his point.

Yet the Obama administration, like its predecessors, regularly celebrates him as a key ally and a crucial mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict......"

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