Déjà vu all over again

Clearly, I'm not the only one who started flashing back to 2003.  Remember Colin Powell at the UN with his tube of fake anthrax?  (We geezers also remember the Tonkin Gulf "incident" of 1964.)

This time around, the pastiche of "evidence" consists of a grainy black-and-white video and a lot of "trust us" from a pack of known liars.

Apparently the earlier attacks, discussed in my previous post,  were not sufficiently impressive.  The attackers escalated a bit – enough to create some better visuals and edge up oil prices, but not enough to impede traffic through the Straights of Hormuz.  Nobody died.

Most of the rest of the world is extremely skeptical of the claim that the Iranians are going out of their way to provoke a war with the US; a war that would be a lot more damaging to Iran than Tr*mp's punitive sanctions.  That leads many of TV's talking heads to opine that the attacks were carried out by "the more radical elements in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps" rather than its central authorities – slightly more plausible, but not by much.

According to Mike Pompeo, intelligence sources have concluded that no non-state actor could have launched the attacks, presumably excluding the Houthis and Hezbollah; but certainly not excluding the Saudis or the Emiratis, who have purchased more than enough high-tech weaponry from the US.  As for the skill set, Erik Prince and his Academi mercenaries are conveniently located in Abu Dhabi.

Of course, there is another state actor with very close ties to Erik Prince: the Tr*mp Administration, which may see open conflict with Iran as a means to gin up nationalist sentiment and distract from its leader's increasingly apparent dementia and/or psychotic breakdown.

Yes, this is a conspiracy theory: I have no solid evidence of its validity.  It is possible that Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who turned 80 in April, is battier than Tr*mp; or that somebody else's conspiracy theory is closer to the mark.  What is certain, though, is that the whole truth remains unavailable.

The Mess in Iran

To begin understanding the current situation in Iran, it may help to remember some history.  In 1953, US and British intelligence agencies fomented a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister.  When Mossadegh nationalized the Iranian oil industry, the oil companies thought they'd rather do business with the Shah, unencumbered by democracy.

Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi ruled a police state until he was ousted in 1979.  Under his rule, Iran westernized and secularized; the cities prospered and women got the vote, while enemies of the state – Islamists and Communists – were executed or forced into exile.  Resistance to the police state came to be associated with resistance to westernization, so Islamic clerics came to lead the political resistance, and conservative Shi'a Islam became the ideology of revolution.

In the quarter-century the Shah was in power, though, a lot of urban Iranians came to lead quite secular lives.  While the rural population welcomed Islamic rule, city dwellers never quite came to terms with rule by the Ayatollahs. Still, US support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War helped maintain their support for the Islamic Republic.

Teheran, though, has remained relatively quiet in recent days; the strongest opposition to the regime comes from the small cities and towns far from the capital.  The most loyal supporters of the Ayatollahs now are expressing the greatest discontent.  Economic problems caused by mismanagement and corruption are the focus of their concerns, problems magnified by economic sanctions that were loosened but certainly not eliminated by the Iran nuclear agreement.  Exclusion from the US banking system makes trade even with willing partners very difficult.

A few demonstrators are reported to have called for a return of the Shah, but the largest number of Iranian monarchists currently are growing old in Los Angeles, and no news organizations are clamoring to interview the Crown Prince.  Our President's tweets "in support" of the protestors help only the current regime: any Iranians who long for a return of Anglo-American petroimperialism are well-advised to their heads down.

Word is that the budget documents that sparked the current unrest were leaked to the public by Hassan Rouhani, to call attention to large expenditures on religious institutions and the Revolutionary Guard.  Iranians might have tolerated a reasonable amount of graft and cronyism in a better economic climate, but not while living standards continue to decline.

The thing to watch for now is how the demonstrations alter the balance of power between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's archconservatives and President Rouhani's moderate reformers.  Security forces are likely to put an end to the demonstrations quite soon, but the political impact on Iran remains to be seen.