Here is guest poster doga’s response to recent events in Iran. He warns of possible hidden motives in the West’s support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi, asking why the West has been quick to champion a man who is part of the same system they have so long criticized?

It’s clear that the reactions of Iranian society to the events of recent weeks, and to the pressures these events have placed on them, haven’t followed a clear logic either in favor of the individual or in favor of the Iranian authorities. It’s true that there has been violence against the demonstrators, but there has also been a destruction of private property which the police are responsible for protecting. For this reason, whether we are for these demonstrations or against them, if we are sincere we mustn’t betray our belief in the liberating and pacifying potential of reason and communication.

Before these events the West had the greatest difficulty in understanding the Iranian people, their way of thinking and their view of the world, and the Western media put their energies into perpetuating a distorted image such as the one presented in the American film Not Without My Daughter—but now all of a sudden everything is reversed, and the majority of Iranians are progressives who support the open, liberal vision of the reformer Mousavi. But are Mousavi’s ideas really as friendly to the West as they seem?

We need to remember that Mousavi is part of the overall Iranian system, even if he now claims that if he had succeeded in the presidential elections, the Revolutionary Guard would have launched a coup against him! We mustn’t forget that in the early days of the revolution he was the editor of the official journal of the Islamic Republican Party, then foreign minister and finally prime minister from 1981–1989 under the presidency of Ali Khomeini, who is none other than the current Supreme Leader of the Revolution, the highest post in the republic. Mousavi chose not to run for the presidency in 1997 when his reformist ally Mohammed Khatami was elected and then reelected by a significant margin, which goes to show that the reformers are part of the Islamic system and have been playing a direct role in it for years, even though the Islamic revolution is only 30 years old! That is why in normal circumstances the West would not support Mousavi today even with words, simply because he doesn’t share their values and goals.

We can say that the West is more against Ahmadinejad than it is for Mousavi. Indeed it is against the system in general and for civil disorder, for well-known reasons. It is hardly obvious that Western call for liberty and for demonstrations, mixed with the indirect call for an uprising against the Iranian system, is in the best interests of the Iranian people, who in my view are an open and tolerant people despite the stereotypic image we see in the media.

In my opinion we need to be vigilant if we want to understand objectively what is currently happening in Iran, because there is always the possibility of hidden interests that want to manipulate the system to their own private ends. We may agree with someone who tells us that gambling destroys the social life of the people, but never with someone who loses everything in the casino and then tells us the same thing!