Tony Cartalucci — Iranian Protests: Deep State’s Unfinished Business

Backgrounder.

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Iranian Protests: Deep State’s Unfinished Business

Tony Cartalucci

One factor that I seldom see mentioned in the extensive commenting on Iran both in the mainstream and alternative media is that the protests are grounded in Iranian politics and the contention for power between the conservative hardliners and the liberal government now in power.

The Rouhani government is labeled "reformist" as if that is a good thing. "Reformist" means neoliberal.

There are two major factors in emerging nations, the haves and the have-nots. The haves favor liberalization and integration into the global economic order, while the have-nots, impoverished by neoliberal policies want none of it.

Under the "hardline" government of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the have-nots fared will under his "socialist" programs. Since the election of Rouhani, those programs have been cut back or ended. This has resulted in social dysfunction and now political turmoil.

This is similar to the causality behind events in different Latin American countries, where the US has key interests and also interferes covertly if not overtly, but with "plausible deniability."

That interference is generally though proxies and it often involves violence, which the US then uses as a manufactured excuse to intervention, e..g, with economic sanctions or even militarily.

The rationale under which this policy is sold is "spreading freedom and democracy." The real reason underlying the expansion of the neoliberal order as the "rules of the game" set by the US is all about the extension and solidification of the American Empire and the dominance of US interests, especially financial and commercial.