Mahsa Amini narrative hijacked by Masih Alinejad
The widely reported protests of the past few weeks in Iran were sparked by the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, allegedly at the hands of the police.
According to prevailing Western narrative, Mahsa Amini was murdered in police custody after being savagely beaten in a police van. In reality, as quickly released CCTV footage shows, the young Kurdish woman collapsed after a conversation with a female police officer inside the police station.
She was then attended to and taken directly to an ambulance. Photographs of her in hospital show no sign of head injuries while medical staff quickly released CT scans showing no recent injuries, though confirming that she had had brain surgery some years previously.
Nevertheless, the allegation that she was killed, or murdered, was the apparent spark used to whip up a frenzy of anti Iranian government propaganda and reporting. Demonstrators have taken to the streets in many Iranian cities and protests in support have erupted in the UK and elsewhere.
But who suddenly pushed the riot button and why?
The US immediately activated its assets and agents to foment subversion. This involved direct attacks on the police and other security services, with 11 killed in the first 10 days of protests, as well as extensive attacks on ambulances, which appeared to have been directed externally.
On the first of October there was an armed terrorist attack on a police station in the city of Zahedan. There were 19 deaths, including 4 IRGC officers, 32 IRGC members were also wounded.
Unsurprisingly, both the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Foundation of George Soros advertise that they are active in relation to Iran, both engaged in attempting to foment regime change in Iran, as they do elsewhere.
Standing behind the US on this question is the Zionist regime. The official Twitter account of the regime openly states that it stands with the protesters and launched a cynical #remember_Mahsa campaign featuring Israeli settlers claiming that they stand in solidarity.
Israel funds two US lobby groups pushing for more sanctions on Iran, including The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, United Against a Nuclear Iran, which is stuffed with Zionists.
Both groups are effectively assets of the so called State of Israel. Meanwhile, Israel continues to directly support Kurdish separatist groups, which are currently engaged in subversion and terrorism against Iran. So we see that both the US and Israel via assets, agents and proxies, came together to push the riot button in Iran.
David Miller is an academic and former professor at Bristol University and a leading British scholarly critic of Israel. He's also a co founder and co director of the lobbying watchdog initiative Spin Watch.
Mona Issa is a journalist and editor from Almayadeen English joining us from the Lebanon. She's the author of "Dirty Money", a revelatory article on how the largest color revolution attempt in recent Iranian history is led by a woman on Washington's payroll.
Your article was one of the few that highlighted the absence of any evidence that Mahsa Amini was murdered. Tell us what you found out.
I'd like to start with how surprised I was with the accessibility of evidence that was present online and how much big media has bombarded us with narratives with no factual basis whatsoever. And then, in an interview by Masih Alinejad, basically a CIA asset who works for the US government, an Iranian exile, she openly admits that she is leading the so called "Revolution in Iran". So that's how I started out my investigation.
Basically, what the article reveals is that she has been operating from an FBI safe house, on the (US) payroll over the past seven years making over half a million dollars. Now for a career in journalism that is a huge number.
And that's in addition to this sort of statement, which is a big statement, which many people have disregarded; CCTV footage shows that Mahsa Amini suffered a heart attack with absolutely no provocation.
What it shows is that the Iranian police (officer) comes, approaches her, perhaps a controversy was going on, a simple back and forth, and then she [Mahsa Amini] falls suffering a heart attack with no physical provocation at least.
And even Masih Alinejad, who I've mentioned in the article, had in her personal tweets on her page on Twitter, she made no mention of any physical violence in the first few tweets about Mahsa Amini, but it seems that as the story progressed, all of a sudden she accuses the Iranian police of waging some sort of violence against her [Mahsa Amini].
So this discrepancy in the narrative was very brazen, and I mentioned it in the article. And, and in addition to that, with that sequence of events, the first news outlets that were to come forward and to accuse Iranian police of killing Mahsa Amini, were actually US funded outlets in Farsi, such as Iran Wire.
Mona Issa, Journalist
So what's the significance, in your opinion, of Iran to the Palestinian resistance factions?
Well, I mean, people must know that the Iranians are stalwart supporters of the resistance in Palestine, the term which is used for the unity there is between various different factions through the whole region, is the term the Axis of Resistance, encompassing the Syrians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarullah in Yemen, and the Iranians have supported all of that, and if it wasn't for Iran, in terms of supplying weaponry, and funding and training, then the possibility of the Liberation of Palestine wouldn't even exist.
David Miller, Academic
Your article referred to the evolution of the story and the role of certain news outlets like Iran wire, how would they relate to the US?
Well, some of the first news outlets that came to mention or accused the Iranian police of violence are, for example, Iranwire, Iran, some other you know, they have their lackeys on social media, because without a base, how will they be able to propagate such a false narrative?
So, what I looked into and what I found interesting was Iran Wire, in particular, because it was founded by Iranian exile, Maziar Bahari, and what I found is that Maziar Bahari openly admitted to supporting, not only illegal demonstrations in Iran, but also color revolutions and hence why now he is a Western Asset and he is behind the propagation of some of such narratives. And many of his likes [sic] are doing the same thing.
For example, there was one mention of a military writer who works with the Pentagon and his works are repeatedly cited in papers published by the US military and these people, they were Iranians, and now they're working for Washington.
So you could say that people like Masih Alinejad, people like Maziar Bahari, they will hold that sort of system in Washington that looks to create instability in West Asia. And right now, today, as David mentioned, Iran is a staunch supporter of resistance factions in this area, so to destabilize Iran would be a blow to Palestinian resistance.
Mona Issa
The role of the US and Israel in the protests
You just have to flood a country's Public Square with enough raw sewage, use that to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing, that citizens no longer know what to believe.
Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other in the possibility of truth, the games is won.
Former US President, Barack Obama
That was former US President Barack Obama uttering words that, though not specifically about Iran, seems eerily close to describing the West playbook when it comes to fomenting dissent in places like the Islamic Republic of Iran, not coincidentally, the self proclaimed leader of the protests also lives in the US in an FBI safe house in New York. But who is this Massih Alinejad?
On Twitter, she has more than half a million followers, and more than 8 million on Instagram, but she describes herself on her profiles only as an Iranian journalist and activist, or as a journalist. In reality, Alinejad worked directly for a US government propaganda operation called Voice of America.
At VOA she has presented a program for the last seven years on the VOA's Persian service, and, according to public records, has received over half a million dollars in government contracts since 2015.
In addition to these roles, Alinejad is the founder of two campaigns, White Wednesdays, which encourages the wearing of white headscarves and My Stealthy Freedom. Both claim to be focused on the hijab and women's rights in Iran.
But Alinejad is not centrally concerned with reforming Iran, but with increasing sanctions and promoting regime change. She has called for "Death to the Dictator". When she appeared on CNN recently her remarks were not about the future, but about pressuring the US not to make a nuclear deal with Iran, and instead increase sanctions.
Stop negotiating with our murderers. Cut up all your ties with the Islamic Republic.
Massih Alinejad
Evidence from inside Iran suggests that through her, and others, the Obama playbook is guiding the protest. For example, the testimony from a protester arrested for petrol bombing an ambulance as follows:
They were saying: Security forces use those ambulances. Since Masih Alinejad and other people were saying it so many times on the internet & different networks I thought to myself that it must be true.
Alinejad's views suggest an alignment with extremist Zionist positions after that her links with key Zionist lobby groups in the US, in June this year she received the so called Moral Courage Award from the extremists American Jewish Committee, a group with a long record of collaboration with Israeli intelligence.
Alinejad was also booked to speak at the conference of "United Against Nuclear Iran" in September this year. UANI is a hard-line US based group, which has a former director of Mossad on its advisory board.
Masih Alinejad is just one of many vehicles for the US and Israel to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran, not least because of its steadfast support of the Palestinian Liberation Movement and the Axis of Resistance more widely.
Can you tell us what you know about Massih Alinejad's connection to the US?
(US) governmental data openly reports that since 2014, when she moved to the US, till today, Alinejad has earned about $628,000 from the US Agency for Global Media. The US Agency for Global Media is the most significant regime changing arm for the US Empire and it is directly funded by the US Congress.
Right now as we are speaking, she's protected by the FBI. Why would she be protected by the FBI if she's doing some form of clean cut journalism? She's doing a lot more than that, much of her work on social media is not only about regime change, but it's also sort of white washing the images of war criminals. She has images with people like Madeleine Albright and Mike Pompeo, who, to be honest, for the wars that they have waged, and for the aggression they have upheld, they should be tried at The Hague, you know.
So she is very, very close to Washington and she is doing their dirty work.
Mona Issa
What support has Alinejad had from Israel lobby groups?
Oh, well, she's well in with the Zionist movement, especially in the US, and she's had support from AIPAC, the biggest Israel lobby group. She's had support from the American Jewish Committee, a long standing Zionist Organization which used to be non Zionist until about 1945.
And then became very Zionist, set up Commentary Magazine, the leading neoconservative journal throughout the whole post war period. So there's that and of course, there's the United Against Nuclear Iran connection, but there are also the group Stand With Us, which, of course, is used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in occupied Palestine as a force multiplier, and that's the words of an Israeli Minister talking about that.
So she's very closely in with it. And she has also expressed her desire to normalize relationships with Israel, to visit Israel, that there shouldn't be a boycott of Israel. So she's very much using the kind of Israeli playbook.
David Miller, Academic
Masih Alinejad has been very favorable, hasn't she, towards the Zionist regime in her public comments. Do you think Israel's role is important here?
Even if no evidence conjurers [sic] on the internet, it is very much likely that the CIA coordinated with the Mossad and we have to note here that Israel is the United States' most staunch ally in this region and its role in West Asia is to create chaos, it lives off of it and it functions off of it. So even if, which is impossible, even if the Mossad had absolutely no role in what's happening in Iran today, it is benefiting off of it.
And here we could look back at a speech by former Prime Minister Netanyahu before Bush's so called "War on Terror" where he mentions that part of the strategic destabilization of West Asia is to destabilize Iran, which today, Iran which is one of the most stable and one of the most sovereign countries in our area supporting resistance factions.
In order to destabilize such an open society, according to Netanyahu, they would have to create some sort of identity confusion, a soft power so what he mentioned was let them watch Hollywood let them watch films. Today, it's Netflix. He suggested that Beverly Hills Nine O Two I O, to let the Iranian youth see all that luxury, all those pools, all those mansions, so that they could maintain some sort of cultural superiority and the fruit of that behavior is, ... it's occurring today they're varying it. But but but not in an organic way.
It's been happening over a course of 20 years. So Israel definitely does have a hand in this and it is benefiting off of the chaos right now.
Mona Issa, Journalist
Would you tell us about the Iranian opposition groups like the supporters of the former Shah, and the Mujahedeen- e-Khalq or MEK organization, which was recently delisted as a terror group by the UK in 2009?
Well, it's interesting that the MEK is an armed organization; it’s regarded as a terrorist organization, by the Iranians and by others. It used to be regarded by both the UK and the US as a terrorist organization. It did this lobbying campaign in 2012.
It was delisted in the US, and it's very active still, it has, for example, Facebook last year, attempted to close down a troll farm it operates in Albania, which seems to have been unsuccessful; it continues to be active in the contemporary period.
And it's also been active in demonstrations around the world. In London, for example, the only key people in Trafalgar Square involved in an attack on a mosque, where many Iranian exiles worship in London. As soon as there's a very strong role there for MEK, but in alliance with the MEK have been marketed as supporting the old Shah and you can see this when you look at the demos you look for the flag, and the flag that they have is an Iranian flag, but it has a lion and the moon on it.
And that's the monarchist flag. And these are people who support the Shah.
In fact, the symbols on that flag are actually, extraordinarily actually, Aryan symbols and there's an actual right wing ideology underlying all this, which sees Iranians as being superior, ethnically and racially, to Arabs, so there's an extraordinary set of politics in (play) there.
David Miller, Academic
Is it really true that the group known as United Against Nuclear Iran is actually an asset of the Zionist entity?
I would go further than saying it was an asset, I mean, this is a very extreme pro Zionist Organization, which is used to pressure the US government to do what the Israeli Government wants. I mean, not just that they had the former chief of Mossad on its advisory board, but it's absolutely stuffed with card carrying Neo cons and pro Zionists.
Its function really is to pressure the US to make sure the US doesn't ever do anything rational and that it does things that the Israelis want, which is to effectively isolate and intimidate and subvert the government of Iran.
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