After a traditional Iranian dinner buffet at the Warwick New York Hotel, attendees were greeted by the Iranian president and three other Iranian officials. After apologies for the security measures imposed by the U.S. Secret Service, the Iranian delegation invited remarks from their guests. Speakers included Phil Wilayto, Ramsey Clark, Brenda Stokely of the Black is Back Coalition, Saladin Muhammad of Black Workers for Justice, Nihad Awad of Council on American Islamic Relations, Sara Flounders of International Action Center and several religious leaders.

All expressed their solidarity with the Iranian people, and voiced opposition to the U.S. threats of war, sanctions and other interference in Iran’s affairs. Many called for affirmation of the Durban Program of Action Against Racism and several raised the imminent execution of Troy Davis in Georgia.

Jess Sundin, of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, addressed President Ahmadinejad saying, “Almost one year ago, my home was raided by the FBI, along with 24 anti-war and international solidarity activists. We are being targeted and criminalized for our lifetimes dedicated to struggling for peace and justice and our own fates are uncertain. We have spoken out against threats of war and sanctions on Iran and we will not be silent. Our silence is the only thing they can use against us. I urge everyone here to follow your example and not be silent in the face of U.S. imperialism.”

After 17 guests spoke, the president addressed the gathering. “Do you know of an animal that has killed one million of its own kind? In our time, we know of a being, that in order to line the pockets of the wealthy, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and killed one million.”

He responded directly to many of the guests’ comments. Referring to the case of Troy Davis, he said, “We have heard today about someone who is not guilty of a single crime, that is being executed, and all of us feel attacked.”

President Ahmadinejad closed with these hopeful words, “The devil may seem scary, but in reality they are weak and vulnerable. 30 years ago, the U.S. government was unbeatable. They could tackle any problem and beat it. What position do they occupy today? They are weak; they cannot resolve even the most basic problems. Who today has hope they can save the economy and the financial system? They used to say Israel would extend from the Nile to the Euphrates, but now the Zionists are surrounding themselves with 20-foot high walls.”

The meeting closed with applause.

#NewYorkNY #AntiwarMovement #Ahmadinejad #Iran #AntiWarCommittee #JessSundin #RamseyClark #InternationalActionCenter #TroyDavis #antiimperialism #InternationalDayOfPeace #DurbanProgramOfActionAgainstRacism #BlackWorkersForJustice #BlackIsBackCoalition #CouncilOnAmericanIslamicRelations #PoliticalRepression

New York, NY – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met here, September 21, with 100 leaders and representatives of anti-war, labor, alternative media and Iranian and Palestinian solidarity organizations. Among the participants were Sarah Martin, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Margaret Sarfehjooy, board member of the Minneapolis-based Women Against Military Madness, former attorney general Ramsey Clark, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Sara Flounders from the International Action Center, Brian Becker of the ANSWER coalition, Ramona Africa of the Free Mumia Coalition and Amiri Baraka, poet and activist.

The meeting was called by the president of Iran with the hope that a frank and honest exchange of views will help activists further the cause of peace between the people of Iran and the U.S.

Specific demands raised include to oppose war, occupation and hostility worldwide; oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries; support the right to nuclear energy for all, but nuclear weapons for none; and to support dialogue, justice and equality among all countries in the UN.

After listening intently to the statements of 22 of the participants, President Ahmadinejad said, “We have a treasure chest full of views. I agree with everything you have said and therefore you have spoken from my heart also. Now I will speak in my own way.”

He said that the source of war, capitalism, must be identified and pointed out. “Violent capitalism is based on superiority, hegemony and violation of rights.” He went on to say that one reason capitalists start wars is to fill up their pockets. They must empty their arsenals so they can build more weapons. As he said at a U.N. meeting earlier in the day, “Capitalism has come to an end. It has reached a deadlock. Its historical moment has ended and efforts to restore it won’t go very far.”

Ahmadinejad spoke of the U.S. wars in Iraq and deaths of over 1 million people for oil . He pointed out that in an Afghan village over 100 innocent people were killed just to get a few terrorists. He expressed anger that even with the floods in Pakistan, the U.S continues to bomb Pakistani villages. He said it is hard to sleep at night after hearing the heart-wrenching stories of the Palestinians living under siege in Gaza with no medicines, no clean water and not enough food. He expressed solidarity with the activists’ goals of struggling for peace and justice at home and abroad and he pledged that Iran will stand strong to the end.

“Speaking with Mrs. Ahmadinejad and hearing the president reinforced the importance of struggling against the U.S. campaign to isolate and demonize Iran,” said Sarah Martin. Margaret Sarfehjooy reported, “I think the meeting was important because we had the opportunity to meet with so many dedicated grassroots activists from all over the country and share our hopes for peace and justice with the Iranian people through their president and his wife.”

#NewYorkNY #AntiwarMovement #Ahmadinejad #Iran #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #MiddleEast

The subsequent media barrage has been so deafening that some of the basic facts and issues surrounding the election have been completely obscured. The unquestioned assumption propagated by the mainstream media is that the election was stolen.

The problem is, the only independent poll conducted four weeks before the election predicted a result very much akin to the official results from Iran's election commission. The poll, conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow, surveyed opinion in all 30 of Iran's provinces. It showed Ahmadinejad with a 2 to 1 lead over Mousavi (Washington Post, 6/15/09), which corresponds to the official tally of 63% for Ahmadinejad and 34% for Mousavi. As for Mohsen Rezai and Mehdi Karroubi, the other opposition candidates, the poll predicted they would earn 1% and 2% of the vote, respectively; while the official tally shows them winning 1.73% and 0.85%. It is clear that the poll was remarkably accurate in its predictions.

The poll also highlighted some of the class divisions around the elections. For example, Mousavi had majority support only among university students and the highest-income Iranians, while those who identified as working-class and poor favored Ahmadinejad. Thus while hundreds of thousands of university students, professionals and better-educated Iranians can be seen protesting in the affluent suburbs of Tehran and other cities, rural poor and workers have not been reported in large numbers at the opposition rallies. This reflects the fact that Mousavi's program of greater western investment, privatization and de-regulation played well with some of Iran's more privileged social classes.

Those who allege voter fraud either ignore this poll or attempt to come up with all kinds of misleading arguments as to why it was inaccurate. On the other hand, one can imagine that if the poll had shown Mousavi with a 2-1 lead, every corporate news commentator on the planet would be holding up this poll as decisive evidence.

It is no small matter that not a shred of hard evidence has been produced to indicate that the vote was manipulated. Abbas Barzegar, writing in the Guardian newspaper, puts it this way:

“One should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight.” (Guardian, 6/13/09)

Barzegar concludes, “It seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting.”

Anyone who takes a serious look at the facts and conditions in Iran would have to agree. There is a very good reason why the Mousavi protests have received such tremendous coverage in CNN, BBC, FOX and all the major mainstream television, radio, internet and other media outlets. It is the same reason why the Obama administration intervened in preventing a temporary shutdown of the internet communication site Twitter, which is being used supposedly by Iranian students (although the evidence suggests that much of this content originates outside of Iran) to coordinate protest information and share information. Or why the leaders of the big imperialist powers have all hypocritically “condemned” the Iranian election or expressed their “grave concern” about its fairness.

The reason Mousavi and the so-called ‘pro-democracy movement’ in Iran have received such lavish coverage is precisely because it is the ‘wishful thinking’ of the big imperial powers – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, etc. – that Iran’s government will fall. Iran is a thorn in the side of U.S. domination of the Middle East.

Despite being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and facing the prospect of air strikes by Israel, the Iranian government has been able to chart an independent course that is focused on national development, independence and, most woeful to the imperial powers, the use of oil revenues to better the lot of Iranian people, rather than the profits of the multinational corporations. Iran has also provided significant support to resistance movements, such as Hezbollah, and built alliances with anti-imperialist governments such as Venezuela.

The United States has been looking to topple the leadership of Iran's government for many years now. During one flare-up in tensions last year, Seymour Hersh reported:

“Late last year [2007], Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.” (New Yorker, 7/08/2008)

One has to ask: what did the Central Intelligence Agency and Joint Special Operations Command do with $400 million over the past year? Could it have something to do with the spectacularly publicized, internationally coordinated and well-funded protest activity in Iran? Instead of investigating this aspect of the story, the corporate media continue to trash Iran's government and sovereignty.

Iran’s election cannot be seen in isolation from the broader context of the Middle East – a region where invasion and occupation uprooted an anti-imperialist, independent government in Iraq, where millions live under a deadly U.S.-backed occupation in Palestine and where puppet regimes backed by the United States oppress and exploit hundreds of millions of people. In this context, there is nothing more hypocritical than for the big imperial powers – which for decades have strangled democracies and rigged elections so that ‘their’ pro-Western candidates come out on top – to condemn the Iranian elections. The U.S. should stop interfering in Iran's internal affairs and respect Iran's right to sovereignty and self-determination.

#Iran #AntiwarMovement #Elections #Imperialism #Ahmadinejad #MiddleEast