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Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the problem with Mr. Mousavi's campaign was not his giving voice to people's grievances, or trying to affect an agenda of positive change in Iran. Rather, it was his method or strategy of change that was problematic. As if the end justifies the means, his campaign seemed to have followed a less-than honest strategy to achieve its goal of removing Ahmadinejad from power. Mr. Mousavi accepted Iran's legal and institutional norms when he decided to run as a candidate for President. Indeed, he greatly benefited from those legal and institutional procedures in running a very effective campaign. Somewhere along the way his campaign decided to disobey those guideline when they became convinced their candidate would lose (or had actually lost) the election. In trying to use the impressive energy of the remarkably galvanized supporters of Mr. Mousavi as a lever to illegally dislodge President Ahmadinejad, his campaign effectively betrayed the trust his supporters had placed in his candidacy.
Not only has the insidious project of "green revolution" paved the way for a lot of unnecessary death and destruction, it has also provided the imperial forces of "regime change" with additional excuses to re-double their brutal efforts of economic sanctions and military threats against Iran, thereby further aggravating the economic hardship and the living conditions of the Iranian people. Mr. Mousavi and his campaign architects simply cannot dodge responsibility for the dire consequences of their "green revolution."
Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at DrakeUniversity, Des Moines, Iowa.
References
[1] Please see, for example, Habib Ahmadzadeh: "Mousavi Must Say Which Ballot Boxes He Disputes," Daily Kos (June 29, 2009); Phil Wilayto, "An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement," CASMII (July 9, 2009); "A Review of the Chatham House report on Iran's 2009 presidential election," CASMII (August 4, 2009).
[2] Paul Craig Roberts, "Are the Iranian Election Protests Another U.S. Orchestrated "Color Revolution'?" Creators.com (June 20, 2009).
[3] Please see, for example, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty "The Iranian People Speak," The Washington Post(June 15, 2009); Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, "Ahmadinejad Won. Get over it," Politico (June 15, 2009); Jeremy R. Hammond, "The Case of the Fatwa to Rig Iran's Election," Dissent Voice (July 22, 2009).
[4] Thierry Meyssan, "Color revolution fails in Iran," voltairenet.org (June 27, 2009); "The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA," voltairenet.org (4 January 2005).
[5] Philip Giraldi, "Twittering Revolutions," Antiwar.com (July 16, 2009).
[6] Stephen Lendman, "Color Revolutions, Old and New," GlobalResearch.ca (July 1, 2009).
[7] Thierry Meyssan, "Color revolution fails in Iran," voltairenet.org (June 27, 2009).
[8] Rostam Pourzal, "Iran's Business Elite, Too, Is a "Dissident'," MRZine (27 June 2009).
[9] Reuters, "Ahmadinejad to focus subsidies on Iran's poor" (June 25, 2008).
[10] Rostam Pourzal, "Iran's Business Elite, Too, Is a "Dissident'," MRZine (June 27, 2009).
[11] Eric Walberg, "Venezuela & Iran: Whither the Revolution?" GlobalResearch.ca (1 July 2009).
[12] Wikipedia, "Economy of Iran--Manufacturing"
