“20 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PROTESTS IN IRAN

By Nury Vittachi

1. Allegations of “mass casualties” among Iran protesters are not dependable. They come from a group called Center for Human Rights in Iran. The Center for Human Rights in Iran is NOT in Iran. It is in New York.

2. Is it an Iranian group? No. It is financed by the CIA-adjacent National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC and related bodies, specializing in disinformation.

3. It is led by the people of Iran? No. The chairwoman is Minky Worden, an American who ran anti-China campaigns for many years. She tried to get the Beijing winter Olympics renamed “the genocide Olympics” and cancelled. She failed.

4. Previously, Ms Worden worked closely with the Hong Kong “pro-democracy” movement (also NED-funded) and her husband was on the board of Apple Daily and had a contract with the Pentagon. Yes, the US regime-change operations around the world are THAT incestuous.

5. The other main source of unbelievable tales of massive protests and huge numbers of deaths in Iran are coming from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). This is also a NED-funded, US-based disinformation outlet.

IN REALITY, IRANIANS HAVE BECOME LESS ANTI-GOVERNMENT

6. Having said that, protest groups against the Iranian government do exist, but they are not large. Western groups including the NED-funded media, and the Persian service of Voice of America, have spent years cultivating anti-government groups.

But Trump’s bombing campaigns, and Israel’s shocking behavior in Gaza, has meant Iranians have become very notably LESS anti-government, not more.

This is important.

THE LOUDEST VOICE

7. The loudest and most prominent Iranian “protest leader” quoted in the west is Masih Alinejad, a women who was salaried by NED for years, and currently works for the US Agency for Global Media.

8. Which part of Iran does she live in? No part of Iran. She lives in the US.

9. What’s her professional background? Propaganda. Her job was and is to push pro-US anti-Iran propaganda through various media services. Despite this, she is quoted in the media as if she is a reliable source of news from the people of Iran.

10. Press reports show that between 2015 and 2022 alone, Masih Alinejad received US$628,000 in funding from NED and related groups. And yes, this regime-change campaigner received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

‘U.S. CAN CREATE A POPULAR UPRISING’

11. Remember Mahsa Jina Amini, a woman said to have been beaten to death by Iran police for wearing her hijab wrongly? Masih Alinejad pushed that tale, but it was debunked by a security video, which showed that no one was standing near her when she collapsed through a medical issue.

12. A 2009 Brookings policy paper “Which Path to Persia?” goes into detail about how the US can take control of Iran. The idea would be to create mobs attacking government facilities, which can be labelled a “popular uprising” by the media, and by fostering division in multiple ways and putting puppet leaders in control.

Variations of this US game plan have been used multiple times around the world.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

13. Why is so much of the US propaganda about Iran based on alleged violations of women’s rights? Because similar US disinformation operations in other places, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, showed that women’s rights made western audiences angrier faster than weaponization of the usual western “Big Three” propaganda lines: Democracy, freedom and human rights.

14. Is the “strictly hijabs only” tale true? No. In general, women in Iran do prefer to dress modestly in Islamic fashion, but it’s far more relaxed and tolerant that the US propagandists pretend.

Think of the religious dress codes of Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, where most people dress modestly and religiously, but the atmosphere is tolerant and reasonable.

15. What about the atrocity stories of ill-treated women? They are invented and circulated by US and Israeli sources: the US has long had an atrocity fabrication department