The tomb of a forgotten maverick American who fought for Iran's Freedom and its Constitutional Revolution was covered, today and as like as precedent years, with flowers deposed by dozens of Iranians. "Howard Baskerville" was a young American Missionary who helped the Iranian revolutionaries, 100 years ago, in order to fight for their basic rights despite the objection of the then US Administration.yesterday, the United States hailed the 1906 Iran's constitutional revolution, as "a defining but short-lived advance toward democracy, and voiced support for Iranians it said who still hoped for an open society."
"Iranian nationalists set forth a powerful and revolutionary concept: a written constitution founded on the rule of fair and just laws, providing for a free press and respect for individual rights," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement released Friday.
"..This short-lived but noble constitutional movement was a significant victory for Iranian democracy and for the cause of freedom in the Middle East..."
"...The United States supports the aspirations of the Iranian people for an open society that encourages debate, allows for freedom of the press, champions human dignity and ensures justice, the rule of law and government accountability," he added.
Baskerville helped forming the Constitutionalist Militia in the northern City of Tabriz, cradle of the revolution, and fought against governmental troops in order to defend the city. He will fall while defending the walls of Tabriz but his bravery will galvanize the Iranian detachment placed under his command. The Iranian 1906 Constitutional Revolution will ultimately win over the forces of oligarchy and repression and will seize, later, the Iranian Capital.
The movement, which was an unprecedented vanguard modernist trend in Asia, paved the way for the establishment of Nationalist, Secularist and Democratic principles in Iran. It forced the then corrupt Qadjar Dynasty to recognize the National Sovereignty and the role of Iran's National Assembly.
The Constitutional Revolution was always subject to sharp criticism and animosity by the dogmatic Islamist clerics, who were considering it as a threat to their backwarded ideology and economic interests. Also various groups, such as the Marxist-Islamist MKO, today self naming itself as the so-called National Council of Resistance, (see various links posted in this article) and all far left groups were echoing the mullahs' stands as they were opposed to the movement's liberal and humanistic principles. Such dark coalition, helped by controversial individuals, such as Mehdi Bazargan and Karim Sanjabi of the so-called Iran National Front, will result in the Islamist revolution of 1979 and the cancellation of most positive laws and social actions generated by the 1906 move.
MKO and some so-called Islamic reformists or Islamic pragmatists have started, very recently, to try to surf the secularist and nationalist popular aspirations and are claiming to have adopted the 1906 movement's principles. Such claim is being made while these groups are very careful, in a Stalinian type behavior, to hide their past blinded and negative opposition.
Another but meaningless group, promoted by some American think tanks, which are desperate of any kind of Iran solution, is the so-called Azari separatist movement. The small group has a hard time to justify how the City of Tabriz, that they qualify as their future capital, was the fortress of Iran's modern time nationalist movement, and how prominent and icon Iranian-Azaris, such as Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan -leaders of the 1906 revolution - were seen raising Iran's "Lion & Sun Flag".
One of the notorious fascist and genocidal leaders of such group, named "Rahim Shahbazi", was recently admitted to the White House in the frame of a panel named "Forum on the Future of Iran". Shabazi's astonishing presence was due to the believed negative influence exerted by Michael Ledeen who's at the WCD based American Enterprise Institute.
While the meeting could have lead to a positive move, It generated sharp critics made by most Iranians and especially by Iranian-Azaris due to the careless presence of individuals, such as, Shahbazi. The meeting is believed to have been inspired by the January 27, 2005, SMCCDI's suggestion made to President Bush, (see section 5 of the letter), and which was, reiterated several times, in other public letters to addressed to other US officials.
It has ben reported that Mr. Ledeen and some of his friends are actively trying to undermine genuine Iranian opposition groups known for having protested against some of their past negative actions. Instead controversial or docile rejected elements are selected in order to reflect their wrong policies and to be promoted as "leaders" of various layers of the Iranian society.
Some of Shahbazi's hate and racist comments can be found on Google: http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/49f0e75d28ce0dc2
The latter calls for an ethnical cleansing and the murder of Persians and Armenian in some of his other posting: http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/browse_thread/thread/9a1e863e8f328a9c/73cffc274db93de6?lnk=st&q=Rahim+Shahbazi+fuck+persian&rnum=3
Such wrong policies, by Mr. Ledeen's like, and Shabazi type messages are making the task, much harder, for those believing in the genuine positive impact of America on the Iranian and Middle-Eastern issues.
