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Our Blogs Open Sauce Iran: is the 'H' word at play here?
Our Blogs Open Sauce Iran: is the 'H' word at play here? | Iran: is the 'H' word at play here? |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Thursday, 18 June 2009 | |
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When I make exceptions to the subject matter in my blog, it's always had to do with proprietary software. Today I'm venturing a bit further afield. And lest there be any doubt about it, let me proclaim here that this is all my own opinion. I've decided to write something about Iran simply because there's been a lot of talk about the presidential elections - and all of it has been from a Western perspective. One has never seen anything rational about the other side. Sure, there are government proclamations. But few, if any, journalists based in the West have bothered to realise that there is another side to this whole story which needs telling at a time like this. I'm quite familiar with the way the Western media tries to shape opinion about an issue in the developing world - and particularly in the case of countries which are official enemies of the US. After the US toppled the Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and planted a dictator in his place, Iran was the best friend of the US. Oil flowed whither the West dictated - until 1979 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came a-calling and threw the Americans and their pals out. Thirty years have gone by and there has been no sign of rapprochement. And in the last four years, there's been this additional thorn in the side of the West, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is prone to do, has been baiting the West ceaselessly. Recently, horror of horrors, the man has even gone on to declaim that he is aiming to make Iran a nuclear power. And though he has cited nukes as a means of generating power, we all know what it means when a country that is ostracised by the West talks in these terms. There's more than a touch of hypocrisy when it comes to the question of nuclear arms - for example, neither India nor Pakistan were in any way prevented from gaining this status. Neither was Israel. India even farcically claimed that it was testing nukes for peaceful purposes when it carried out its first nuclear explosion in 1974! Of course, as anyone with a cursory knowledge of international affairs is aware, countries all around the globe have become aware that once a country has a nuclear arsenal, the tone employed by the West towards that country changes. There is no talking down, there is a reasonable approach from the so-called "international community". Hence, one cannot blame countries, especially those towards which the West is hostile, from aspiring to pile up a few nukes. With all the animosity displayed towards Ahmadinejad by Western governments, it is but natural that a lot of it rubbed off on the Western corporate media, those faithful servants of the people in power. Hence, in the run-up to the Iranian elections, there was a barrage of coverage all of which hinted that the man who would better suit Western interests, Mir Hossein Mossavi, was set to win in a canter. Remember, Iran has a lot of oil and gas within its borders. |
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