This video, created by InfoWars raises important questions about the Obama Administration’s Iran Deal and John Kerry’s recent violation of the Logan Act, when he met with Iranian officials in back-channel talks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused Kerry of “actively undermining” the Trump Administration’s policy toward Tehran.
The video has gone viral in Iran among those who oppose the theocratic regime, in a hashtag movement called #Restart. The movement was founded by Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, an Iranian political refugee living in the US who was a previously a popular game show host on the Iranian state TV network, IRIB.
#Retstart claims to be the largest opposition group against Iran’s Islamic Republic regime, with 20 million followers worldwide. It is very likely that this movement has the support of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Trump Administration.
The narration refers to the Charter of the Rights of Nations of 583 BC, which espoused the Democratic principle of rulership by consent of the governed that was established by the founder of the first Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great. The charter was memorialized in Akkadian cuneiform script on the Cyrus Cylinder and discovered in 1879 by Assyrian archeologist Hormuzd Rassam at the site of the ancient city of Babylon, 85 miles south of modern-day Baghdad.
The cylinder was found buried in a time capsule left by the Persian conquerors of Babylon led by Cyrus. The British Museum had sponsored the archeological expedition and that is where the cylinder currently resides. The Museum’s Director, Neil MacGregor described the cylinder as “the first attempt we know about running a society, a state with different nationalities and faiths – a new kind of statecraft”.
For the first time in known history, Cyrus established an empire as large as the continental United States with beautiful art, an orderly government, a robust network of safe roads and communications, enabling vigorous trade. The aggregate of these were equaled only by the zenith of Imperial Rome before modern times. Cyrus guaranteed the religious freedom of his subjects and did not force conversion to his Zoroastrian faith. The Greeks and later the Romans adopted the best features of this Persian method of governing an empire.
A millennium later in the 7th century AD, the Persian Empire succumbed to the Rashidun Caliphate of Arabia and the strict Shariah Law that is intolerant of other faiths. The video even-handedly describes Iran’s subsequent struggles with the Russians, the English, British Petroleum and the CIA and it explains the positives and negatives of the Pahlavi Dynasty.
One Iranian commenter on the YouTube video page which has since been taken down posted: “Long Live #Restart! Don’t let Rothschild print your money. Print your own money and stay free.”
