Iran's Ayatollah Cheers for "Occupy Wall Street"

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has been supported by many, yet criticized by many as well. How does one cover such a controversial issue that runs this deep and when it is this controversial? It is easy enough to find some sympathy for much of the movement’s aims. There are far fewer jobs than there are applicants, inequality seems to be forever widening out, and America’s future is nowhere near as bright as what Warren Buffett would like you to believe with his historic references that are about as relevant as gold to a dead man. The other side of the coin is that it is still a difficult challenge in determining exactly what Occupy Wall Street really is aiming for in any unified message or unified goal.

Now this movement is going to have to try to distance itself from an unwanted (and uncounted) friend: IRAN! … All you have to do is read what will be in the print edition of the Tehran Times on Thursday, October 13, 2011 titled, “Wall St. demos are shaking capitalist system.” Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said that the capitalist system “has reached an impasse and the protests on Wall Street have set a crisis in motion in the West.”

Khamenei noted that the U.S. government will not be able to eliminate this movement’s roots and that the realities of the capitalist system should be a lesson for those following the Western capitalist system. He even went on to say, “The roots of this movement will grow in such a way that will knock the U.S. and Western capitalist system to the ground. … The people of the United States are protesting the rule of the 1 percent minority over the 99 percent majority who have spent the money and taxes paid by the people of the United States on waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporting the Zionist regime.”

We have been following the Occupy Wall Street movement from a distance. Again, some of the points are easy to sympathize with. Wall St. and big business did not exactly act as the greatest supervision before, during and after the financial carnage that would have taken down the system had it not been for the bailouts. Greed truly was unregulated. The problem that no one wants to address, the elephant in the room, is that Joe Public acted without logic and without a conscience when it came to buying too much car, buying too much house, buying a second house by borrowing against their first house, carrying massive credit card balances with the minimum payments financed by phantom home equity and on and on.

Khamenei is going to be hard for anyone in the West to really understand, and he certainly is not going to be a welcomed voice to anyone trying to get their message across. He called the Iranian nation a “model for recent developments in the region” before encouraging the Iranian voters to turn out in large numbers next March and said the law must be upheld and also that “the votes of the people should be respected.”

If you are expecting that this will be an attempt to tie Occupy Wall Street to Iran, it is not. Far from it. It does seem likely that Occupy Wall Street will want to distance itself from any “Iranian leadership support” and will certainly want to distance any of the Zionist remarks even harder.

Iran wants a world voice. The latest economic data we saw on Iran was also noted in the Tehran Times last month noting that unemployment was 13.5% in the previous year. The Economist projected an increase in unemployment to 14.1% and the publication noted local projections are calling for Iranian unemployment to fall to 11% in the current calendar year. With far higher unemployment and far higher inflation, Iran can hardly be considered a model. That is particularly true if you measure unemployment among the young Iranian adults and the women. Many think that the U.S. Labor Department data is often fudged on the nice side, so how many think that perhaps Iran is painting a better portrait than reality?

Occupy Wall Street noted itself as being “Inspired by the popular assemblies of Egypt, Spain, Oaxaca and worldwide, those gathered will work to find a common voice in one clear, unified demand.”  At the bottom of its website it even goes on to say “this site was brought to you by various radicals.”

We would expect that certain individuals inside the Occupy Wall Street movement will try to distance it from any praise or any comments from anyone tied to Iran’s leadership.

To be continued …

JON C. OGG