Iran's presidental elections

[ZenGum]

Well, it makes a change from "Death to America".

Australian ABC quotes some supposed expert saying that Ademinedjadwhatsisname probably does have more than 50% support, and so is the rightful winner anyway.

*keeps watching*

[Griff]

Looks quieter now?

[capnhowdy]

CBS just reported that the riots are still on and [quote]"Ademinedjadwhatsisname"[quote] has won by a 2 to 1 margin. Yeah, right.

[DanaC]

About 100 opposition members/supporters have been arrested.

[Undertoad]

The opposition candidate has been arrested.

No major western media is covering this in detail because they are under heavy controls and many of them have simply left. The Sunday morning shows are quiet on it. Cell phone network is shut off, SMS is shut off, even Facebook is filtered.

[ZenGum]

... at which point the presumption that dodgy shit is being done, becomes quite natural.

*thinks about reaction amongst the Arab world.*

[Kitsune]

The death toll of the Iran-Iraq war has essentially created a great generational rift in Iran -- the current population of people under 25 there is huge (~50%) and they aren't exactly pleased with the hard line government.

Here's to hoping there is revolution and positive change for them in this.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Here's to hoping there is revolution and positive change for them in this.

Of course the theocrats will try to distract the public by focusing on the evil outsiders so things could get a lot worse before improving.

[Undertoad]

tehranlive.org

Michael Totten features a bit from a Polish journalist who witnessed and wrote about the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The policeman’s experience: If I shout at someone and raise my truncheon, he will first go numb with terror and then take to his heels. The experience of the man at the edge of the crowd: At the sight of an approaching policeman I am seized by fear and start running. On the basis of these experiences we can elaborate a scenario: The policeman shouts, the man runs, others take flight, the square empties.

But this time everything turns out differently. The policeman shouts, but the man doesn’t run. He just stands there, looking at the policeman. It’s a cautious look, still tinged with fear, but at the same time tough and insolent. So that’s the way it is! The man on the edge of the crowd is looking insolently at uniformed authority. He doesn’t budge. He glances around and sees and sees the same look on other faces. Like his, their faces are watchful, still a bit fearful, but already firm and unrelenting. Nobody runs though the policeman has gone on shouting; at last he stops. There is a moment of silence.

We don’t know whether the policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd already realize what has happened. The man has stopped being afraid – and this is precisely the beginning of the revolution. Here it starts.

the rest here

[Kitsune]

It is getting interesting:

Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate and cooperating with his government against Islam. There are strong rumors that his house and office are surrounded by the police and his website is filtered. He had previously issued a fatwa, against rigging of the elections in any form or shape, calling it a mortal sin.

[Kitsune]

But, really, we should be happy about the election outcome, even if it doesn't reflect the will of the people and is a step backwards.

If the mullahs were really canny, they would have let Mousavi win. He would have presented a more reasonable face to the world without changing the grim underlying realities of Iran’s regime–the oppression, the support for terrorism, the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He is the kind of “moderate” with whom the Obama administration could happily engage in endless negotiations which probably would not accomplish anything except to buy time for Iran to weaponize its fissile material.

...

So in an odd sort of way a win for Ahmadinejad is also a win for those of us who are seriously alarmed about Iranian capabilities and intentions. With crazy Mahmoud in office–and his patron, Ayatollah Khameini, looming in the background–it will be harder for Iranian apologists to deny the reality of this terrorist regime.

[sugarpop]

Iran's Military Coup
"So let’s get this straight. We are supposed to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected in Iran’s presidential election last week by a 2 to 1 margin against his reformist rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. That this deeply unpopular president, whose gross mismanagement of the state budget is widely blamed for Iran’s economy hovering on the edge of total collapse, received approximately the same percentage of votes as Mohammad Khatami, by far Iran’s most popular past president, received in both 1997 and 2001? That Mousavi, whom all independent polls predicted would at the very least take Ahmadinejad into a runoff election, lost not only his main base of support, Tehran, but also his own hometown of Khameneh in East Azerbaijan (which, as any Azeri will tell you, never votes for anyone but its own native sons)…and by a landslide. That we should all take the word of the Interior Ministry, led by a man put in his position by Ahmadinejad himself, a man who called the election for the incumbent before the polls were even officially closed, that the election was a fair representation of the will of the Iranian people.

Bullshit.

...Yet the brazenness with which this presidential election was stolen by Ahmadinejad’s supporters has caught everyone in Iran, even the clerical establishment, by surprise. Indeed, I am convinced that what we are witnessing in Iran is nothing less than a slow moving military coup against the clerical regime itself, led by Iran’s dreaded Revolutionary Guard, or Pasdaran, as the organization is called in Iran. The Pasdaran is a military-intelligence unit that acts independently from the official armed forces. Originally created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to be the supreme leader’s personal militia, the Pasdaran has been increasingly acting like an independent agent over the last decade, one that appears to no longer answer to the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei..."

...It is the Pasdaran that controls Ahmadinejad, not the mullahs. Indeed, it was precisely fear of the Pasdaran’s rising political and economic influence that led to the “anybody but Ahmadinejad” coalition we saw in this election, wherein young, leftist students and popular reformists like Mohammad Khatami joined together with conservative mullahs and "centrists" like Rafsanjani to push back against what they consider to be the rampant militarization of Iranian politics. There is a genuine fear among these groups that Iran is beginning to resemble Egypt or Pakistan, countries in which the military controls the apparatus of government...

...What is abundantly clear, however, is that the days in which power in Iran rested in the hands of a single individual (the supreme leader) or a single group (the mullahs) are over. For better or worse, the new power base in Iran is the Pasdaran.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...military-coup/


Ayatollah Khamenei Orders Probe Of Iran Election Fraud
"...Mousavi said another rally was planned for Tuesday in north Tehran, the hub of his youth-driven campaign and now a nerve center for his opposition movement.

This is the type of spreading unrest most feared by Iran's non-elected ruling clerics, who control all important decisions but are rarely drawn directly into political disputes. A long and bitter movement against Ahmadinejad could push the dissent past the presidency and target the theocracy itself.

It also has the potential to embolden some members of the ruling inner circle, such as the powerful former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who strongly opposed Ahmadinejad in the campaign.

"That sets you up for a tremendous split," said Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It could be tremendously destabilizing because if the office of (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) is damaged, then the whole shape of leadership ... moves into flux."

There's widespread belief that Khamenei _ the successor of the Islamic Revolution patriarch Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini _ will do what it takes to keep the system intact..."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_215489.html


A Coup Manual: What We Should Know About Iran's Election
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omid-m..._b_216461.html


It was amazing to see the video of all the people taking to the streets protesting this election. Of course it is a fraud. I hope Reza Aslan is wrong and the power doesn't rest with the military now, because if Iran really turns into Pakistan, we are really in deep trouble. I don't have the fear of Iran that some people in this country have, but Pakistan is turning into a very dangerous situation with al qaeda taking over. If that happened in Iran too, and I'm not saying it would because I believe the people of Iran are much more pro-western and America-friendly, and educated, but if the military takes charge then who knows. *heavy sigh*

[classicman]

The power is not with him anyway - Its with the clerics.

[sugarpop]

According to Reza Aslan, who is Persian btw, it is now with the military, after this coup. This is apparently a military coup, not a religious one.

[classicman]

Mohsen M. Milani, the chairman of the political science department at South Florida University, is the author of “The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.” He is also the author of “Tehran’s Take: Understanding Iran’s U.S. Policy,” an essay in the current Foreign Affairs. :
The strategic direction of the Islamic Republic of Iran has always been determined by the Supreme Leader, in consultation with the main centers of power in Iran’s highly factionalized polity.

From The Economist:In terms of constitutional authority, the ascetic Mr Khamenei is plainly the most powerful man in the Islamic Republic; no big decision can be taken without his consent. Some Western experts think he is more powerful now than at any time in his 19 years as leader.

No matter who wins the presidency, a big shift in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy seems unlikely while the 69-year-old Mr Khamenei remains the supreme leader.