Eight years ago, and following a third visit to Iran, I had several articles published by American Herald Tribune reflecting on our experiences there, and perceptions of Iranian attitudes to the West. Firstly in mid January 2018, I wrote about the latest protest rallies in Iran, which were estimated to have brought about 15,000 Iranians onto the streets. This was exactly 8 years ago last week, and so was at just the same moment in Trump’s first presidency as the current events are in his second. The similarities are striking, as in the title of the article link – ‘help us Trump’: https://web.archive.org/web/20200814143241/https://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/iran/2095-help-us-trump.html This was my introduction:
“It’s hard to know who’s more confused – Iranians who think that Donald Trump could be their saviour, or Americans who believe that Iranians need saving from their own government! One mightn’t think there would be many on either side suffering this unfortunate delusion, and still suffering it despite everything that has happened since Rouhani took the Iranian leadership. But if Fox news is anything to go by there must be millions, and the number is growing! It is no surprise to see Americans misinformed about life in Iran, made out in this report to be some weird and primitive state where the whole population lives in serfdom beneath “the Mullahs”, whose only interest is in plotting to destroy the US and Israel. Rather like North Korea with an anti-Semitic twist. Apparently – "We have no life in Iran. Our life and death is equal. We have nothing to miss. We want freedom. Just poverty, unemployment and corruption is the result of the Mullah regime ... young people are unemployed. Educated people escape to other countries.” - or so says one protestor in Iran interviewed by Fox News.”
Just two weeks earlier, at the break of the New Year, I had written another article about the Iranian protest rallies (which took place in late December 2017 - illustrated above), with the clear infiltration of foreign agitators backed by Mossad and the CIA, and how this was reminiscent of the first days of the ‘Syrian uprising’, when unseen snipers fired on police and protestors. It’s a favourite technique to provoke escalation and militarisation of an ‘uprising’, used – mostly – by the West. https://web.archive.org/web/20180103072535/https://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/iran/2081-fifth-column.html my introduction:
“There’s no rest for the wicked – as they say – but the wicked won’t let us rest either. While we try to gather our thoughts, and plan some reasoned response to the fiesta of false news that marks this time of year, the “news creators” are busy stirring up trouble on new fronts and trying to breathe new life into old ones. Not for America the bonhomie of “Auld Lang Syne”, of forgiveness and reconciliation, or that very Christian invocation to “love thine enemies”. Nor any admission from America that its behaviour over the last year has created new enemies and stimulated hatred of old ones, while fostering partnerships with other oppressive and aggressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel. Leave alone contrition - far from it - “2017 has been a fantastic year” says Trump – and 2018 will be even better! “With our best allies we’ve made fantastic progress in Israel, which will soon be whole again and free of terrorists, while in Syria the work is going well, and I’ve just told the Iranian people to hang in there, because we going to help them, because their government has been spending all their money on supporting terrorism. Not good!” Which is where we are now, at the start of a new year and with a new opportunity to step back from war and “give peace a chance”. But that’s a possibility that seems to have put the wind up those in the war business who evidently did so well out of last year’s bloodbaths, driving the US stock-market up to record heights.”
Of course it didn’t work out quite like that – in March the UK staged the Skripal ‘Novichok’ poisoning, and a month later the fake chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria. There were successes however, as Syria was more or less liberated by May with Jaish al Islam and Jolani’s takfiri mob ‘sent to Idlib’ to fester. Hezbollah was also on the up, winning elections in May 2018, though this was also the moment that Trump cancelled the JCPOA and re-introduced punishing sanctions on Iran. I continued:
“It’s too early to say whether this latest conspiracy to take control of Iran away from its leaders – again (consider Mossadegh in 1953) – will succeed, and numbers of experienced observers believe it won’t. I would probably have agreed with them only a week ago, but for two things. One is the sheer determination of the US and Israel to drive the “uprising” forward, like the Maidan on steroids. The breathtaking hypocrisy and mendacity of Trump’s tweets, and Netanyahu’s speech encouraging “the brave Iranian people”, have been broadcast without ridicule or even sensible criticism. But the other thing that makes me worried is something I learnt by chance about the viewpoint of Iranians, not on their leaders but on Iran’s fight with the Anglo-Zionist Empire. It seems I have been mistaken – in assuming that Iranians would be better informed than those in the West about what is really happening and has happened in Syria, and Libya, Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen. I was mistaken in thinking that Iranians would also watch Press TV, or RT, and believe what they saw. In visits to Iran – as a “dissident Westerner” - I’ve been too keen to assure them of my disdain for Iran’s enemies, and to warn them against being seduced by degenerate US culture. They in turn have been too polite and reserved to contradict me, so I’ve dismissed their strange affection for Coca Cola and popcorn as just some trivial aberration, or hangover from the hay-days of the Shah and the Savak.” What has alarmed me is this: that in an exchange of ideas about the war on Syria, my correspondent has willingly revealed his sincere belief that Bashar al Assad is a brutal dictator guilty of terrible war crimes and that the Iranian government should not be supporting him. Taking the opinion of one person to be that of millions is clearly unwise, though I believe this one person may speak for many in his particular milieu, which appears as Tehran’s liberal and social intelligentsia. This was not some flippant tweet from a Fox News watcher, but considered opinion from a multi-lingual, highly educated and cultured Iranian.”
What I was referring to here was an email exchange with an Iranian man referred to me by an Iranian travel agent in Sydney, who took slight exception to my bad-mouthing of Iranians in the diaspora as well as those ‘dissidents’ in Tehran who formed the ‘fifth column’. They denied such a group existed, claiming or believing that most Iranians were also against their government, but were too afraid and repressed to say so. It is possible that there were more such people than I estimated – eight years ago on our last visit to Iran. But from everything I now read and hear that is credible and authentic, the vast bulk of the Iranian population has rallied around its government and nation following the brutal Israeli attack in June – which killed over 1000 innocent civilians alongside military leaders and scientists. The extent to which Iran had been white-anted by Mossad, MI6 and the CIA was very shocking, and a wake up call for anyone who thought Iran’s Western enemies were benign and civilised. There has long been an assumption in the West that anti-government protestors are inherently anti the Ayatollah Khamenei, reflected in the chants we hear of ‘Death to the Dictator’, along with the burning of pictures of the 86 year old Sayid Ali Khamenei. But my belief and perception from visits to Iran and discussions with Iranians is that Khamenei is widely respected as well as venerated by many as their spiritual guide and leader – much as Sayed Hassan Nasrallah was universally respected in Lebanon. My understanding and appreciation of the man was improved back in early 2016, when AHT’s editor asked if I’d like to write a piece on “Khamenei’s letter to Youth”, which addressed young people in Europe following the Paris terrorist attacks. His words of wisdom and reflections on the degeneration of European culture remain just as relevant now as they were ten years ago, as I then described them in context: https://web.archive.org/web/20160504231440/http://ahtribune.com/youth/583-khamenei-thoughts-on-terrorism.html
“Following the Paris bombings last November, Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayed Ali Khamenei posted an open letter on his website, addressed to ‘the Youth of the West’. Titled ‘Today terrorism is our common worry’, this letter was an urgent appeal to that youth, in whom Khamenei sees the hope for a different future from the one promised by the West’s current policies. Sympathising with the pain felt by all those affected by the terrorist attack in Paris, he nevertheless puts it in perspective with that suffered for so long by the people in the Middle East, as a result of Western intrusion and attacks… “It is correct that today terrorism is our common worry. However, it is necessary for you to know that the insecurity and strain that you experienced during the recent events, differ from the pain that the people of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan have been experiencing for many years, in two significant ways. First, the Islamic world has been the victim of terror and brutality to a larger extent territorially, to greater amount quantitatively and for a longer period in terms of time. Second, that unfortunately this violence has been supported by certain great powers through various methods and effective means. Today, there are very few people who are uninformed about the role of the United States of America in creating, nurturing and arming al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their inauspicious successors. Besides this direct support, the overt and well-known supporters of takfiri terrorism- despite having the most backward political systems- are standing arrayed as allies of the west while the most pioneering, brightest and most dynamic democrats in the region are suppressed mercilessly.” We need hardly mince words about which ‘states’ we are referring to – Khamenei himself certainly doesn’t hesitate to identify Israel and Israel’s key backer the United States as the prime source of aggression and destabilisation toward Iran and other countries in the region. While Iran’s previous President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad never tired of haranguing the West and Israel over the persecution of Palestinians, Western leaders and their puppet media did a great hatchet job on this man who wouldn’t wear a tie, or shut up. Even though he got to have his say in the very public forum of the UNGA, where it provoked a traditional walk-out from Israel’s many allies, what he actually said rarely got any attention. Thanks to the power of the US media – which in this case we can rightly call ‘the Western Zionist media’, most people in the West believed not just that Iran wanted to ‘wipe Israel off the map’, but was actually planning to do so, with a single nuclear tipped missile. President Ahmedinejad didn’t actually ever say this of course, but rather presented the distinctly unpalatable idea that Israel wanted to wipe Palestine off the map, and was busy doing so. This idea wasn’t just unpalatable, but the truth of it was hard to conceal – except perhaps by distraction; we could look at the claims about Iran’s nuclear weapons program in this light, and see just how effective they have been. We can go further though – and consider that the essential reason for Israel’s persistent belligerence towards Iran is primarily because of Iran’s unshakeable support for Palestinian rights. While Iran is clearly antagonistic to the Zionist state and its US ally, as illegitimate invaders of the Islamic world, it also sees the ongoing persecution of the Palestinians as an affront to humanity, and the prime cause of destabilisation of the whole region. This is an argument difficult to counter, and with many unheeded UN resolutions behind it might also be impossible for Israel to win in a fair court of opinion.
Given the current prominence of Ayatollah Khamenei in Western media, and attribution of malignant qualities to him that justify burning his image and calling for his death, it's very informative to read all his 'letter to youth', written just two weeks after the November 13th Paris terrorist attacks. It illustrates just how far ahead his thinking was on the geopolitics of West Asia and its imperial occupiers and enemies - compared with the neanderthal thinking of the Western media. But it also remains highly relevant to the current 'protests' because of their links to ISIS and to Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iranian government found that amongst those foreign mercenaries brought into Iran across the Iraqi and Turkish borders were Takfiri headchoppers - who did what they do - and well-armed Kurdish militants - both of whom are 'on the move' from Syria as the new Syrian army forces them out of Raqqa and Hasakah. It is far from clear whether the US stated intention to transport 7000 ISIS prisoners into Iraq is in order to imprison them there - or use them as soldiers in a war on Iran. But the timing of this sudden and dramatic clearance of Eastern Syria with Tom Barrack's visits to Erbil, Ankara and Damascus is highly indicative of US coordination. Thus appears the re-launching of the headless and stateless 'radical Islamist' terrorist monster as a decoy for the next phase of the Path to Persia. I discussed these events as well as their connection to previous terrorist attacks in 'The Fourth Great Deception'. - which was ironically published just as 'Israel' was launching the latest Iran operation leading up to the fifth event in the series on January 15th...
DM 24th January 2026