How Western media backs the “green revolution” in Iran

It was an election that was snatched from the Iranian people – or at least that's the impression being given by Western media outlets. But are they telling the full story?

The BBC and the Voice of America radio station have been harshly criticized by Iranian officials who accuse the broadcasters of fueling violence after the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The European Union has rejected Iran’s accusations that the Western media helped engineer post-election unrest as protests in Tehran continue.

And US President Barack Obama has also said that Washington is not interfering in Iran's affairs. While strongly condemning the actions of Tehran in curbing the protests, Obama said the United States respects the sovereignty of the country.

But Iranians screaming about fraud and demanding a fair election – that’s what most people are seeing on their TV screens.

Journalist Jalal Ghazi believes Ahmadinejad won the elections because “the difference is 11 million and you just cannot expect 11 million votes to be forged.”

So why does the American media seem to overlook that fact?

As the protests continue, some experts still believe there is interference from outside of Iran. A columnist and a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts, says it's all part of a major destabilization plan ordered by the US.

“The CIA has been conducting a destabilization plan within Iran for the last two years; it is well known and has been widely reported in American and British press. We are seeing the fruits of an orchestrated protest that is taking place in Tehran,” said Roberts.

“The American media serves as a propaganda ministry for the government,” he added.

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen told RT that the real story behind the media in Iran is that of instigating a “green revolution.”

“George Bush funneled $400 million to George Soros’ Open Society Institute and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) institutions to influence this opposition movement against the Iranian government,” Madsen claims. “Every time you hear about revolutions it is George Soros and the Open Society Institute.”

Going further, Madsen argued that “Yesterday, CNN really had trouble with priming itself away from the coverage of demonstration in Tehran to cover a terrible metro train accident in Washington. What is the motivation for all this intense coverage by CNN, MSNBC and Fox News? It seems like there is a coordinated and concerted effort to stir things up using Western media.”

Experts are questioning whether or not this may be another US attempt to foment a color revolution in the Middle East, as it has done in past years in Eastern Europe.

“There is a tendency now to take advantage of what is an internal problem with the present Iranian government,” Wayne Madsen said. “We see some of the same hallmarks today in Tehran which we saw in Ukraine and Georgia.”

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