IRI
Lobby
IRI
Lobby
Sam Ghandchi
http://www.ghandchi.com/473-IRILobby-plus.htm
The discussion of lobbyists of Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has come up on many Iranian forums in the past, but the positions were seldom clearly stated by the supporters and opponents, and the dialogues ended up in personal attacks.
The supporters of IRI lobbyists used to call all the opponents as mojAhedin or monarchists, and the opponents would call the supporters of IRI lobbyists as the agents on payroll of Islamic Republic of Iran.
The reality is that not all opponents of IRI lobbyists are mojAhedin or monarchists and not all supporters of IRI lobbyists are IRI paid agents.
This is an issue within the Iranian opposition movement and name-calling will not make it to go away. Today after the rise of Iran's civil movement inside the country I doubt it that any of those who used to call opponents of IRI lobbyists as mojAhedin and monarchists, can ignore the reality that many others in the Iranian opposition want the end to IRI regime.
The last time I
wrote about this topic was the following in
http://www.ghandchi.com/
Iranian publications that have been supporters of IRI lobbyists all these years, publishing in English or Persian, would censor the articles of Iranian human rights groups such as MEHR.ORG that wanted regime change in Iran, whereas would publish the articles and publications of IRI lobbyists and their supporters, nonetheless, they would never come out and say that supporting the IRI lobbyists is their editorial policy.
Why is this issue real? The reality is that Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is not just a dictatorial regime like the Shah's regime which was OK with the world order that is headed by the Western Democracies. In contrast, IRI is a dictatorship which wants a different world order headed by the Islamists.
Although IRI knows their wish of a world with Islamism on the top is not just around the corner, it still did not stop them from calling for takeover of Jerusalem through Kabala from the early days of Khomeini which was followed by Iraq-Iran war.
This reality means that just like the contention of Soviet dictatorship with the West, a similar contention will always be a part of the reality of IRI dictatorship until the time they succeed to have a new world order headed by the Islamists or the IRI ends. It was the same with Soviets who hoped for World Communism.
Now until there
is a World Islamism or the disappearance of its major proponents, both IRI and
the West need to see how they can deal with each other. This is why the issue
of relations of the West and IRI is of importance to Iranian opposition in
the way it has come up time and again in the last
Recently a discussion has started within the same publications that have all these years basically supported the position of IRI lobbyists with regards to the relations of Iran and the West. Publications that mainly censored those who wanted regime change in Iran who opposed the IRI lobbyists.
Let me emphasize that the current discussion is *within* those same people and even some of those publications that are now entertaining views opposing pro-lobbyist positions are from the same outlooks that would censor human rights groups like MEHR.ORG which consistently opposed IRI appeasement policies and called for regime change in Iran.
Nonetheless the current debate although within the same ranks of those supporting IRI lobbyists, I believe, is very important, because I think the current debate will help to openly understand what the underlying issues are and name-calling hopefully will be replaced by some intelligent discussions because many involved in the current discussions are former and even current colleagues.
Here are the discussions that have started. First is the publication of the following article of Mohammad Sahimi by payvand.com:
http://www.payvand.com/news/07/may/1042.html
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/MuhammadSahimiVOA052807.ram
Then the following article by Hassan Dai rejecting the above was published on the Internet [http://www.gozareshgar.com/fileadmin/goz/user_files/LobbyRegime4.doc] and even the site of Akhbar-rooz surprisingly [http://www.ghandchi.com/419-akhbare-rooz-plus.htm] not only did not censor it but published and featured this article on their site for a few days:
http://www.akhbar-rooz.com/article.jsp?essayId=9444
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/HassanDaiVOA061007.ram
They are now actively involved in this debate which I believe is very important and hopefully will finally allow the debate to be done in an atmosphere of reason rather than the usual name-callings. Also it is good to see this discussion on publications that are not filtered in Iran.
I hope all these publications that are not censored in Iran to provide proxy servers on their sites so that Iranian people can see the political views of those that are being censored by IRI, views such as this topic, if they all really believe in democracy the way they claim, and even the lobby groups claim when working for IRI in the West. These are not personal issues and are about filtering of political views.
Wouldn’t that be more of a fair presentation to Iranian readers that are being deprived of seeing the web sites that IRI does not approve politically by IRI spending millions of dollars on Internet filtering. Are the filtered web sites all porno sites as IRI used to claimed. How long more are we going to self-censor ourselves!
Hoping for a Federal, Democratic, and Secular Futurist Republic in Iran,
Sam Ghandchi, Publisher/Editor
IRANSCOPE
http://www.iranscope.com
Text in Persian
http://www.ghandchi.com/473-IRILobby.htm
RELATED MATERIAL
Please see Chapter 12 of the new edition of Futurist Iran book
http://www.ghandchi.com/500-FuturistIranEng.htm#12
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