In the New York Times, Robert F. Worth mocks Tehran’s latest effort to claim responsibility for the Arab Spring:
The conference was widely reported in the Iranian news media, and posters bearing the words “Islamic Awakening” were plastered on walls near the conference hall. They were met in some Tehran quarters with dismissive sarcasm. One popular text message, circulated widely on cellphones around the capital, went: “If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, don’t worry: it’s not the high prices, poverty, or unemployment. You are suffering from Islamic Awakening.”
Worth also notes:
During a news conference with Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a Jordanian reporter asked how to tell a real revolution from a foreign conspiracy, in a tone that seemed almost tongue in cheek.
“Good question,” Mr. Velayati said. The answer was simple: “One of them favors the United States and the Zionists, and the other is against it.”
The question that Tehran and other “Arab Spring” cheerleaders have studiously ignored, however, is this: If the so-called “Islamic Awakening” is against the United States and the Zionists, why have so many staunch supporters of Israel such as Carl Gershman, Kenneth Wollack and Robert Kagan been in the vanguard of “democracy promotion” throughout the Middle East, including in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt which had U.S.-backed dictators?