Opinion

INSIDE IRAN’S NEW CONSPIRACY THEORY

IRAN is facing an “international conspiracy” to over throw the Khomeinist re gime with a “velvet revolution,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) claimed yesterday.

The latest mascot of the plotters is supposed to be Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota now charged with espionage in Tehran. A US citizen with an Iranian father and a Japanese mother, the 31-year-old Roxana has worked in Iran on and off for years as a freelance reporter.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for Saberi’s immediate release and safe return to the US.

IRNA claims that the plot was first given “a credible structure” during a conference organized by a German think tank in Berlin eight years ago. It identifies the Heinrich Boll as an annex of the Green Party that is itself “controlled by Zionists.” Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is labeled as arch-conspirator and presented as “a close friend” of Massoud Rajavi, leader of the People’s Mujahedin, an Iranian armed opposition group based in Iraq.

The latest IRNA analysis is one of several that the official news agency has published on the subject in the past two weeks. An earlier installment quoted Saeed Hajjarian, a key theoretician of the so-called “reformist” camp opposed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praising “velvet revolutions.” In another, the agency’s analysts claimed that supporters of “regime change” are now “entering the stage in the name of democracy and the transfer of power through elections.”

This is not the first time that Iran’s rulers claim to have uncovered foreign plots.

Two years ago, Tehran was struck by another spy fever. At that time Haleh Esfandiari, a 71-year-old American grandmother, was arrested and charged with anti-regime activities. (She was later released and allowed to return to the US after making forced televised confessions.)

At the same time, financier George Soros was accused of having funded a “velvet revolution” study in Iran. Ramin Jahanbagloo, a Canadian-Iranian philosopher working for Soros, was arrested and charged with espionage. Iranian-American journalist Parnaz Azima and Iranian-American researcher Kian Tajbakhsh were also arrested on similar charges. (All were later released as a gesture of “magnanimity” from the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei.)

But what is behind the new “velvet revolution” fever in Tehran? Fear of “soft overthrow” has been deepening in ruling circles since last fall. According to IRNA, with President George W. Bush out of office, the United States is no longer thinking of using force to topple the regime. Instead, the Obama administration, adopting the position of some Europeans, may support “change from within.”

The new spy story may also be intended to slow down or forestall proposed talks with Washington.

Some radical elements in Tehran claim that the US may use negotiations as a cover for identifying individuals that might bring about “change from within.” According to IRNA analysts, the Reagan administration used the technique in 1985 when it (briefly) opened secret talks with the then-Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mussavi-Khamenei.

The fact that Mussavi-Khamenei has decided to challenge President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in next June’s presidential election may also be a factor. Ahmadinejad’s supporters wish to portray Mussavi-Khamenehi as “Washington’s man,” pointing to his contacts with the US through Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, an Iranian financier in Europe.

Ahmadinejad’s supporters claim that, if elected president, Mussavi-Khamenehi would start a process to transform the Islamic Republic into a pro-US Muslim regime.

IRNA’s analysis quotes Gary Sick, a former “senior CIA official,” as saying: “How could I not be happy that a new wave is rising in Iran to close the chapter of the Islamic government and replace it with a government like that of Iran under the Shah or in Saudi Arabia?”

The IRNA analysis names a number of former members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s parallel army and chief instrument of repression, as elements active in the “soft overthrow” plot. Some, like Akbar Ganji and Alireza Jalaipour, have since gone into exile in the West; others are still in Iran and active in Mussavi-Khamenehi’s presidential campaign.

By claiming that the revolution is in danger, Ahmadinejad hopes to mobilize his radical base, which has grown disenchanted with his disastrous economic policies and failure to curb corruption. The former Miss North Dakota finds herself in the middle of a dangerous power struggle in one of the deadliest political systems in the world today.

Amir Taheri’s new book is “The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution.”