News - World: A new report has revealed that the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) privately plotted to direct government resources into an anti-Iran campaign established after 2022 foreign-backed riots.

Citing leaked documents and emails, The Grayzone news website reported Thursday that the NED had tried to channel US State Department resources into the so-called Iran Freedom Coalition.

The coalition, that is composed of pro-Western Iranian figures and warmongering US neoconservative operatives, represents a clear attempt to impose an “exiled leadership” over anti-Iran opposition, the report added.

It further said that the initiative against the Islamic Republic was spearheaded by Carl Gershman, the longtime director of the NED, which is considered Washington’s regime-change arm or the CIA spy agency in disguise.

“Regardless of the listed members’ level of participation, the composition of Gershman’s proposed Iran Freedom Coalition demonstrates how Iran’s self-proclaimed pro-democracy movement has become a plaything for the Bomb Iran lobby,” it said.

“Among those handpicked by Gershman to lead the initiative was William Kristol, the neocon impresario who has led a decades-long lobbying campaign for a US military invasion of Iran. Also selected was Joshua Muravchik, a flamboyant supporter of Israel’s Likud Party who insists that ‘war with Iran is probably our best option.’”

The report also said that the anti-Iran campaign’s Iranian members consist heavily of US government-sponsored cultural figures and staffers at interventionist Western think tanks like the Tony Blair Institute. 

"As Gershman’s leaked proposal illustrates, these elements quickly hijacked the protests, inserting US government-sponsored exiles as the movement’s international face and voice, thus ensuring that their ultimate effect would be a deepening of US sanctions on average Iranians," adds the report. 

The Foreign-sponsored riots broke out in Iran in September 2022, when 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini died in a hospital in the capital Tehran, three days after she collapsed at a police station.

The findings of an investigation into her death later attributed the tragic incident to Amini’s pre-existing medical condition, debunking claims that she was beaten by the police.

Rioters, nonetheless, went on rampage across the country, causing massive material damage to public property and, in some cases, lynching security forces as well as civilians whom they regarded as supporters of the Islamic establishment.

Iran’s intelligence community said several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, used their spy and propaganda apparatuses to provoke unrest in the country.

Source: Press TV