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Sun 14 Jun, 2009 03:41 am
This is interesting.....
Quote:TEHRAN " The streets of Iran’s capital erupted in the most intense protests in a decade on Saturday, with riot police officers using batons and tear gas against opposition demonstrators who claimed that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen the presidential election.
Witnesses reported that at least one person had been shot dead in clashes with the police in Vanak Square in Tehran. Smoke from burning vehicles and tires hung over the city late Saturday.
The Interior Ministry said Saturday afternoon that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 percent of the vote, with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the top challenger, taking just under 34 percent. Turnout was a record 85 percent.
Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister who had promised to reverse Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hard-line policies, declared himself the winner by a wide margin Friday night, charged widespread election irregularities and called on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to intervene.
The landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad, an intensely divisive figure here and abroad, came as a powerful shock to opposition supporters, who had cited polls showing that Mr. Moussavi had a strong lead in the final days of the campaign.
Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli said Saturday that such a lead was a misimpression based on Mr. Moussavi’s higher levels of support in the capital, and that he had less backing elsewhere.
Mr. Moussavi made clear in statements on Saturday that he rejected the results and called on supporters and fellow clerics to fight them. But there were no reports of any public appearances by him through the day, leading to rumors that he might have been arrested.
In a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr. Moussavi said: “Today the people’s will has been faced with an amazing incident of lies, hypocrisy and fraud. I call on my Iranian compatriots to remain calm and patient.”
But Ayatollah Khamenei closed the door to any appeals for intervention in a statement issued on state television on Saturday afternoon, congratulating Mr. Ahmadinejad on his victory and pointedly urging the other candidates to support him.........
Full NYT story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html?th&emc=th
Furether commentary here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14memo.html?th&emc=th
Quote:TEHRAN " It is impossible to know for sure how much the ostensible re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the preference of an essentially conservative Iranian public and how much, as opposition voters passionately believe, it is the imposed verdict of a fundamentally authoritarian regime.
But for those who dreamed of a gentler Iran, Saturday was a day of smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy centers of Western capitals.
Iranians who hoped for a bit more freedom, a better managed economy and a less reviled image in the world wavered between protest and despair on Saturday.
On the streets around Fatemi Square, near the headquarters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, riot police officers dressed in RoboCop gear roared down the sidewalks on motorcycles to disperse and intimidate the clots of pedestrians who had gathered to share rumors and dismay.
“Another four years of dictatorship,” a voter muttered. “This is a coup d’état,” several others agreed. Some women wept openly. Some talked of “mutiny.” Others were more cynical.
“It was just a movie,” said Hussein Gharibi, a 54-year-old juice vendor, scoffing at those who had gotten their hopes up. “They were all just players in a movie.”
Far off, President Obama and other Western leaders who had seen a better relationship with Iran as potentially helpful in resolving the problems of Afghanistan, Iraq and nuclear proliferation faced the prospect of doing business with a man who, in addition to being a Holocaust-denying hard-liner, now stands suspected in a sham election...............
Al Jazeera's take:
Quote:Reformists held after Iran riots
Reformist leaders who supported defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi have been detained following violent protests over the results of Friday's presidential election.
Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran, fighting running battles with riot police, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, was declared the winner of the polls.
"They were taken from their homes last night," Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice-president and close associate of Mohammad Khatami, the former president, said.
Mohammad Reza Khatami, the former president's brother, was among the members of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, which won more than 100 seats in the 290-member parliament in 2000, who were arrested.
Al Jazeera's Alireza Ronaghi, reporting from Tehran, said that the official IRNA news agency was reporting that a committee led by two senior supporters of Mousavi was organising the riots.
"Whether this is really an honest outburst of anger against the outcome of the election we don't know yet, but what we see is a major crackdown on reformists and their leaders," he said.
Quiet streets
However, the streets of the capital were quiet on Sunday morning.
"The streets would usually be crowded with people going to work," Ronaghi said.
"People are scared and some of them have decided that they want to close up shop for today."
Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Friday's polls by a wide margin, with figures from the interior ministry showing he had taken 62.63 per cent of the vote, while Mousavi, his main challenger, garnered only 33.75 per cent.
But Mousavi criticised the vote as "rigged" and urged his followers to resist a government he said was based on "lies and dictatorship".
Sadegh Zibakalam, head of the Iranian studies department at Tehran university, told Al Jazeera that the demonstrations were largely "spontaneous" responses to the election result.
No one is giving them commands, no one is ordering them, no one is leading them," he said.
"Nevertheless, the government has started a crackdown on the leading reformist figures ... The government reaction is too harsh, but it is understandable."
In a televised speech late on Saturday, Ahmadinejad made no mention of the unrest, but said the election had been "completely free" and the outcome was "a great victory" for Iran.
"Today, the people of Iran have inspired other nations and disappointed their ill-wishers," he said late on Saturday.
"This is a great victory at a time when the ... propaganda facilities outside Iran and sometimes inside Iran were totally mobilised against our people."
'Unpredictable'
Some analysts questioned the speed of the ballot count and the size of the victory for Ahmadinejad.
But Mehran Kamrava, director of the centre for international and regional studies at Georgetown University's campus in Qatar, cautioned that the displays of support for Mousavi were not necessarily an indication of fraud.
"The Western media has been talking to people in north Tehran, who tend to vote overwhelmingly against Ahmadinejad," he told Al Jazeera.
"But let's not forget that many of the urban Iranians have priorities and proclivities that are not necessarily reflected in other areas of the main cities, and those people could easily have voted for Ahmadinejad.
"Iranian politics have proved themselves to be notoriously unpredictable and this could be one of those instances of unpredictability."
Iran does not allow international election monitors.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/200961445310869719.html
Al Jazeera reports on western reactions:
Quote:West concerned by Iran fraud claims
Mousavi supportesrs have accused Ahmadinejad of stealing the election from his rival [AFP]
The US, Britain and Canada have voiced concern about reports of irrigularities following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory in Iran.
Thousands of protesters roamed through Tehran on Saturday, waging hit-and-run clashes with police and setting trash bins and tires ablaze and accusing Ahmadinejad of stealing an election from Mir Hossein Mousavi, his reformist rival.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the US secretary of state, said she hoped the outcome reflected the "genuine will and desire" of Iranian voters, responding to claims by supporters of Mousavi that allege that the outcome was rigged to give Ahmadinejad a decisive victory.
"We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide." Clinton told reporters in Ontario, Canada.
The White House also released a two-sentence statement praising "the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians," but also expressing concern over "reports of irregularities."
Lawrence Cannon, Canada's foreign affairs minister, said his country was also "deeply concerned" by reports of irregularities in the election.......
(article continues with European reactions)
And Arab ones:
Quote:Arab reactions
Amr Moussa , the Arab League chief, said he hoped Ahmadinajad's second term would boost cooperation to achieve peace and rid the region of weapons of mass destruction.
"I believe the situation could move in the direction of quieter talks and understanding. Dialogue is the name of the game," he said.
Iraq's government said it hoped the Iranian leader will seek reconciliation with other countries to promote peace in the region.
Iraq's Shia-led government faces a delicate balancing act in maintaining close ties to both the US and Iran.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613224029494729.html
An Iranian woman's perspective:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/200961017716136972.html
Damn...there's already a thread on this. Sorry Farmerperson:
http://able2know.org/topic/133255-1
@dlowan,
No, my thread hs been invaded by several who only see this in terms of the US, and maybe I was instrumental in steering it that way so I can easily abandon it).
Im thinking that the election may NOT have been rigged. The plurality was just too damn high to be a numbers fraud thing.
There was always big support for Ahmedinejad from the army, the business owners, older folks and the conservative religious.
AHmedinejad now has to see whether he can bolster the country's economy , maybe he will pay some attention to his Arab neigh bors who dont want all the brinksmanship that Iran has been famous for .
Ive always been a fan of having everybody armed with nuclear weapons. Having a mini-"Mad" policy takes away the intimidation that a single nuke represents.
Course thats just me.
@farmerman,
Yeah...it's a major pain in the bum how every political discussion here tends to become a predictable yelling match between US culture warriors about the US.
Mini mad, eh?
I am really interested in whether the damn election was honest or rigged.
Guess we'll never really know.
Nice to know there appears to be more moderate forces beginning to grow in Iran.
I hope they are less fundamentalist Islam as well.
Need to look this up!!!!
@dlowan,
dlowan wrote:
I am really interested in whether the damn election was honest or rigged.
Guess we'll never really know.
Nice to know there appears to be more moderate forces beginning to grow in Iran.
I agree with farmerman: the number are just too high.
And - in my opinion - our media looked more on the urban population, and there on those, who articulated loud, than on the (majority) of conservative rural voters.
There wasn't a poll like we know it before, isn't it?
@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:in my opinion - our media looked more on the urban population, and there on those, who articulated loud, than on the (majority) of conservative rural voters.
There wasn't a poll like we know it before, isn't it?...
But then, such demonstrations are very unusual in Iran. Nothing resembling such scenes on the streets of Tehran for 30 or so years ...
@dlowan,
A short summary of what i've been talking about in FM's thread:
In 1953, the Brits suckered Eisenhower, with the enthusiastic support of the CIA, into overthrowing the government of Mohammed Mosedegh, who was keeping the Shah on a short leash and who was nationalizing the petroleum industry. In the aftermath, the idiots in MI6 and at the CIA brought in the Israeli Mossad (their spy boys) to set up the SAVAK, the Shah's hated and feared secret police. So, it is clear why the Persians absolutely detest the Israelis, who otherwise would be too far away to matter much to them. Seeing Islam as a monolith is stupid, and Iran has long been the only Shi'ite dominated state in the world (Iraq will probably soon qualify as the second such state). So (as FM pointed out) the hatred and rivalries between Sunni and Shi'ite would ordinarily count for more with them.
The people who made the Persian revolution were well aware of the MI6-CIA-Mossad-SAVAK connection, and hated the Americans, the Brits and the Israelis for it as a consequence. The Mullahs who run Iran now were most of them victims of SAVAK, so their hatred of the US, UK and Israel is pretty strong. Those who had no stomach for a Shi'ite state were able to, and most of them did get out of Dodge, accounting for the Persian expat community around the world. The rest of the Persians then lived through the Iran-Iraq war.
The younger generation of Persians, though, barely remember or don't at all remember the Iran-Iraq war, and don't remember or weren't even born at the time of the revolution. I strongly suspect that they're tired of the rhetoric (just as many young Americans, Brits, Ozzians, etc. are tired of hearing about WW II). They're intelligent, well-educated and relatively affluent (the Mullahs are corporate, and control the wealth of Iran, but they haven't been greedy as the
aparatchiki of the old Soviet Union), and sophisticated in contemporary technology. It will be increasingly hard for the Mullahs to control their thinking, and denying them their material aspirations (which the Mullahs have
not shown a tendency to do) would only worsen the situation. I suspect that Ahmedinejad stole this election, but i also suspect that Mousavi had been vetted by the Mullahs, and simply represented a different shade of permitted political rhetoric. Rafsanjani, whom Ahmedinejad replaced, had been approved by the Mullahs, but he had become to independent, and too conciliatory toward the West. Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 might have been rigged, but there is still enough of the "old guard" and still a strong enough memory of the SAVAK and the Iran-Iraq War (which was socially devastating for the Persians) to account for his election.
As time goes on, and the personal memory of the SAVAK and the Iran-Iraq War fades, the revolutionary rhetoric will be more and more irrelevant to young voters, and they may well become more and more alienated by the religio-political structure which rules the nation. Sooner or later (although probably later rather than sooner), the Mullahs will be obliged to compound with a true opposition. I'm just not convinced that Mousavi represented a true opposition. But as times change, people change, and children grow up to be adults who really don't give a rat's ass how far grandpa had to walk to get to school.
@Setanta,
Apparently the authorities missed shackling the TWitter users. So they had to shut down the entire cell phone network.
Im amazed how quickly the election results were made available and statistics were developed. We should hire these guys in my township where the last supervisory election took two weeks to certify, and we only have a population of 4000 people.
Mousavi was vetted and found acceptable. If you can listen to some of the summaries that I heard on CBC, His own policy toward Irans nuclear program.has been an Ahmedinejahd "Lite".
@farmerman,
The Persians are very internet savvy, and i've never understood why the Mullahs tolerate it. Their long tolerance of Rafsanjani, combined with their (relative) tolerance of street demonstration, as well as their (apparent) tolerance of the internet (they have no national firewall as China does) suggests to me that the Mullahs are smart enough not to put the screws on people too hard. After all the Majlis elects six members of the "Guardian Council," and the other six are appointed by the Supreme Leader. These are intelligent men, and the Majlis elects six judges, men who have studied long and hard in Quranic universities. Just because they have a different world view, doesn't mean they are stupid. Unless things get too far out of hand, i suspect they're smart enough not to do what the Shah did when he employed SAVAK to hunt down the opposition. I also think that it is entirely possible that the Mullahs have a genuine affection for their people, and want the best for them, even if their notion of the best is couched in terms of Shi'ite religious purity.
@msolga,
Yes, that was my first reaction too -- while much is still unclear (whether the elections were rigged, etc.), just the fact of demonstrations is encouraging.
Lots of good info here, thanks.
@Setanta,
does the Supreme leader appoint the Committee heads? or do hey elect internally?
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Im amazed how quickly the election results were made available and statistics were developed. We should hire these guys in my township where the last supervisory election took two weeks to certify, and we only have a population of 4000 people.
At least that's something not really unusual - we had our results from the EU-election 1 1/2 hour after polling station closed, officially, 70,000 inhabitants, 31 parties, all 'hand-counted'.
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
does the Supreme leader appoint the Committee heads? or do hey elect internally?
Wikipedia has some infos about that, with additional links.
@msolga,
msolga wrote:
But then, such demonstrations are very unusual in Iran. Nothing resembling such scenes on the streets of Tehran for 30 or so years ...
The most sincere demonstrations since
the student's protests in 1999 , it is said.
@farmerman,
I don't know what you mean by "committee heads." If you are referring to the Guardian Council, there are twelve members--six appointed by the Supreme Leader, and six elected by the Majlis (the parliament) from among sitting judges or members of the law faculty at domestic universities.
Just a little humor from the English language site Iran-Daily.com.
Quote:The final results of Iran’s closely-contested 10th presidential election showed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a landslide victory.
“Of the 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent),“ Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli told reporters on Saturday.
Mir Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent), Press TV reported.
The former commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezaei was third with 678,240 votes (1.73 percent) and former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karroubi trailed fourth with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent).
The minister said 409,389 ballots (1.04 percent) were void.
Over 46 million Iranians aged 18 and above were eligible to vote in Friday’s presidential elections.
Mahsouli said the ministry had not received any “written complaint“ about fraud or irregularities.
The vote was held in a manner that “ruled out the possibility of cheating.“ He dismissed claims that the elections were rigged.
“No violations that may have influenced the vote have been reported, and we have received no written complaint,“ he said in response to a question from an Italian reporter.
He explained that there may have been some tensions between the representatives of the presidential hopefuls but added that there is no evidence to suggest that the contentions had led to violations.
Meanwhile, the media's ten-day visas almost all expire this week, and the regime has refused to extend them. ... ...
Why the official Iranian election results are suspect
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
6/18/09
TEHRAN, Iran " In American politics, it would be as if President George W. Bush won re-election over Sen. John Kerry in 2004 by taking Kerry's home state of Massachusetts, doing surprisingly well in liberal New York City and besting his 2000 vote totals by 40 percent.
What really happened in last Friday's Iranian presidential election, whose reported results have set off the deepest political crisis here in 30 years, may never be known.
However, unexplained police movements on the evening of the election, the exceptionally fast counting of handwritten ballots and some inexplicable election returns are among the reasons that opposition candidates and analysts cite when they say they suspect the vote was rigged.
Iran's theocratic regime proclaimed incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the landslide victor, with 24,592,793 votes, compared with 13,338,121 for his closest challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, according to Interior Ministry figures as of Monday.
Ahmadinejad's opponents don't believe those numbers. They've taken to the streets every afternoon, wearing signs that say, "Where's my vote?" or "I wrote Mousavi; they read Ahmadinejad."
Of course, it's possible that Ahmadinejad won. He's popular with many Iranians in ways that Westerners find hard to understand. A visit to a polling station in the eastern Tehran district of Narmak on election day turned up no voters in that Ahmadinejad stronghold who said they'd cast ballots against the incumbent.
While almost every other major Iranian political figure has been accused of corruption, Ahmadinejad has had no such scandals. He's distributed cash and potatoes and provided roads and development projects to the rural poor, winning support from non-elite Iranians, who are used to getting nothing from Tehran while the rich get richer.
A nationwide scientific public-opinion survey May 11-20 found Ahmadinejad ahead by two to one, with a very large number saying that they were undecided. The groups Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation conducted the telephone poll of 1,001 voters.
There also are good reasons to be suspicious, however.
Things seemed to go well on election day, when Iranians by the millions " a record turnout, apparently " gathered at mosques, schools and other voting places. Citizens presented their identification cards, received voting slips and wrote in their candidates' names. The candidates' names were posted on the wall for all to see. The voting slips went into large plastic ballot boxes, and voters touched their index fingers to pads of ink.
There were scattered reports of opposition candidates' poll observers not being allowed into polling places, but no overt signs of voter intimidation or other troubles, in Tehran at least.
What happened next is opaque. There were no international observers. None of the ballots has been seen publicly; they're under guard at the Interior Ministry in downtown Tehran, which is under Ahmadinejad's control.
By late Friday afternoon, the atmosphere in Tehran was beginning to change. Morning newspapers had carried news of "Operation Sovereignty," a police maneuver in Tehran that involved tens of thousands of police units. A reporter driving near the Interior Ministry at the time saw security presence being beefed up, as if the authorities expected trouble.
According to a European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid, the Interior Ministry brought in loyalists from the provinces to tabulate the votes, furloughing its regular employees and locking them out of the building.
The diplomat's account couldn't be confirmed; a McClatchy request to speak with someone at Iran's Election Commission was turned down Monday, and the next day the government ordered foreign journalists in Iran on temporary visas to stay off the streets and prepare to leave the country.
Aides to Mousavi, who have an obvious motive to say so, speculate that the votes may never have been counted at all.
If they were, the handwritten ballots were tallied amazingly fast. Around the time the polls closed, state-run news media reported that Ahmadinejad had a commanding lead of almost 70 percent with slightly less than a fifth of the votes tabulated.
On Saturday morning, officials at the press ministry posted a statement that foreign journalists' visas wouldn't be extended because there was no need for a runoff. However, government spokesmen had assured reporters all week that no results would be available until late Saturday.
According to Monday's Interior Ministry figures, only 420,000 ballots, a little more than 1 percent of the total of 39.3 million, were invalidated, most likely because of illegible or incorrect names written on them.
Ahmadinejad showed strength in surprising places, according to the official figures.
He beat Mousavi, a former prime minister and ethnic Azeri, in Mousavi's home province of East Azerbaijan, including the provincial capital, Tabriz " urban areas were thought to be Mousavi's strength " by 435,000 votes to 420,000.
Analysts in Washington and Tehran called such results suspect and said the same about the count in the city of Tehran, where it's often hard to find someone with a good word to say about Ahmadinejad. The incumbent barely lost the capital to Mousavi, by 2.1 million to 1.8 million, according to the official results
More detailed results showed Ahmadinejad winning 11 out of 12 districts in Tehran province, many by substantial margins.
The 24.6 million votes Ahmadinejad is said to have received are 7 million more than he received in a run-off that propelled him to the presidency four years ago. While that's not inconceivable, this election appears to have brought out many anti-Ahmadinejad voters who boycotted the 2005 election.
Ahmadinejad has dismissed charges of fraud. The Guardian Council, which oversees elections, agreed to recount some ballots. Which or how many isn't clear, however, and there's unlikely to be independent oversight.
(Roy Gutman contributed to this report from Washington.)
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