CIA attempts to topple Ahmadinejad at SCO Yekaterinburg summit

[Magda Hassan]

I have been keeping a weather eye on it. A bit unsure about what to make of it initially which is why I didn't reply to Peter L's post as I didn't quite have it sorted. I'm not sure I entirely do now either but it certainly seems that other interested parties are trying to foment unrest. The other candidate was obviously the Wests tool of choice. Ahmadinejad wont dance with the West on their terms. From my two Iranian friends it seems that Ahmadinejad is genuinely popular there though they don't like him or the politics of Iran much given the constraints of the mullahs in running the show lock, stock and barrel.

Yes, I read Juan Cole's take on the elections and he does put a good case forward for fraud but then there is Robert Fisk

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com...04810.html
An interval here for lunch with a true and faithful friend of the Islamic Republic, a man I have known for many years who has risked his life and been imprisoned for Iran and who has never lied to me. We dined in an all-Iranian-food restaurant, along with his wife. He has often criticised the regime. A man unafraid. But I must repeat what he said. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad."
My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. "You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."

The whole twitter thing had shades of the recent Moldavian exercise in manufactured revolutions. I saw the protest in NY and the printed signs, the designer clothes and sunglasses and thought 'here we go again'. Like Venezuelan matrons banging their unfamiliar saucepans and getting their maids to walk with them in the protest march.

It doesn't quite pass the smell test, for me anyway. And of course qui bono?