It is utterly amazing how liberals and some who consider themselves even radical leftists get confused over the relationship between elections and democracy. Haven't the two elections involving George W. Bush proved that all sorts of tricks can be used to give a false result. The United States through various government agencies like the CIA and Agency for International Development and many others, some which are supposed to be NGOs, pumps enormous amounts of money into foreign elections to get the result they want. They want to get a government into power in these countries which is totally sympathetic to US foreign policy and the penetration by US corporations into their economy. They definitely do not want any country which is unsympathetic to total privatization and has any ideas about nationalization of anything- particularly very valuable natural resources like oil. Hence, we have the so-called Rose revolution in Georgia, the Orange revolution in the Ukraine and the Velvet revolution in Lebanon. In case, there are some who get confused by all the repetitious propaganda and think the US would never influence foreign elections, there is the very well documented case where the CIA used every trick in their book, including vast amounts of money, to prevent the Italian Communist Party from winning the election in Italy immediately following World War 2. When the election turns out the way the United States desires, a very nice sounding name is given to it like Rose or Velvet. Since these elections are so far from anything resembling true democracy, why not call them skunk, outhouse or rotting corpse revolutions. It would be exceedingly more appropriate. If the US puppet gets a little imperialistic like the one in Georgia and attempts to expand its influence by military force, it sometimes gets a pummeling by a state like Russia, which is now very nationalistic and not completely a US puppet, like it was under Yeltsin. Then, the US and most of the corporate controlled media call it an invasion by Russia, which it was not, but a response to an invasion by Georgia and massacres of civilians by Georgian troops, recently trained by the US military and CIA.

Now, let us turn to recent events and the elections in Iran. The United States and the corporate elite definitely want a change of government in Iran. Under George W. Bush the idea of an open invasion or a bombing campaign like the one against Yugoslavia that would bring them to their knees was openly discussed. Why is Iran so important to US foreign policy? One of the main reasons can be deduced by simply looking at a map. Iran lies directly between their military conquest in Iraq and all the profits that will bring to US and British oil companies and Afghanistan and the oil rich republics of Central Asia. Iran itself has a large quantity of oil. Iran is a large country, and it simply can not be overemphasized, is situated between the military bases and the world's largest US embassy, which looks like a fort, in Iraq and the US military bases in Afghanistan, which not surprisingly are located on the once proposed Unocal pipeline from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. Iran is definitely not a US puppet state, its oil is nationalized and it has formed alliances with countries the United States and its corporate elite despise because of their socialistic policies like Venezuela and Bolivia. All of these things aggravate the United States intensely.

This whole situation presents a great dilemma to US foreign policy. They can't openly invade because the American people would be adverse to a major war, which this would entail. Iran has some modern weapons, which could probably sink US ships and aircraft carriers and cause large US casualties, which the American people would definitely oppose, even if a major propaganda campaign was unleashed in the media. Therefore, the other options are a coup or an election strongly influenced by the United States, which would bring a regime sympathetic to US foreign policy and corporate desires to power in Iran. When I saw the pictures on television of the riots in Iran, It brought back memories of similar riots I saw occur, which were orchestrated by the CIA and caused the overthrow of Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah, who naturally privatized the oil and invited US oil companies back into the country.

I realize that there is a difference between a coup like the one that brought the Shah to power and an election, but with the exceedingly sophisticated methods the United States uses to influence foreign elections, I think the difference is rapidly evaporating. I am not a supporter of theocracy or lack of true democracy. In fact, I would love true democracy all over the world, but that would entail the dissolution of corporations and imperialism and US imperialism is far from dying. I suspect the hand of US imperialism in the Iranian elections and the riots immediately following. It seems I am all alone in this opinion as every leftist publication I am aware of or leftist pundit is strongly of the opposite opinion. Every time there is an election against a regime which is oppressive to some degree, these people get all excited and forget that their is something called imperialism, which has been operating for hundreds of years and should be the immediate thought of every true leftist. Some regimes like those with socialist governments must be repressive to some degree because the CIA spends every waking moment trying to devise a method to overthrow them. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the new government in Iran, if it had been elected, would have been just as antagonistic to US imperialism as the previous one. However, I am very, very suspicious because of all the reasons I have mentioned in this article.