Secrets of CIA's Color Revolutions for Regime Change

From Iran in 1953 to Ukraine in 2014 to Bangladesh in 2024

Ousted! Prime Minister of a country with 170 million people fled the country after continued protests by students. Who believes this childish narrative?

I unravel what really happened in Bangladesh in this podcast, with details and history of American regime-change operations. You can watch the video below or read the transcript below:

Transcript:

Iran to Bangladesh – Understanding American Color Revolutions & Regime-Change Operations

“Moscow accuses Washington of planning a post-election Arab Spring in Bangladesh” – Dec 2023.

“The US wants Saint Martin Island [of Bangladesh]. They also want Bangladesh to join the QUAD – the anti-China alliance” – Aug 2023

“The US can overturn the government of any nation” – Prime Minister Hasina in April 2023

What happened in Bangladesh will have tremendous repercussions in geopolitics for India and China. It’s also crucial that people – especially in developing nations – understand the secrets of color revolutions, which subvert and change the destiny of nations.

The ouster of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Hasina is very bad news for India for a myriad of reasons:

1) A friendly neighbor is going to turn into an adversary. India’s national security interests and regional influence are now being greatly threatened.

2) The Indian nationalists’ dream of Akhand Bharat was just shattered.

3) US-India relations are going to suffer a lot, since the US overthrew a pro-India government in Bangladesh and replaced it with a group that has been traditionally anti-India and anti-Hindu. Plus, another key player in the new regime is Jamaat-e-Islami, which is considered a terrorist group by India, Russia and many others.

The US has sent a clear message to India — “We are not true allies. Our interests are not fully aligned.”

As for the US empire, this coup is a huge victory, since it can now project power in South Asia. More importantly, it can contain China’s influence in Bangladesh as well as in the neighboring Myanmar.

Remember that the US wants “full-spectrum dominance.” And if you look at the world map, the one region where there are no US military bases is the Bay of Bengal region.

This region of South Asia was very poor, so the US ignored it for a long time. Now, there are three reasons why India needs to gain a foothold here:

1) India is rising rapidly – it will surpass Japan and Germany in the next five years, in terms of GDP.

2) China has been getting too influential here.

3) China has been planning two escape routes for trade in Pakistan and Myanmar. These routes will be crucial if there is a US-China war, and the US blocks the Malacca Strait through which much of Chinese exports and imports pass through.

Ideally, the US would have liked to have new military bases in the Andaman-Nicobar Islands, which belong to India. However, since India refuses to allow foreign military bases on its soil, the US decided to go after the St. Martin Islands, which belong to Bangladesh.

In the near future, Bangladesh will likely get closer to Pakistan. And here’s why this is significant:

Bangladesh got its independence from Pakistan in 1971… with the help of India. Now, that will be reversed to some extent.

Thus, the two client states of the US can squeeze India from both sides. The US will be able to contain India in the future, if Indians become too independent.

Remember how just a month ago, the US ambassador to India warned that India should not try to have strategic autonomy? Now, the Americans are backing up their words with actions.

Going back to the beginning of the podcast, the shocking quotes you heard about the warnings reveal that anyone can think clearly … fully understood that the country was being targeted by the US for a regime change.

However, most people on social media now – even some smart people like George Galloway – do not realize what happened.

This is because of the clever narrative like “oppressed people rose up in a revolution and overthrew a dictator.”

Who doesn’t like such a heart-warming story? This is the Disney version of geopolitics for the masses.

By the way, there is no country in the world where a bunch of students can simply riot and replace their leader. A regime change cannot be accomplished without the blessing of the police, military and media at the highest levels. And that requires enormous sophistication and vast sums of money.

As for the US spreading democracy in Bangladesh or anywhere else, take a listen to a former CIA agent:

So, we will explain what color revolutions are, how they are carried out, by who, and the history of this sophisticated imperialist tool. And we will go into the details of the American coup in Bangladesh.

First US-led Color Revolution

What happened in Bangladesh followed the same playbook as we saw in the successful coups in Sri Lanka in 2022 and Ukraine in 2014.

However, the first American color revolution was in 1953! And it happened in Iran.

Here’s what happened. Until 1951, the British owned the entire oil sector in Iran, and kept most of the profits. Then, Iran had a popular, democratically elected leader, Mossadegh, who demanded a better deal from the Brits.

When they refused, Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry. “Iran’s oil belongs to Iranians,” he claimed! That’s when the British wanted to get rid of him.

However, Britain was very weak at that time – having lost most of its colonies after WW2. Thus, it sought the help of the CIA, which said,

“I will help you as long as you share the oil with US corporations after the coup.” The British agreed.

The main CIA guy in Tehran at that time was the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, former US President. His plan was simple: bribe everyone and then hire a mob.

So, he went around with suitcases full of dollars and literally bought the top military and police chiefs, plus even the clergies. Then he hired thousands of people to protest and riot. The mobs burned down several government buildings; and the pro-Shah police even joined the mob.

Soon, Mossadegh resigned. He was then arrested and sent to jail for a few years and then was placed in a house arrest for the rest of his life.

The democratic leader was replaced by a dictator, the Shah, who was a puppet for the US.

What happened in Bangladesh was almost an exact replica of this playbook in Iran. In fact, most color revolutions follow this formula.

Take Ukraine, which experienced not one but two, color revolutions. In 2004, when a pro-Russia candidate won the election, grassroots -- funded with tens of millions of dollars from George Soros -- had organized massive protests and demanded a re-election. Of course, the pro-US candidate narrowly won the second election.

Then, in 2014, the US organized the infamous Maidan Coup slash revolution, when neo-Nazis and snipers helped overthrow the democratically elected leader, Yanukovych.

Victoria Nuland bragged in 2014 that the US State Department had spent $5 billion to spread democracy in Ukraine. George Soros’ Open Society also revealed in its annual reports that it had spent billions of dollars in Ukraine.

All this money was, of course, to brainwash Ukrainians into hating Russia so that they would fight on behalf of the American empire.

By the way, if the government is too popular, then the US-funded protests will get more and more violent. We saw this in Hong Kong, for example, 5 years ago. And the US media will continue to lie about “peaceful protests” and “brutal government” regardless of the truth.

In some cases, the US will even transform the color revolution into a full-blown civil war, as it happened in Syria.

In 2011, the US orchestrated the violent protests in Syria. When that failed, the US worked with Syria’s neighbors to send in 150,000 Islamist jihadists into Syria and armed them with powerful weapons such as rockets, mortars, shoulder-powered missiles etc.

And the deep state will spread all sorts of malicious lies such as President Assad using chemical weapons.

Note that, if it were truly organic protests against a US-friendly government, then the Western media will completely IGNORE the protests – like it happened with the Yellow Jackets in France.

Now, interestingly, although the 1953 coup in Iran was a great success story, the color revolution was not adopted as a key strategy for another three decades.

Cold War Era

During the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the US empire’s key strategies for getting rid of unfriendly governments around the world involved more brutal ways – such as assassinations or military coups. They were justified as tools to fight communism.

In many countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, the US would simply bribe a corrupt and ruthless military general and make him the leader of the country. Examples include Chile, Argentina, Indonesia and dozens more.

Sometimes, as in Panama, Ecuador, Congo etc., the CIA simply assassinated the leaders.

Invasion by the US military became the last choice, since the Korean and Vietnam Wars were huge failures for the US Empire.

New Strategy of Color Revolutions

In the mid-1980s, the US came up with a different strategy for overthrowing governments around the world. This was to overthrow foreign governments, while making it look like a popular uprising of the people, rather than it being an American operation.

This has been a very clever and successful strategy.

While many of the projects are long-term and more sophisticated – as we will discuss soon – some of the projects are plainly about training young people on how to overthrow their governments!

Here is a BBC documentary from a decade ago on what the reporter describes as the “School for Revolution.” This was the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway. Listen to it:

It started with the creation of the National Endowment of Democracy or the NED in 1983. Soon, the NED created other subsidiaries such as the NDI and IRI. Now, we have dozens of such alphabet soups, but they all have the same purpose.

In 1991, Alan Weinstein – the founder of the NED – admitted in an interview: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

In 1993, billionaire George Soros joined this scam. Since that time, his group Open Society Foundations has spent almost $20 billion on “civil societies.” How does Soros benefit?

When a government is overthrown, Soros gets to choose the new leaders and economic policies. Then, in the name of privatization, the countries will sell their assets for pennies on the dollar to Soros-controlled hedge funds and corporations.

The modus operandi of all these groups is to fund the so-called NGO’s all over the world. The term NGO stands for Non-Governmental Organization, but they are all funded by American and European governments! How Orwellian.

The NGOs all sound very noble and philanthropic – they focus on democracy, freedom, justice, human rights, minorities, independent media, free market etc.

Here is an example for an NED project in Bangladesh: $900,000 for Bolstering Inclusive Democratic Engagement and Networking.

Thus, these NGOs and their projects are all about Western propaganda and fueling opposition to an existing government. You would not find many NGOs in countries that are friendly to the US.

These NGOs or civil society groups recruit and train young people on various skills that would be useful to overthrow governments – for example, journalism, social media influence, legal skills etc. The most talented ones get scholarships to study in the West.

In Bangladesh, the NED and other groups gave millions of dollars to the political science department of Dhaka University. There, most professors get their Ph.D. from the US. UK or Canada. After getting brainwashed in neoliberalism and the American way, they come back and brainwash the young students in Bangladesh.

The brightest students will get paid to work in the NGOs. So, imagine one of these Bangladeshi college students getting $200 a month. That’s probably his father’s salary!

So, this kid will work very hard to spread the American ideals, recruit other students, organize protests etc.

While groups like NED are open about their fundings, many other private organizations do not reveal their work. Thus, when the country of Georgia tried to pass a law that would force the NGOs to reveal their sources of funding, the US and the EU staged massive protests.

Think about the irony. The groups that scream about transparency do not want to be transparent about their own financial dealings. So corrupt!

Another key factor for the success of these dark groups is that the NGO graduates are groomed and kept in touch for years through alumni associations.

Many of these NGO graduates go on to join the ruling class in their countries, and they transform into informal ambassadors for the US and spokespeople for neoliberalism.

Take Yunus, the new leader of the interim government in Bangladesh. He got the Fulbright scholarship to study in the US back in the 1970s.

Yunus was such a perfect student that he went on to develop strong relations with Western elites such as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and Tony Blair. Yunus even got the Nobel Prize for peace and the Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest civilian award of the United States.

Wikileaks emails show that he went to the US Embassy in Calcutta (India) in 2007 and discussed his plans to run to be the leader of Bangladesh. That did not pan out, but now he became the leader just two days after the coup!

The role of US media and social media

The US media and social media play a pivotal role in color revolutions.

All the mainstream media repeat the same, childish narratives like programmed robots. They all pretend to be monkeys who see no evil or conspiracy. It’s all about noble America trying to dethrone a dictator in a country far-far away and spread freedom and democracy!

When US officials openly collude with the opposition teams and protesters, it’s portrayed as a valiant, benevolent effort. John McCain and Victoria Nuland go to Kiev to give speeches and encourage the protesters? How wonderful.

Of course, the US would not allow Russian, Chinese, Indian or French officials to come to the US and encourage Trump protesters. That would be subversion! Those people will get sanctioned or probably even arrested on national security grounds.

As for the American social media, they are all infiltrated by former US deep state employes – from the CIA, FBI, NSA, DNI, DHS etc.

And as Twitter Files revealed, US government agencies had regular conference calls with Twitter about what and who to censor. These agencies also have backdoors to Facebook, Instagram etc., so the spooks can directly ban people without asking the social media company. Others like Google were born out of relations with CIA and NSA, and thus need no coercion to manipulate information on search engines, YouTube etc.

The social media play a crucial role in color revolutions by boosting the right message and the right people, while censoring or throttling down the people and messages who are against the regime change.

Then, there is Wikipedia, which pretends to be open-sourced but tightly controls information on key geopolitical matters.

Censorship is a multibillion-dollar industry in the US. The powers that be spread misinformation and disinformation, while banning truths.

In summary, the thought police control the narratives and opinions of the people not only in the targeted country but all over the world.

Conclusion

Every person in a developing nation should be aware of how color revolutions work. Else, they will naively end up supporting regime change in their own country.

And most of the time, the color revolutions do not help the country, which simply ends up as a vassal of the Western empires. Look at Ukraine, which is being devastated by war. The country has no future because it foolishly fell for the lies and deceptions of US-led color revolutions.

Let’s see if Bangladesh goes down the suicidal path, thanks to the new puppet regime.

— S.L. Kanthan