The US Keeps Openly Admitting It Deliberately Caused the Iran Protests

By Caitlin Johnstone

Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explicitly stated that the US deliberately caused a financial crisis in Iran with the goal of fomenting civil unrest in the country.

Asked by Senator Katie Britt what more the US can be doing to place pressure on the Ayatollah and Iran, Bessent explained that the Treasury Department has implemented a “strategy” designed to undermine the Iranian currency which crashed the economy and sparked the violent protests we’ve seen throughout the country.

“One thing we could do at Treasury, and what we have done, is created a dollar shortage in the country,” Bessent said. “At a speech at the Economic Club in March I outlined the strategy. It came to a swift and I would say grand culmination in December when one of the largest banks in Iran went under. There was a run on the bank, the central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.”

This is not the first time Bessent has made these admissions. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, the treasury secretary said the following:

“President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division, Office of Foreign Asset Control, to put maximum pressure on Iran. And it’s worked, because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under; the central bank has started to print money. There is dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports, and this is why the people took to the street. So, this is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here.”

Following these remarks, Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Farres wrote the following for Common Dreams:

“What Secretary Bessent describes is of course not ‘economic statecraft’ in a traditional sense. It is war conducted by economic means, all designed to produce an economic crisis and social unrest leading to a fall of the government. This is proudly hailed as ‘economic statecraft.’

“The human suffering caused by outright war and crushing economic sanctions is not so different as one might think. Economic collapse produces shortages of food, medicine, and fuel, while also destroying savings, pensions, wages, and public services. Deliberate economic collapse drives people into poverty, malnutrition, and premature death, just as outright war does.”

Bessent laid out these plans in advance at the Economic Club of New York back in March of last year, saying the following:

“Last month, the White House announced its maximum pressure campaign on Iran designed to collapse its already buckling economy. The Iranian economy is in disarray; 35% official inflation, has a currency that has depreciated 60% in the last 12 months, and an ongoing energy crisis. I know a few things about currency devaluations, and if I were an Iranian, I would get all of my money out of the Rial now.

“This precarious state exists before our Maximum Pressure campaign, designed to collapse Iranian oil exports from the current 1.5–1.6 million barrels per day, back to the trickle they were when President Trump left office.

“Iran has developed a complex shadow network of financial facilitators and black-market oil shippers via a ghost fleet to sell oil, petrochemical and other commodities to finance its exports and generate hard currency.

“As such, we have elevated a sanctions campaign against this export infrastructure, targeting all stages of Iran’s oil supply chain. We have coupled this with vigorous government engagement and private sector outreach.

“We will close off Iran’s access to the international financial system by targeting regional parties that facilitate the transfer of its revenues. Treasury is prepared to engage in frank discussions with these countries. We are going to shut down Iran’s oil sector and drone manufacturing capabilities.

“We have predetermined benchmarks and timelines. Making Iran Broke Again will mark the beginning of our updated sanctions policy. Watch this space.”

The US has been orchestrating plans to foment unrest in Iran by causing economic strife for years. In 2019 Trump’s previous secretary of state Mike Pompeo openly acknowledged that the goal of Washington’s economic warfare against Iran was to make the population so miserable that they “change the government”, cheerfully citing the “economic distress” the nation had been placed under by US sanctions.

As unrest tore through Iran last month, Trump egged protesters on and encouraged them to escalate, saying “To all Iranian patriots, keep protesting, take over your institutions, if possible, and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you,” adding, “all I say to them is help is on its way.”

Deliberately trying to ignite a civil war in a country by immiserating its population so severely that they start attacking their own government out of sheer desperation is one of the most evil things you can possibly imagine. But under the western empire it’s just another day. They’re doing it in Iran, and they’ve also aggressively ramped up efforts to do it in Cuba, where the government has just announced it will be rationing oil as the US moves to strangle the island nation into regime change.

A lot of attention is going into the Epstein files right now, and understandably so. But it’s worth noting that nothing in them is as depraved and abusive as what our rulers are doing right out in the open.

–

Only Idiots Believe the War Propaganda about Iran

Sachs om Iran

Iran och kommunisterna

Om protesterna i Iran

Epstein och vår tids centrala politiska insikt

Epstein har gjort det tydligare än någonsin: dagens höger och dess borgerliga kapitalism är mer oförenlig med en de överordnade värdenas konservatism och en andlig traditionalism i allmänhet än den verkliga, historiska vänstern och socialismen.

Ordförande Haz förklarar:

“Unlimited warfare on the global Epstein regime.

Now you know why Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara fought with the intensity, fury and hatred they did.

This shadow regime doesn’t care what you think. It’s ruled by the parasites of humanity – Transatlantic, Jewish, European, Gulf Arab, ex-Soviet dynastic elites.

The real two parties are: the Party of Revolution and the Party of Mammon.

This division transcends cultures, ideologies, and fake ‘politics’.

The entire soul of humanity is at stake.

Cheap comforts, entertainment, and crumbs of luxury distract you from slow death and existential annihilation.

The truth is that you have nothing to lose, but an entire world to win.”

Och i en i ljuset av Epstein litet vidareutvecklad analys:

“In secret, the ruling classes are fascist like Epstein. They believe in eugenics, racialism, and view the majority of humanity as subhuman.

If they had been open about their views, or platformed them in mainstream media or academia, they’d have been overthrown.

So instead, they astroturfed them as ‘edgy’ and ‘anti-establishment’ redpills on anonymous image boards. Making an entire generation adopt openly the secret antihuman ideology of the elites.

They simultaneously funded and bankrolled insane libtards to make leftism absurd and retarded to the majority, propping them up in mainstream institutions to foment the Rightist backlash.

The real red pill was Left-Wing all along.”

D.v.s. den verkliga konservativa revolutionen är nu den enda vägen.

Att konstatera att nästan allt det man genom åren försökt bidra till formuleringen av en kritik mot nu dessutom luktar Epstein. Kan man kanske pedagogiskt förenkla benämningen av det: Epstein-systemet?

Da Free John: The Bodily Sacrifice of Attention

Introductory Talks on Radical Understanding and the Life of Divine Ignorance

The Dawn Horse Press, 1981

Publisher’s Description:

The usual man or woman thinks that Enlightenment is the having of a vision. Enlightenment is the most subtle, or tacit, unspeakable understanding. It is the Bodhicitta, the ultimate Realization of Being, the ultimate Wisdom. On its basis, all kinds of radiant transformation may develop, but the Realization itself is so fundamental, so tacit, so simple, so direct, so obvious, so transcendental, that it is not identified with any phenomenon of experience or knowledge. The means of the transmission of this Realization is an awakened individual, the Spiritual Master, but the Realization is most tacit, perfect, simple, direct, and obvious. When you come to the point of acknowledging the Divine Identity and Condition of manifest existence, then you are Enlightened.

JOB’s Comment:

As I have pointed out before, the titles of Jones’s books are not always – indeed not even normally – easily comprehensible without at least some familiarity with his teachings.

Only Idiots Believe the War Propaganda about Iran

By Caitlin Johnstone

There is nothing you can say to me to convince me that US regime change interventionism in the middle east is a swell idea.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that the Trump administration is telling us the truth about Iran.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that the mass media are telling us the truth about Iran.

There is nothing you can say to convince me the people who just spent two years incinerating Gaza have kind-hearted intentions for the Iranian people.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that protecting Israel is a good and desirable thing that westerners should support.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that the empire-like globe-spanning power alliance that is loosely centralized around Washington should be in charge of our world.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that I should help the US and Israel manufacture consent for a regime change war by criticizing the Iranian government in the middle of a frenzied war propaganda campaign.

It is not okay to be a grown adult in the year 2026 and still believe US regime change interventionism in the middle east will lead to positive outcomes.

It is not okay to live in a post-Iraq invasion world and still not understand that we are being lied to about Iran.

It is not okay to have lived through what these monsters did to Libya and still believe forcibly toppling the Iranian government is a moral and just cause to get behind.

It is not okay to have just watched these freaks turn Gaza into a gravel parking lot pervaded by the smell of rotting corpses and believe they have noble intentions for the people of Iran.

I don’t care if you are making your pro-regime change arguments from a right wing anti-Islam perspective, from a liberal humanitarian pro-democracy perspective, from a left-wing “solidarity with our Persian comrades” perspective, or from an “oppose all tyranny equally” anarchist perspective. Your arguments are shit, and your position is wrong.

The agenda to oust the Iranian government is about dominating the planet in general and the middle east in particular. You might think it’s about something else, but you are wrong. It’s about power and control, and all your fanciful notions about freedom and democracy for the Iranian people will be instantly subordinated to those goals. If this isn’t obvious to you, you’re an idiot.

The goal is not to bring freedom and democracy to the Iranian people. The US and Israel do not permit democracy to thrive in the middle east unless they can control its outcomes, as they are working to do right now in Iraq. The US and Israel are not popular enough in the middle east for the people to be allowed to control their own government.

The goal is to either install a puppet regime in Tehran, or to balkanize the nation into multiple independent states which can be easily controlled, or to plunge the entire state into unmanageable chaos like they did in Libya. None of these plans advance the interests of the Iranian people.

If you support Trump’s regime change agendas in Iran, then you support inflicting this upon the Iranian people. That’s what you get under the best-case scenario. Under the worst-case scenario, you get a hot war between the US and Iran which unleashes horrors you cannot possibly imagine. It will make the Iraq invasion and all the fallout therefrom look like an episode of Spongebob.

There is nothing you can say to me to cause me to support this. Call me a traitor. Call me a dictator lover. Call me an antisemite. Tell me all you want to tell me about how mean and bad Iran’s leadership is. I won’t care. I will dismiss you, because you are my enemy.

Anyone who supports war with Iran is my enemy. Anyone who would want to inflict such horrors upon the human species is an enemy of humanity.

I promise I will not be moved on this. I like to keep an open mind, as the saying goes, but not so open my brain falls out.

–

Sachs om Iran

Iran och kommunisterna

Om protesterna i Iran

Sachs om Iran

Den nödvändige, alltid lysande Jeffrey Sachs intervjuas av likaledes nödvändige George Galloway.

Om Iran, men inte enbart. På en dryg halvtimme hinner förbluffande många meningsfulla, med Irankrisen sammanhängande analytiska kommentarer göras om Trumpregimen i allmänhet, Europaförfallet, atlanticismens nu nästan totala kriminalitet, Gaza, Ukraina, FN, atomvärldskrig, t.o.m. Sverige, och historiska perspektiv ges på varje punkt.

“The Doomsday Clock is 85 seconds to midnight. Professor Jeffrey Sachs on the countdown to oblivion. Trump will attack Iran unless the rest of the world says no. Israel has always wanted this big one. Billionaires rule the White House.”

Missa f.ö. ingen av de intervjuer Max Blumenthal dag efter dag ger om Iransituationen.