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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.

So while the war on Syria continues to be a nice little earner, with renewed demand for anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile launchers to supply the “New Syrian Army”, and the bombardment of Yemenis by the NATO-Gulf state-Israel coalition is unrelenting in the face of world outrage, this is evidently not quite enough. The juggernaut needs something to sustain it when those wars are finally brought to an end, and what better than a long war with Persia!

I don’t know why we should be surprised at the launching of the war on Iran, so long planned for, and spruiked aggressively by Iran’s perpetual enemies since their cosy alliance with the Shah was cut short in 1979. Perhaps it’s just the sheer nakedness of it all – the transparent inauthenticity of protests from inside Iran that echo Donald Trump’s supportive tweets in advance! “Let go of Palestine” – “Death to the Dictator” (er.. which one?)

But verifying that these were indeed inauthentic and foreign-sponsored “fake protests” was this – the logo of the NCRI, a gold Persian lion in the corner of a video of protests in Hamadan. The NCRI, as explained by Moon of Alabama, is the civil arm of Israel-backed terrorist group the Mujahideen e Khalq, which has been the chief conduit through which the US and Israel incite protests and political assassinations. Not long ago the MEK was declassified as a terrorist group by the US.

We should not be surprised either that within a day there were reports “that cannot be verified” of two protestors being shot dead. The immediate condemnation of the claim that police were responsible by a government minister – who also noted that foreign agents were responsible for inciting the riots – was broadcast on Western media, but these same media added the two to the “rising death toll of 12 people and one policeman” only two days later.

We should remember these points.

In a few weeks’ time it will be seven years since “agents provocateurs” fired on police and protesters in Southern Syria, and launched the “uprising” against the Syrian state by the anti-Syrian coalition. Immediately following the Dera’a protest rallies the government stated that police were fired on, by persons unknown - who had also shot protestors, but this crucial piece of information was effectively suppressed by Western media. From then on the exchange of fire and of information was always portrayed as government repression of peaceful protests, and nothing could change the minds of Syrians supporting the protests or their cheer squads abroad.

And seven years on, despite treatises written on those earliest “provocations” and the powers behind them, belief that innocent protestors were shot by Syrian security forces in Dera’a remains unshakeable throughout the Western world, except of course amongst its leaders. One could not credit them with belief in anything, beyond their own interests.

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.

Had it not been for this personal contact, which was only coincidentally connected to the current “protests”, it would be easier to dismiss the slogans and calls from the protestors for Iran to “get out of Syria” as mere propaganda from the NCRI, that would be seen as such by most Iranians. They surely could not have believed the seven years of lies that have sustained “the Syrian Revolution”, and would understand that Syria has been fighting to defend its people and its sovereignty from the most ruthless and barbaric foreign insurgency of the modern era.

While it might be understandable that many Iranians don’t want their money spent on foreign interventions, it is still hard to believe that they don’t actually support “the cause” – the “Resistance” – and are in fact opposed to it. Must they learn the hard way that this resistance is now vital for the Iranian nation’s survival against the hegemony of the US and its allies?

*(Iranian students protest at the University of Tehran in the capital on December 30, 2017. Image credit: AFP PHOTO / STR)