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Wie der Westen Iran jetzt behandeln sollte

 

Gary Sick, der für mehrere US-Regierungen Iranpolitik gemacht hat, hält den Wahlbetrug im Iran für einen Wendepunkt in der Geschichte des islamischen Systems – und rät doch zu weiteren Verhandlungen: Das ganze hoch interessante Interview auf der Website des Council on Foreign Relations:

Why do you think Khamenei moved like this? He had to have given his approval to this whole internal coup. Do you think he himself was scared of losing power?

The role of the Supreme Leader is deliberately shrouded in mystery. It’s one of those things that people in Iran speculate about. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories that perhaps Khamenei didn’t know about this, or that he was accidentally behind it and so forth. We never know the truth. And he keeps his counsel to himself. Several of Khamenei’s supporters have come out publicly-people like Ali Larijani, who is the speaker of the Majlis [parliament], and who, though a bitter opponent of Ahmadinejad, has now gone public in support of the election. This is probably not so much about what happened in the election as it is a reiteration of Larijani’s position that he supports the Supreme Leader. And if that is the case-if he is in fact making this statement even though he personally is opposed to Ahmadinejad-that suggests that the Supreme Leader wanted this to happen and is requesting that his closest lieutenants back him up on this. So on the basis of the evidence we’ve got so far, my reading is that it couldn’t have happened without Khamenei’s knowledge; it was much too orchestrated and premeditated, and now that it’s over, supporters of Khamenei are coming in to support him.

It looks like the votes were never really counted, they just decided to announce a victory, right?

The timing of the thing suggests if in fact there was a record turnout, 85 percent to 86 percent of the population voting, the fact that they could announce the results about the time the polls closed or not very long afterwards, obviously, even if they had the world’s best voting machines, they would not have been able to do that. And they don’t use voting machines-they have people dropping their ballots into boxes which have to be opened and counted. The fact that this was a stolen election is not in doubt at all. The kind of information they put out-and then the fact that as the polls were closing they deployed police and military forces and paramilitary all over Tehran-they surrounded the Interior Ministry-they closed down Facebook sites, Twitter, mobile phones were all turned off, and regular news sites were blocked. Those things don’t happen instantly-they had to be planned, they had to be organized. And the reality is that they were expecting a severe reaction, which is what they got, and they were fully prepared to meet force with force. And that is what they have done.

Do you think the events of June 12 and 13 will be remembered by Iranians as they still remember the events of August 1953 when Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup that was backed by the United States and Britain?

I really do see this as a kind of historic turning point. A commentator from Iran just today sent me a note saying that the Islamic republic is dead, that basically it was based on a concept of listening to the people and having the support of the people for Islamic programs. That was the nature of the Islamic constitution and it’s what [Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi] Khomeini [Iran’s first Supreme Leader] said he wanted to do. In effect now they are saying „forget about the Iranian people-we don’t care what they say or what they think. We’re not going to listen to them.“ Basically it means that Iran is moving from what had been a decent experiment of being an Islamic Republic to being a totalitarian dictatorship. Now it isn’t at that point yet but it is a step in that direction which is going to be unmistakable to a lot of people in Iran and they will remember this. How will it resonate fifty years from now, I don’t know. But it clearly demonstrated to many, many people in Iran that they were simply ignored. They had been asked to go out and vote; they had been allowed a certain amount of freedom to say what they thought. There were demonstrations, there was great excitement. Then the regime simply thumbs its nose at them and says, „OK, that was a mistake, now we’re going to tell you what you need to do.“