Let me begin my saying that I did not follow the campaigns of the four contenders to the post of President of Iran very closely. Nor did I carefully scrutinize their electoral platform. I did have a vague preference for anyone the West would consider a “moderate” (an utterly nonsensical concept) if only because it would make a military aggression on Iran by Israel and/or the USA harder to sell, and therefore (very) marginally less likely.
As for Ahmadinejad, I had carefully read his speeches, I listened to several of his interviews, I saw the full videos his speeches in the USA, (at the UN and in Columbia U) and I basically liked him. He is very smart, his arguments are always well thought through, and I like his calm but firm stance towards the constant US and Israeli sabre rattling. But Ahmadinejad has a huge drawback: he is not photogenic (a key factor for the Western public) and some of his statements can be easily distorted to paint him as a raving lunatic. In other words, Ahmadinejad is a good target for the Zionist press and that is why I had personally hoped that a guy like Ali Larijani would become the next President.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I was generally leaning towards a change of faces in the Iranian Presidency, and if the new face was a “reformer” (another stupid concept, but hey – if they like it, let’s give them what they want, no?).
And then this:
Ahmadinejad wins by a landslide and Mousawi declares the elections “stolen” and riots break out.
Considering the current situation in Iran and, even more so, around Iran, Mousawi’s attitude is worse than irresponsible, it smacks of outright treason, if you ask me.
First, he is insulting our collective intelligence when he speaks of fraud. Yes, fraud can happen anywhere, including Iran, but not with the following figures:
The final results of Iran’s closely-contested 10th presidential election indicate that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide victory.
According to Press TV, of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent), Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent).
These are figures which are impossible to create by fraud, that is obvious. Dubya could steal the elections from Gore with a couple of hundred of votes, yes, but he simply could not have done so if Gore and received almost the double number of votes. No election rigging technique allows that kind of thing. If that is what a regime wants to do, then it simply cancels the elections, period.
Also keep in mind that the post of President holds no real power in Iran to begin with. Why bother with fraud?
No, the fraud accusation is an insult to everybody’s intelligence. Either that or, which is far more likely, it is a carefully orchestrated destabilization operation against Iran. I say that this is the latter.
Mousavi is no idiot for sure (check out his resume here), and since he is not an idiot, he must know that he lost this election and that, in fact, Ahmadinejad won by an un-fakable landslide. Still, he choose the destablilize his own country at a moment when that country is facing a possible military agression from abroad. What does that tell you about Mousavi? It tells me that he is objectively the tool of yet another US backed destabilization campaign. It matters little whether Mousavi himself is a paid CIA agent, or whether his entourage is carefully using his ego to push him towards the kind of action he has taken now. The bottom line is still that Mousavi is now hurting his country and helping to destabilize it.
And that brings another question to my mind, and that question is a scary one: how could the Guardian Council ever approve Mousavi when it clearly turns out that he is precisely the kind of candidate which should should have been carefully vetted (and rejected!) by this body?!
I don’t think that this Mousavi thing is going anywhere. Both the vast majority of Iranians and the entire power structure of the government will never let him destabilize the country. Sure, the Western press will constantly remind us that “Ahmadinejad stole the election”, but it’s not like Ahmadinejad was ever popular with the Zionist press corps, or like anybody in Iran really cares.
But the ability of the Iranian Vilayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists) system to vet presidential candidates is now clearly in doubt. Sure, Mousavi probably had impeccable Muslim credentials, but why 12 members of the Guardian Council were not informed of his character and inclinations is rather puzzling for me. Either that, or they did know, but could do nothing to prevent him from running. In either case, this entire business seems to show that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not as impermeable to destabilization operations as one might have thought.
Why do you think the figures make any claim of foul play impossible? For me it is just the contrary: the campaign was so tight, that this wide margin is unbelievable.
I’m not impressed by what our media or politicians may say, because they rarely say the truth. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to swallow what the Iranian leadership says. Had Ahmadinejad won for a few points, I’d be inclined to believe it. But by such a wide margin…
There is no possible comparison with the Bush/Gore election. In fact Gore did win. But as we all know the Florida polls were rigged, and the peculiar American casino system allows a candidate with fewer national popular votes to win the election. But Bush didn’t even win properly Florida: it was a judge who decided to give him the victory by ordering to stop recounting, when Bush even in Florida was losing.
In Iran they didn’t get so far. It was decided Ahmadinejad won, and that is it. And to be sure by an incredible wide margin!
The dangerous situation now there is that this president will lack of legitimacy. And the future looks uncertain. I hope the Iranians can work this out in a positive way, but I’m afraid civil strife will follow.
This is the best that could happen for Israel. They keep their bogeyman in place. And Iran emerges discredited, after an amazing campaign for its democratic ways…
@Enrique: Why do you think the figures make any claim of foul play impossible?
Large figures PLUS a society like Iran’s, with a diverse and sophisticated public and press, combing with a huge population is what makes rigging on that kind of scale impossible. Add to this that the Iranian president has no real power and that makes it absurdly useless.
Nobody had ANYTHYING to get by rigging it and EVERYTYING to loose by rigging. Look at your own choice of words:
“This president will lack of legitimacy”
(legitimacy for WHAT, the President has no real power?)
“Civil strife will follow”
“Iran emerges discredited”
I can just about hear the champaign corks popping in Langley…
No Enrique – can’t you smell the sweet and nauseating smell of BS here?!
Remember Venezuela and what kind of situations the USA tried to create there.
And remember that both Venezuela and Iran has special task forces organinzed in the USA specially to deal with them…
Surely you can see the fingerprints all over this one…
Also, check out this piece of Informationclearinghouse:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22827.htm
I’m not sure to what degree Musavi was the West’s boy. My take is that Ahmadinejad was a true believing socialist who wanted to redistribute the nation’s oil wealth in a way that presumably benefited the poor. The poor liked that and voted for him in droves.
He cultivated their affection by living modestly. On his trips to the UN, he brought along dates and snacks from home to save money on food. His brother earns a living as a cab driver.
His opponent was backed by Rafsanjani, a billionaire, former president and main member of the powerful expediency council. His opponent was a former PM for 8 years. These are the kind of guys who steal elections, not have elections stolen from them.
But at any rate, they represent a different constituency of money and business in Iran. There is nothing wrong with that, but they can’t win an election purely by the numbers.
Also, while Iran likely had economic troubles from the collapse of oil prices, oil prices have more than doubled since their 35$ low last February. So maybe Iranians started seeing their own “green shoots.”
What happens now is difficult to say. The money elite can cause trouble. In Thailand a similar situation arose when Thaksin’s party, the clear winner in a number of elections was paralyzed by yellow shirts.
As Enrique says, the government’s legitimacy is under attack. If Ahmadinejad has real support, he needs to get his people on the street in huge numbers and do so now while the world is watching.
I should add that, had Musavi won, they would have simply found some angry comment from his past to demonize him as well. There was no way they were going to let the narrative that Iran is more of a democracy than **any** other country in the middle east ever take hold.
Peace all,
Vineyard let me start by saying it has been a crazy last 24 hrs or so for the Iranian people. I cannot spend much time here as I am packing up my flat to move out so I am going to try and be brief and follow it up tomorrow or so.
Firstly, Mousavi should accept defeat simply because his style of campaign let him down to say the least and his reliance on the youths and the rich class did not pay off. Lets be clear here that the rich/upper class only makes up of 15% or less of the country and most of them living in Tehran. While Ahmedinijad campaigned for working and lower class people. He won them over by providing support for them and the rich did not appreciate that aspect of his policies. In the end, the working and the lower class makes up 60% or so altogether of the population hence it is not unexpected that he managed to win the elections by a landslide.
Secondly, Mousavi represents the whole reformist attitude which is backed by the likes of Khatami and Rafsanjani. Both of whom are considered as corrupt officials within the Government and the nation to a great extend. People did not enjoy the terms of Khatami simply because during his term the rich benefitted due to his policies and there was a lot of internal corruption, the same during the time of Rafsanjani hence it would be no surprise to the public that Mousavi lost. Do note too that the people protesting on the streets out of them not even 80% would be those who voted for Mousavi rather they are just out for the sake of it. Expect the Baseej to come out in force by tomorrow and Ayatollah Khamenai to make a speech.
Thirdly and most important the swaying factor in these elections was the televised debate between Mousavi and Ahmedinijad where Ahmedinijad took a swipe at Rafsanjani and accused him of great corruption. This would have won him a lot of supporters because openly challenging Rafsanjani is not a option any Government official would take given the influence he holds. Do note there are rumours going around that Rafsanjani has resigned from all Governmental positions that he was incharge of.
Another point to note here is that the Western medias need to really get their story right. The protests happening are not un-planned. They were planned and even Rafsanjani’s wife in this video admits to it [unfortunately its in Farsi], see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U57ngkhmqJ4
Moreover, the supporters of Mousavi should not complain and not get sympathy from the Western media outlets especially when the country interior ministry has already announced that no demonstration can be held and Ayatollah Khamenai along with the party leaders have called for no violence so I really do hope that these protestors are taken care of because this is showing sour grapes and nothing else.
On another note Vineyard have a read of this article, its brilliant: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/iranian-election
http://americangoy.blogspot.com/2009/06/iranian-youth-vs-corrupt-decrepit-lazy.html
Hi Saker,
Myself, I was leaning towards an Ahmadinejad re-election. He has proven himself effective on multiple fronts, and shown that the presidency can be a very powerful tool. But this was a very hard fought election, and Mousavi does represent a very real slice of the Iranian public and established elite. These people have felt quite alienated by Ahmadinejad and now feel quite cheated. It was irresponsible of Mousavi to pre-emptively declare victory as he did and employ the incendiary rhetoric he later adopted, but this surely could have been avoided, for example, by having a more transparent ballot counting process(although all candidates did have representatives at polling places).
The point is it is also the Regime and Ahmadinejad’s failing to give Mousavi the space to make such claims. There is little room for error in that part of the world.
As for the actual claims, i’m quite sceptical that anything will come out of them, but it’s important never to pre-judge such claims. They aren’t made lightly. And it’s gratifying to see a Reformist finally stand his ground for once. Mousavi will pursue this process as far as it can go, and I don’t think there will be many questions left at the end of the day.
On the plus side, while some of the surprise protests yesterday seemed to cross into 10’s of thousands mark, there were no reports of any undue violence, and today things seem to be cooling down a bit. An Iranian Newspaper is carrying the headline that Mousavi has not conceded. Things are going to start going through official channels
Masoud, the slice of Iran that Mousavi represents is about the same that Chavez’s opponents. I would say, the numbers who actually support Mousavi, and what he represents is far less than the vote numbers – maybe 10-15%.
The section of the establishment, that Mousavi represents, well, they are not exactly liked by many Iranians. Rafsenjani et al.
As such, I don’t particularly see why Ahmadinejad should compromise with him… Well, I do see that it may be in the interest of a stable Iran. But then what of the long term? Enfranchise, and further empower the elite, that would be a status quo arrangement. And that would really be an untenable situation for Iran.
Peace all,
Vineyard you had asked why was Mousavi allowed to run given his track record? Well my friend to understand the answer this you have to look at the profile of Mousavi.
Mousavi is a person who was the President during the time of Imam Khomeini. Has reign was also during the time of Iran-Iraq war so there was not much about his policies that would be available. Plus had he been corrupt then his fate would have been same as Bani Sadr. Khomeini was very strict on these aspects during his time. So now when Mousavi decided to stand as a background there was not much on him. The only basis to dismiss him would be just because he is with the reformist camp and that would not be fair since the Guardian Council removes people due to their profiles such as any convictions, criminal activity, lack of qualification to be the office etc. Their job is not to remove people based on their policies. Do remember that the reformist camp did not disclose their policies till after the approval. Once the approval is given only the Supreme Leader can disqualify the candidate. In this situation it would have been disasterous to do that simply because of the influence that the Reformist camp have. For instance you have to realise the Guardian council has the likes of Rafsanjani. And his influence and support would have provided a platform for Mousavi to work with as his influence would have ensured he is qualified to run. Now when that train cannot be stopped what is the alternative? A clear victory for Ahmedinijad. A lot of prominent scholars backed Ahmedinijad where as Mousavi had no big supporters from the Government. He had Khatami and Rafsanjani which represent the elite where as Ahmedinijad had support of the rest.
Anyhow I digressed coming back to the question; giving him authorisation to run is only on the basis that he has nothing stopping him to run. The only point to remove him would be on the basis of his policies but that is nothing concerning the Guardian council. Also remember when Mousavi was under Khomeini he had the support and that carries a lot of weight as that indicates that his approval is enough for the council to approve Mousavi.
The Guardian council also need to be fair because if Mousavi was to be dismissed on the basis of being a reformist then Rezeai should have been dismissed because of his background. Even though his manifesto was the best fit for the position. I think one cannot blame the Guardian council for allowing Mousavi to run simply because in line with jurisdiction they did what they could.
Thanks for the comments altigerrrr.
Mousavi is an opportunistic, ambitious politico who just happens to be around when there is destabilization to be had. (see his role when Khomeni went down)
I think he is a judas goat, being used by the West to the stage for the next phase of Iran/US policy — whatever that will be. Hint: Lebanon was a good warmup.
This unrest was obviously a creation of the CIA to destabilize Iran. Only a wingnut would say something else. 9/10 pre-surveys all depicted that Ahmadinejad would be the winner.
This US madness must stop!