You might not have expected me to invoke the name of Neda Agha Soltan(i), the Green Revolution bystander “whose name in Farsi means ‘voice'” and whose angelic face adorned every subsequent Iranian reform movement ephemera. Remember the video where pretty Neda was shot by an unseen gunman, left to die on camera, the footage used to rally indignation against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s evident barbarity? Curiously our media chose to break from its usual sensibilities about snuff films. Remember your own blood lust? What fate were you wishing then for poor Neda’s killers? No doubt Iran would like to see justice for Neda too. They’ve conducted inquiries about who killed the unsuspecting martyr. Have you?
The Iranian government blames US operatives for instigating the reformist uprising, prompting Tehran’s secular class to take their grievances to the streets. They point to Iranian student groups organized by nonprofits funded by the West. They hold capitalist rabble-rousers accountable for inciting impressionable consumer wannabes to push against the riot police. They know the US is spending beaucoup black budget bucks to destabilize Iranian society. “Promoting Democracy” in Farsi means subverting leadership, and where there’s been a revolutionary movement against the established order, the USA habitually sets about to breed counter-revolutionaries. But that doesn’t explain Neda.
Political movements have infinitely more potential when there’s a martyr, and it’s a strategy no US adviser leaves to nuance. Movements have succeeded without them, but no psych-ops crafted scenario has done without. You wonder who volunteers for the role? We’ve seen recent examples, I can think of an incident in Honduras, were protesters pretended one of their number had been felled. But such is the weakness of the good guys, they’re not about to kill someone as a means to an end. Can we say the same about the good guys of the CIA?
When the saintly Neda was killed onscreen, the Iranian government immediately suspected a plot. Was it one of their soldiers who killed her, standing at an isolated corner, part of no confrontation? By whose orders would he have fired?
Who said the reelection of Ahmadinejad was rigged? None but the Americans. Who egged on the crowds to overturn a democratically elected government? America. Who branded the reform movement, and levitated it via social media?
Who else but America color-codes its exported “revolutions?”
“Remember Neda” has become the rallying cry of Iranian expats and Shah loyalists in exile. They’ll change their tune when authorities in Iran finger her murderers.
When Iran executes those responsible for the covert machinations meant to provoke an uprising to satisfy the US call for regime change, it’s not for crying out “freedom” but for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, pointing at Neda.