July 8, 2009
Posted: 2:32 am
July 8, 2009

The New York Post

AFTER weeks of efforts to find someone to blame for the post-election insurrec tion, the Khomeinist regime in Tehran has finally found the ideal culprits: Liz Cheney and George Soros.

Never mind that the financier and Dick Cheney's daughter are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Tehran propaganda says that they joined to set millions of Iranians marching against the Khomeinist regime.

A series of "exposes" published by the official Islamic Republic News Agency tells us that this supposed international conspiracy (involving the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France) started eight years ago with the aim of toppling the Khomeinist regime.

Tehran's bizarre narrative goes something like this: During the Bush administration, "the neocons" persuaded the president to "green light" efforts to topple the regime. Somehow, Washington enlisted the support of "world Freemasonry," which, acting through the so-called Bilderburg Group, managed to persuade Iran's then-President Muhammad Khatami to join secret efforts to "turn Iran into a secular state."

Then, the tale goes, Soros and several US think tanks started sending their agents to Iran to recruit and train operatives for regime change. And the Bush administration created a special Iran center in Dubai, modeled on the Riga Center that Washington set up to subvert the Soviet Union in the 1930s. With Liz Cheney as the supposed coordinator, the plot supposedly soon won the support of several European countries.

The authorities in Tehran, we're told, arrested a number of US agents who confessed their "criminal missions" on TV. But all were freed because no one in Iran could imagine how successful the plot had been in recruiting large numbers of activists.

The IRNA reports name scores of prominent Iranians, including many former senior regime officials, as "figures involved in the re- gime-change plot." Many are already under arrest; others have fled into exile. Also accused are Mir Hussein Mousavi and Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, two of the defeated candidates in the June 12 presidential election -- indicating the regime's determination to move against them at some point.

Indeed, the reports implicate almost all Iranian political groups and parties in the alleged plot, sparing only supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That is, the regime's own propaganda suggests that a majority of Iranians oppose Khomeinism -- to the point of collaborating with foreign powers against it.

Since the election, some 80 people have been executed on trumped-up charges, often without a proper trial. Another 4,000 -- including hundreds of writers, academics, industrial workers, students and former officials -- are under arrest.

The regime's most radical faction may be using the conspiracy claims to prepare public opinion for Stalinist-style show trials. Its chief mouthpiece, the daily newspaper Kayhan, has already called for "the speedy punishment of the enemies of Islam" as part of a purge to "cleanse our revolution."

Amir Taheri's latest book is "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution."