Iran's crises would be solved domesticallyThey've mobilized their facilities, packed their luggage and set off their missions to distort, spread out, "separate and rule", "divide and conquer".
Everything began on the eve of June 13's gloaming, the grumbling and whining Saturday of the late spring, when the astounding outcomes of the 10th presidential elections in Iran was chanted by the mass media and electoral commissions, and that was the very beginning of a communal bewilderment and perplexity all over the country, and around the world as well. The friends and enemies, supporters and dissidents, compatriots and strangers, internals and externals, everybody was amazed by the results of the most dynamic presidential elections in the contemporary history of Iran; the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected by a vast majority of 63%, thumping the reformist rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi by a discrepancy of 11 million votes.
Even the most optimistic fans of Mr. Ahmadinejad could not foretell a 24.5m victory will be achieved by their beloved candidate whom in the most realistic situation, would have been beating the reformist contender in a run-off round after coming to a close standoff in the first round; however, everything was over and the congratulatory message of the Supreme Leader had arrived: "the elections of Khordad 22 (June 12) with the creative performance of Iranian nation, set a new record in the long sequence of national elections. The 80% turnout on the ballots and the 24m votes of people to the president-elect is a pure festivity which can guarantee the country's improvement and progression, national security and sustainable contentment with the divine patronages and assistances."
That was the commencement of protests by the foremost failed candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who could never imagine losing with such a soaring discrepancy. He accused the electoral commission of fraud and manipulation in the elections, and expressed that he would not recognize the results, calling for the annulment of the whole elections.
This was the allegation which the electoral commission denied from the very early moment and declared its readiness to publicize all of the detailed documentations and evidences to prove the healthiness and purity of the elections. They told the public media that we will publish the details of each ballot, an unprecedented elaboration of details which has never been done over the past 30 years.
Mousavi, however, began to issue statements and fervent declarations, calling his supporters to pour into the streets and mount demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of his fans paid homage to the call of their popular 67-year old former prime minister, and stormed out into the streets of Tehran, creating scenes which the foreign correspondents described as "unprecedented" after the Islamic revolution.
- How the complexity pulls in
The rallies were going on peacefully at the beginning, and people would just chant slogans such as "where are my votes", "I want my votes back" or "I've voted green, why it's vanished".
The rallies lasted for some 3 days, and the tensions gradually began to arouse. The western media outlets, especially those of UK and U.S., who would never give up such precious and invaluable opportunity to put an extravagant and "exclusive" coverage on Iran, seized the most infinitesimal chances, and turned them into the most spacious grounds for airing black propaganda.
CNN established its special "Iran desk", and BBC Persian TV added some 3 hours to its regular daily coverage. Encouragements for the continuation of rallies, strikes and protests progressively began to turn up from the foreign radio and TV stations, particularly the Persian section of Radio Israel whose "experts" would fervently advocate the expansion of unrest to the large cities all around the country, instead of "concentrating" them in Tehran.
Riots and rebels, the former fighters of the paramilitary group MKO which the U.S. Department of State recognizes as a terrorist organization, the Israel-linked suicidal bombers being partially systematized by the foreign forces to carry out destructive actions, and the unorganized flocks of hooligans were soon scattered all over the country, starting to revolt and rise amidst the peaceful and political demonstrations, performing mischievous actions and divesting the longstanding peace and stability from the country.
Plainclothes and anti-rebel polices came to action, and a number of supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as well as some religious students were arrested, shot or killed along with the mutineers and insurgents. The death toll rose to 19 – the official stats – and according to the state-run Press TV, the members of Hashemi Rafsanjani family were arrested, while they were released immediately.
Will Iraq be a global gas pump?- The (re)making of a petro-state
Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq's fate.
For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.
In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Later, Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC, provoking unrelenting British and American hostility. Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company, part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country's Shiite majority. And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil.
Iraq is, of course, one of the world's great hydrocarbon preserves. According to oil giant BP, it harbors proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels -- more than any country except Saudi Arabia (with 264 billion barrels) and Iran (with 138 billion). Many analysts, however, believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored, and that the utilization of modern search technologies will yield additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels. If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies.
- Nailing down the energy heartland of the planet
Iraq's great hydrocarbon promise has been continually thwarted by war, foreign intervention, sanctions, internal disorder, corruption, and plain old ineptitude. Saddam Hussein did succeed for a time in elevating oil output, in the process raising national income and creating a well-educated middle class. However, his ill-conceived invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 led to devastating attacks on Iraqi oil facilities, as well as trade embargoes and crippling debt, erasing much of his country's previous economic gains. The trade sanctions imposed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the wake of the First Gulf War only further eroded the country's oil-production capacity.
When President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, his overarching goals all revolved around the geopolitics of oil. He and his top officials were intent on replacing Saddam Hussein's regime with one that would prove friendly to American oil interests. They also imagined that, greeted as liberators by a grateful population, they would preside over a radical upgrading of Iraq's petroleum capacity, thereby ensuring adequate supplies for American consumers at an affordable price. Finally, by building and manning a constellation of major military bases in a grateful Iraq, they saw themselves ensuring continued American dominance over the oil-soaked Persian Gulf region, and so the energy heartland of the planet.
All of this, of course, proved to be a mirage. The US invasion and ensuing occupation policies provoked a bitter Sunni insurgency that quickly overshadowed all other American concerns, including oil. As a result, no matter how much money they poured into the task, the Bush administration and its Baghdad agents found themselves incapable of boosting petroleum output even to the levels of the worst days of Saddam Hussein's regime -- and so their plans to use oil revenues to pay for the war, the occupation, and the reconstruction of the country all vanished into thin air.
The data provided by BP on yearly production tallies cannot be starker when it comes to the impact on oil output of the insurgency, rampant corruption, the loss of the nation's oil professionals (many of whom fled into exile amid sectarian warfare), and other related factors. Prior to the American invasion, Iraq was pumping 2.6 million barrels of oil per day, already significantly below its pre-invasion peak of 3.5 million barrels per day. In the first year of the ill-starred US occupation, production quickly plunged to a paltry 1.3 million barrels per day. Only in 2007 did it finally top the two million mark and, with improved security, 2.4 million in 2008. Assuming conditions continue to improve, Iraqi output could, for the first time, exceed pre-invasion levels, though barely, in 2009 or 2010 -- six years or more after Baghdad fell to American forces.
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন