Iran Is Ready To Embrace A New Future: Democracy And Secularism – OpEd

The “national security strategy” that was recently initiated by tUS President Donald Trump clearly and strongly frames the Islamic regime of Iran as a rogue government that is primarily antithetical to American values and interests in the greater Middle East. It gave the message that the world community should not just focus on the Islamic regime’s nuclear capability; its support of terrorism, accelerated development of ballistic missiles and regional expansion should also be considered. All endanger peace in the region and pose a direct threat to the security of the world. Further, the Islamic regime could also destabilize global energy security by closing the Hormuz Strait to passage of over 21 million barrels of crude oil and its products daily.

According to reports from banned newspapers in Iran that have been echoed by the international media, Iranian people remain in the lowest standard of living since the Islamic regime took over the country about four decades ago. No one can recall any part of the world where a country so rich in natural resources and manpower experienced such a profound and rapid deterioration of the general standard of living, as did Iran after the so-called Islamic revolution in February 1979.

Then, Why the Revolution?

For many decades before the Islamic revolution, Imperial Iran was considered the West’s staunchest ally. However, for understanding the full implications of the Islamic revolution in Iran, we must begin to review and analyze the events before the revolution. The West, by pinpointing Iran’s few shortcoming – if there were any at all – had an undeniable role in undermining Iran’s legitimate government, and thus by conspiratorially interfering in the country’s internal affairs, gave credibility to the fanatical revolutionaries who are in power today.

It all started in 1975 when officials from the Aspen Institute, the Club of Rome, and the Institute of International Studies of Geneva, along with Anglo-American Intelligence specialists on Iran, participated in the Aspen Institute Symposium at the historic “Persepolis” in Iran. The attendees concluded that modernization and dynamic industry in Iran undermine the spiritual and nonmaterial values of ancient Iranian society, and that these inherited values must be preserved wholeheartedly and above all other values. Therefore, so-called foreign experts secretly planned to reverse the late Monarch’s industrialization program and to cause dynamic Iran to regress into a model dark ages regime in the fast moving world.

Therefore, from 1975 until the rise of Khomeini’s activities in 1978, the Aspen Institute established a closer relationship with the Iranian Ministry of Education, particularly through well-placed agents like minister Manuchehr Ganji (Hostage to Khomeini, by Robert Dreyfus, published by: New Benjamin Franklin House, NY 1980) and his advisor, professor Ali Shariati, who was a member of the British intelligence “Freemasonic” movement and in charge of the Center for Propagation of Islamic Truth Society in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. Shariati was radically antimaterialist and the originator of so-called Islamic Marxism. He sowed the seeds of “antimaterialist” rebellion among Iranian youths, especially college students, and aimed to restore their faith in Islam. Of course, his activities were guided by the Aspen Institute and Club of Rome networks which had gathered at Persepolis three years earlier and were the foundation of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. By 1977, evidently Shariati, with support from the Aspen Institute and Club of Rome, began rallying against the Monarch of Iran, and that attitude was the main issue in a late 1977 conference in Lisbon sponsored by the Interreligious Peace Colloquium and the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

A short while before the fall of the monarchical regime in Iran, Andrew Young, President Carter’s ambassador in the UN in 1978, called Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, a “saint.” William Sullivan, Carter’s ambassador in Tehran, had described Khomeini in one of his reports to the State Department as a “Ghandi-like individual,” and as a savior who was to bring justice, freedom and compassion to his countrymen, and depicted pre-revolutionary Iran as a massive prison and the late Monarch of Iran as a dictator.

A New Iran is Just a Matter of Time

The bulk of the Iranian population was born after the revolution and is therefore under forty years of age. Fortunately, they are very active in social affairs and aware of their country’s history and daily politics. They know the clergies that currently govern Iran did not come to power in 1979 on the basis of political merit, and that they were installed by foreign powers that used the clergies’ depravity and backwardness for their own benefit. They are very much informed about the events that took place years before the revolution, such as the Aspen Institute Symposium and its players, decisions and purposes.

This generation has realized that after the Islamic revolution 39 years ago, not only was freedom lost, but also the great majority of citizens have been deprived economically. They are witnessing the national resources of the country being depleted due to the mismanagement and systematic corruption of the Islamic regime. The Iranian people not only have endured years of oppression under the rule of dictatorial theocracy, but they have also been isolated throughout the world as a result. Therefore, the great majority of Iranians have recognized that the resolution of the country’s serious economic, political and social problems is clearly beyond the competence of theocratic and intrinsically corrupted clergies in Tehran.

The sense of nationalism as well as the demand for free elections and secular government are growing everyday and clearly spreading continuously across the land. President Trump should advocate the overthrow of the Islamic regime and should not demoralize the growing secular opposition in Iran by appearing to give in as President Barack Obama did to the terrorist blackmail school of Islamic diplomacy.

*Mansour Kashfi, Ph.D., was petroleum geologist with the National Iranian Oil Company and Chairman of the Geology Department at Pahlavi University in Iran from 1970 to 1979. Now he is president of Kashex International Petroleum Consulting and is a college professor in Dallas, Texas. He is also the author of innumerable articles and books about the petroleum industry and its market behavior worldwide. [email protected]