Iranians may be ready to vote Ahmadinejad out of power

i don't the MMs let drag queens vote.

 

Interesting how that is happening while Obama is president and not GW Bush.

 

the soviet union fell under Bush's dad, not Reagan.

 

True but Gorbachev came to power under Reagan.

Under GW Bush's presidency a moderate Iranian leader who was relatively friendly to the west got ousted too.

 

I found the following from the NYT to be good reading. It dovetails nicely with the other things I know about the dynamic.

Basically, it describes Ali Khamenei as a political appointment, lacking completely in the religious qualifications to be a Grand Ayatollah or (by extension) Supreme Leader. It also states that the way he overcame this has been to suck up to the Revolutionary Guard, who are at the core of the vote fixing. The conflict at the core of the election dispute is clearly between the religious authorities and the military authorities.

[rquoter]
In Iran, an Iron Cleric, Now Blinking

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: June 15, 2009

For two decades, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has remained a shadowy presence at the pinnacle of power in Iran, sparing in his public appearances and comments. Through his control of the military, the judiciary and all public broadcasts, the supreme leader controlled the levers he needed to maintain an iron if discreet grip on the Islamic republic.

But in a rare break from a long history of cautious moves, he rushed to bless President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for winning the election, calling on Iranians to line up behind the incumbent even before the standard three days required to certify the results had passed.

Then angry crowds swelled in cities around Iran, and he backpedaled, announcing Monday that the 12-member Council of Guardians, which vets elections and new laws, would investigate the vote.

“After congratulating the nation for having a sacred victory, to say now that there is a possibility that it was rigged is a big step backward for him,” said Abbas Milani, the director of Stanford University’s Iranian studies program.

Few suggest yet that Ayatollah Khamenei’s hold on power is at risk. But, analysts say, he has opened a serious fissure in the face of Islamic rule and one that may prove impossible to patch over, particularly given the fierce dispute over the election that has erupted amid the elite veterans of the 1979 revolution. Even his strong links to the powerful Revolutionary Guards — long his insurance policy — may not be decisive as the confrontation in Iran unfolds.

“Khamenei would always come and say, ‘Shut up; what I say goes,’ ” said Azar Nafisi, the author of two memoirs about Iran, including “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” “Everyone would say, ‘O.K., it is the word of the leader.’ Now the myth that there is a leader up there whose power is unquestionable is broken.”

Those sensing that important change may be afoot are quick to caution that Ayatollah Khamenei, as a student of the revolution that swept the shah from power, could still resort to overwhelming force to crush the demonstrations.

In calling for the Guardian Council to investigate the vote, he has bought himself a 10-day grace period for the anger to subside, experts note. The outcome is not likely to be a surprise. Ayatollah Ahmed Jannati, the council’s chairman, is one of Ayatollah Khamenei’s few staunch allies among powerful clerics. In addition, Ayatollah Khamenei appoints half the members, while the other half are nominated by the head of the judiciary, another appointee of the supreme leader.

“It is simply a faux investigation to quell the protests,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Ayatollah Khamenei was an unlikely successor to the patriarch of the revolution, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and his elevation to the post of supreme leader in 1989 might have sown the seeds for the political crisis the country is facing today.

The son of a cleric from the holy city of Mashhad, Ayatollah Khamenei was known as something of an open-minded mullah, if not exactly liberal. He had a good singing voice; played the tar, a traditional Iranian stringed instrument; and wrote poetry. His circle of friends included some of the country’s most accomplished poets.

In the violence right after the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a bomb hidden in a tape recorder permanently crippled his right arm, and he was elevated to president in 1981 after another bomb killed the incumbent. He managed to attract the ire of Ayatollah Khomeini himself once, ironically, by publicly questioning some aspects of having a vilayat-e-faqih, or supreme leader system.

He also clashed repeatedly with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the powerful prime minister at the time. After being trounced in the official election results by Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Moussavi, the reformist presidential candidate, challenged Ayatollah Khamenei in the one area where he has always been vulnerable: his religious credentials.

Mr. Moussavi wrote an open letter to the clergy in the holy city of Qom about the election results. By appealing to the grand clerics, he was effectively saying Ayatollah Khamenei’s word as supreme leader lacked sufficient weight.

Ayatollah Khamenei was elevated from the middle clerical rank, hojatolislam, to ayatollah overnight in what was essentially a political rather than a religious decision. He earned undying scorn from many keepers of Shiite tradition, even though Iran’s myth-making machinery cranked up, with a witness professing he saw a light pass from Ayatollah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khamenei much the way the imams of centuries past were anointed.

Still, lacking a political base of his own, he set about creating one in the military. It was the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and many senior officers returning from the front demanded a role in politics or the economy for their sacrifices. Ayatollah Khamenei became a source of patronage for them, giving them important posts in broadcasting or as leaders of the vast foundations that had confiscated much of the pre-revolution private sector.

“By empowering them, he got power,” said Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In the wake of the election debacle, questions are being raised about who controls whom. But over the years, Ayatollah Khamenei gradually surmounted expectations that he would be eclipsed.

“He is a weak leader, who is extremely smart in allying himself, or in maneuvering between centers of power,” said one expert at New York University, declining to use his name because he travels to Iran frequently. “Because of the factionalism of the state, he seems to be the most powerful person.”

But many analysts say the differences between factions have never been quite so pronounced nor public as in the past few days. Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, once a close Khamenei ally who helped him become supreme leader, sent an open letter to him in the days before the election warning that any fraud would backfire, Mr. Milani noted. If he allowed the military to ignore the public will and to destroy senior revolutionary veterans, the decision would haunt him, Mr. Rafsanjani warned: “Tomorrow it is going to be you.”

Everyone speaking of Ayatollah Khamenei tends to use the word “cautious,” a man who never gambles. But he now faces a nearly impossible choice. If he lets the demonstrations swell, it could well change the system of clerical rule. If he uses violence to stamp them out, the myth of a popular mandate for the Islamic revolution will die.

“The Iranian leadership is caught in a paradox,” said Ms. Nafisi, the author of memoirs about Iran.

[/rquoter]

 

That in no way shows that Iran is better off because of our 130K troops in IRaq

 

watching an abc news segment on the twitter facet of this whole thing....this is really fascinating. reminiscent of khomeini's cassette tapes 20 years ago.

 

Still thinking nothing will result from this.

 

I think you are right, but you can clearly see how the people are venting here under a goverment that is just very oppressive.

After Tianimen square, didn't China lighten up on it's rules and become more capitalistic?

Maybe that type of change happens here too.

DD

 

How come nobody is covering or providing pictures of the hundreds of thousands that came out to celebrate Ahmadinejad's victory?

Also, why are these protests mostly taking place among urban youth in Tehran? Other than a couple of other sporadic demonstrations here and there, where are the massive protests elsewhere?

If you want to use crowd size as indicated of anything, Ahmadinejad's rallied had a much higher turnout all over the country during the campaign trail than any of Mousavi's. You can refer back to the video I posted that shows the size of the crowds and to the guardian article that talks about this.

If you make an accusation of fraud, don't you have to provide some evidence to back it up? Basically, you're admitting that there's no evidence, but yet you're still calling it a fraud. I see the position that you're taking now. Fact of the matter is that the poll provides more evidence that the final results were legit than all the speculation in this thread and elsewhere.

Here's Juan Cole's more sophisticated argument against that poll, but as you can see in the comments section, his argument is disproved:

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/terror-free-tomorro-poll-did-not.html

Monday, June 15, 2009
Terror Free Tomorrow Poll Did not Predict Ahmadinejad Win

Noting my skepticism about the announced outcome of Friday's presidential elections in Iran, readers have been asking me what I think about this WaPo op-ed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty pointing out that a scientifically weighted Project for a Terror Free Tomorrow poll in mid-May found Ahmadinejad beating Mir-Hosain Mousavi by a 2 to 1 margin.

I have enormous respect for Ballen, PFTFT and Doherty & the New America Foundation.

But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.

The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%.

27% said that they were undecided. (Some 22% of respondents are not accounted for by any of the 4 candidates or by the undecided category, and I cannot find an explanation for this. Did they plan to write in for other candidates? A little over a quarter of respondents did say they wanted more choice than they were being given. Update: Some of this 22% refused to answer, others said they did not like any of the candidates. Ahmadinejad is unlikely to have picked up the latter, and Mousavi supporters were more likely to refuse to answer.)

Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform. As Ballen wrote at that time:

' A close examination of our survey results reveals that the race may actually be closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate. More than 60 percent of those who state they don’t know who they will vote for in the Presidential elections reflect individuals who favor political reform and change in the current system.'



That is, supporters of the challenger's principles may not quite have committed to him at that point but were likely leaning to him on the basis of his platform. They were 16% of the sample. This finding suggests that in mid-May, Mousavi may have actually had 30% support.

If Ahmadinejad got all of the other 11% among undecideds, the race would have stood at 45% to 30%.

Ballen noted in May,

'The current mood indicates that none of the candidates will likely pass the 50 percent threshold needed to automatically win; meaning that a second round runoff between the two highest finishers, as things stand, Mr. Ahmadinejad and
Mr. Moussavi, is likely.'



That is, based on his polling, Ballen did not expect Ahmadinejad to get to 51%.

In fact, the regime has announced that Ahmadinejad received almost 63% of the vote. So while Ballen's polling does suggest that it was plausible that Ahmadinejad could have won a run-off election against Mousavi, it indicated that Ahmadinejad was unlikely to win a first round.

Moreover, given the PFTFT numbers, all of the undecideds would have had to vote for Ahmadinejad in order for him to get over 60% of the total vote. That outcome seems to me so statistically unlikely as to rate as an impossibility.

Note that the regime is not merely claiming that Ahmadinejad barely avoided a run-off by getting 51% of the vote. They are saying he received nearly two-thirds of the vote. No such outcome was predicted by the PFTFT poll-- quite the opposite.

So my commonsense, non-technical, historian's comment is that the poll may well have been sound, and Ballen's original conclusions may also have been. But the tenor of his WaPo article contradicts the poll in seeming to find a 63% margin of victory for Ahmadinejad plausible on the basis of it.

Particularly puzzling is that he seems to have forgotten his own observation that the race in May was closer than it seemed, since 60% of undecideds identified with reform principles.

Finally, 42% of respondents successfully contacted declined to answer the poll. Since it is much more likely that reformists would be afraid of government reprisal and afraid of talking about their politics than that Ahmadinejad supporters would be, the possibility that declines were disproportionately pro-Mousavi voters is strong. Although Ballen says voters were willing to answer controversial questions on press freedom or voting for the supreme leader, in fact these are vague and general issues. Imagine if a woman was pro-Mousavi and the phone rang when her husband, a pro-Ahmadinejad voter, was present. She might well just hang up rather than risk a domestic squabble. The decline rate strikes me as quite large, and of a sort that might well skew the results toward Ahmadinejad supporters.

Here are some of the comments:

Anonymous said...

Faced with a poll that confirms Ahmadinejad as hugely the most popular figure, all you can do is speculate based upon your questionable assumptions about the non-responders or don't knows being motivated by the old culture war issues rather than class-based or other issues (such as Ahmadinejad's populist campaign strategy).

You know there's a reason his approach is called "populist" - please think about it without being blinded by your own political prejudices. Surely that must be the cardinal sin for an academic.

And what about the damage the poll does to several of your other points. It shows support for the two mionor candidates as trivial, and Azeri voters breaking 2 for 1 in favour of Ahmadinejad over Mousavi.

And if the reasonable assumption about Ahmadinejad's class-based support is correct, that he dominated the rural and urban poor votes, then one would expect any telephone poll to sugnificantly understate his support, and I doubt they could correct for that completely - telephone polls are notoriously biased in that way.

I don't know how you can declare that the evidence supports the argument that the poll was rigged and still sleep - the evidence is speculative and wholly uncertain and the only valid and responsible conclusion is "don't know".

Behnam said...

Prof. Cole, you wrote, "Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform."

(1) Many of those calling for reform and change would be attracted to Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad successfully portrayed himself as a radical: as an outsider to the system who is courageously standing up to the entire establishment.

His withering attacks on all the previous administrations, and on Rafsanjani and Nateq Nouri, were breathtaking in the context of Iranian public discourse. He very much stole Mousavi's thunder on that score. That move played very well to those who believed that something is wrong with business-as-usual, that there is a need for change.

Moreover, Ahmadinejad succeeded in painting Mousavi as the candidate of Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Mousavi gave himself the kiss of death by falling into Ahmadinejad's trap and defending Hashemi Rafsanjani! Nobody is more a representative of "business as usual" than Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Furthermore, Mousavi was ambiguous on whether he was truly a reformist. He referred to himself as "a reformist who relies on the principles." So, he was carving for himself a space in between the reformists and the "Principlists" (conservatives).

Mousavi's positions also put him in the middle of the two groups. Examples:

(A) He criticized Ahmadinejad for being too nice to the British sailors that were captured.

(B) He criticized Ahmadinjad for his position that Iran is "a friend to the people of Israel."

* * *

(2) "Reform" is not anti-thetical to the conservative faction. Many conservatives speak well of reform. Speaking well of "reform" (which is what the TFT poll talks about) is to be distinguished from the question of whether one belongs to the political faction called "the reformists." It's like being a democrat versus being a Democrat with capital D (i.e. belonging to the Democratic party").

* * *

There is one thing we should not lose sight of here, and it is the simple fact that there is absolutely no evidence for the claim that Mousavi may have been the actual winner.

Please see the evidence of irregularities cited by Mousavi in his website: http://www.mirhussein.com/.

Even if we accept all the evidence he cites without question, none of it adds up to the election having been stolen!

There is, for example, not a shred of evidence that any vote for Mousavi was ingored, or that Ahmadinejad's numbers were boosted artificially. Even Mousavi has not (yet) claimed that there is any such evidence!

Changing the results of the elections would require a VAST, complex, and unprecedented conspiracy. Conspiracy-minded Iranians may fall for it; but there's no actual evidence for it.

Behnam said...

Prof. Cole, you write, "Given the PFTFT numbers, all of the undecideds would have had to vote for Ahmadinejad in order for him to get over 60% of the total vote."

Not at all. It doesn't follow that ALL of the undecideds would have had to vote for Ahmadinejad. It would suffice for 2/3 of the undecideds AND 2/3 of those not accounted for to end up voting for Ahmadinejad and 1/3 to end up voting for Mousavi. Then the results would come out right. And there's nothing implausible about such an outcome.

Here's a key observation:

In the TFT vote, Ahmadinejad was twice as popular as Mousavi.

That is exactly the ratio of Ahmadinejad's votes to that of Mousavi.

A Lebanese said...

Sorry, Juan, but I have to say, you are battling non-existent ghosts. The undecided may have wanted reform, but in Iran, reform is understood in many different ways. Just because those opposed to Ahmadinejad have taken on the title of "reformists" for themselves does not mean that they are, or that the supporters of reform will necessarily give their vote to them... Anyway, it is not only about political reform but also economic reform and that is much more important for most people than political reform which is centred mostly in the well-to-do suburbs of Tehran (and possibly other major cities). Iran is not only Tehran, and Iran is not only those hundreds or even thousands of thugs on the streets. It is the 45 million voters who had their say, and it is the results that came out of the ballot box, which there is no proof they were fake..... Also, it is totally untrue what you and others have been propagating that the youth are mostly with Moussavi. And it is also untrue that almost all supporters of Ahmadinejad are Religious fanatics. There are women in Ahmadinejad rallies that cover their hair to the extent that women supporters of Moussavi do(with a lot of hair showing). Ahmadinejad has a diverse support base, more so than Moussavi. And that may be the cause of the landslide. The landslide is not unexpected or impossible. It actually makes a lot of sense. The rumors that are flying around are ridiculous. The number I keep hearing is that Ahmadinejad has won 5.8 million whereas Karroubi has won 13 million and Moussavi 19 million. How utterly ridiculous (besides the fact that it does not give Moussavi victory in the 1st round, and is far lower than what Moussavi claimed before the polls closed). Moussavi supporters were saying, as early as February, that Karroubi was a ridiculous candidate that stood no chance at all. Now they are claiming that Karroubi would've won 13 million votes? Give me a break. The numbers Karroubi received officially make more sense, if you compare with Moussavis' supporters words in February. There is a bigger chance that they were more honest back then because they did not face the shock of defeat... Anyway, the two minor candidates' results are not surprising at all, given how polarizing the elections have been and how the main run off was really between Ahmadinejad & Moussavi to begin with... It makes no sense that the "reformists" would've split up their vote in such a manner, especially that Karroubi was not a serious candidate at all (he had promised to give every Iranian $60 if he was elected in 2005 -- and most "reformists" had to laugh at that)... So please, quit spreading propaganda and chasing ghosts that do not exist.. The fact that there are rumors flying around (all of which have either been unsubstantiated or proven false) does not mean the votes are rigged. And the fact that there are thugs on the street burning down public and private property and engaging in hooliganism sure as hell does not mean that the voting was rigged... there was more fraud (and bribing that reached $1 billion) in the elections in Lebanon than there could ever be in Iran, and yet, the world hailed the outcome of the "free and fair" elections here... because the pro-American side won.

A Lebanese said...

Also, it is not true that in the two Azeri-populated provinces, Ahmadinejad won... In the West Azerbaijan province, Moussavi won (656,508 votes versus Ahmadinejad's 623,946), whereas in the East Az. province, Ahmadinejad won, and not by a huge margin you make it to be (1,131,111 versus Moussavi's 837,858)...... It seems you've made your mind that an Azeri can only vote for an Azeri! And maybe you will now come out and say that Jews in the U.S would only vote for a Jewish candidate if any was running against a non-Jewish one! How ridiculous and racist and stereotyping! Anyway, the official results are out -- released just a while ago by the Interior Ministry.

A Lebanese said...

Another thing is that Moussavi did win in the City of Tehran (2,166,245 versus 1,809,855). If the votes were rigged, you would expect Ahmadinejad to have won in Tehran, which is HUGELY SYMBOLIC. After all, he was the MAYOR of Tehran, and Tehran is the most populous city in Iran and its capital... Ahmadinejad won Tehran PROVINCE, but only by a difference of less than 400,000 votes. 3,819,945 vs. 3,371,523.

Robert Naiman said...

Dear Juan: you don't seem to be accounting for the fact that the TFT sample included people who did not vote on election day.

If you had 45% of the vote in a poll whose sample included 15% nonvoters - the official turnout figure was 85% - then on election day, if the poll is predictive, you're going to have 45/85 of the vote, or 53%.

Thus, by same calculation that you do, if you allocate 60% of the undecideds for the opposition, and you account for the nonvoters, the TFT poll would indeed predict an absolute majority for Ahmadinejad in the first round.

Tosk said...

Let us assume that Professor Cole is 100% correct in his analysis above. Moussavi and his campaign claim that HE was the one with 60-some percent.

Looking at the TFT polls that would mean Moussavi would have to get his 14%, PLUS ONE HUNDRED percent of the 27% that were undecided, PLUS ONE HUNDRED percent of the 22% that didn't figure in the poll i.e. 14% + 27% + 22% = 63%

Exactly how likely is this scenario? Doesn't say much for the credibility of Moussavi's campaign.

Additionally, Moiussavi claimed victory before polls closed. Now this purportedly was because his campaign was notified by ther Interior Ministry that they had won. Apparently the Moussavi campaign was OK with this. However, later when the result was announced the other way, all of a sudden the speed of the announcement meant that this "proved" fraud because there was no way the count could be done so fast. So, Moussavi ahead, sure they can count that fast; Ahmedinajad ahead (several hours later), no way they could count that fast.

Bottom line: Very little credibility on Moussavi campaign side. We can now argue which of the two (Ahmedinajad and Moussavi) have more of a very small amount of credibility.

Only thing sure, Iranian people the losers.

Yes, I missed it, thanks. Again, though the article doesn't provide anything but speculation and conjecture. A lot more evidence in the actual poll and analysis of the poll indicates that it was legit. See Prof. Juan Cole's much more sophisticated analysis above, but his argument is disproved as well in the comments section of his own blog no less.

 

Kwame, I love how you're crusading for the victory of Ahmadinejad. What is your biggest motivation in your fight?

 

That Kwame supports the lunatic does not surprise me at all.

 

I've also noticed people like Sweet Lou 4 2 saying the speed in which they counted the ballots proves somehow that it was a fraudulent election. Again, more speculation. Iran has lotsa of experience handling large elections so I'm sure they have a solid system in place to handle these things. But here's the real kicker, as one of the guys commented in Juan Cole's blog above, according to Mousavi, an anonymous source told him he won the election before the polls closed. This was fine with people, but when the final results were calculated and Ahmadinejad won, somehow it became a fraud. I don't think anybody told the Mousavi camp they won, Mousavi and company just said that so they can create problems once the final results were announced.

I've asked this question to geeimsobored, but received no reply. If the results were reversed and Mousavi had won this way, would people still be calling the election a fraud? I can only imagine what they would be calling Ahmadinejad's supporters if they demonstrated and protested the results. Trouble makers, threats to democracy, etc..

For those of you so concerned about these protests, what should the Iranian government do if people are rioting and committing acts of violence?

Where has all this concern and outrage been when Israel routinely kills unarmed demonstrators in Palestine and kills innocent civilians?

Also, for those of you so concerned about elections in the Middle East, where have you been since 1981 when Hosni Mubarak became the dictator in Egypt and holds "elections" where he regularly wins 99% of the vote while the opposition candidate is in jail while people are "voting?" After all, Egypt is a US sponsored dictatorship. They get billions of our dollars each year, yet here's what the US had to say last time they held a presidential election:

Bush Congratulates Egyptian President, People on Election

http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2005/September/20050911120639lebahcb0.2090723.html

Last question for now is that since the Iranian government has agreed to do a recount, will that satisfy people? I'm guessing nothing will.

Here's some more articles to balance out the largely one-sided perspective here in this thread:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/201934

"Your people, sir—your people is a great beast!" the American founding father Alexander Hamilton is supposed to have spluttered at a dinner party more than two centuries ago. He was not a fan of popular democracy, much less of what would later be called populism: he deemed the people too emotional, too volatile, too inclined to vote against their own best interests. And there probably are a good number of analysts in Europe and the United States who feel that way about the voters who just returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power in Iran.

How could they be so … beastly? What happened to all those charming, articulate young men and women in North Tehran, interviewed again and again on Western television? They were so enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's main opponent, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. They were excited about the prospect of more freedoms. They thought Ahmadinejad was a failure and an embarrassment, and they really seemed to like us Americans. Indeed, they seemed almost to be like us Americans. Didn't they speak for the real Iran?

Actually, no. It appears that the working classes and the rural poor—the people who do not much look or act or talk like us—voted overwhelmingly for the scruffy, scrappy president who looks and acts and talks more or less like them. And while Mousavi and his supporters are protesting and even scuffling with police, they are just as likely to be overwhelmed in the streets as they were at the polls...

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090615_western_misconceptions_meet_iranian_reality

Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality

June 15, 2009 | 1745 GMT


By George Friedman


In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.

The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch’s modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years — Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn’t speak Farsi all that well.

The second group of Iran experts regarded the shah as a repressive brute, and saw the revolution as aimed at liberalizing the country. Their sources were the professionals and academics who supported the uprising — Iranians who knew what former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini believed, but didn’t think he had much popular support. They thought the revolution would result in an increase in human rights and liberty. The experts in this group spoke even less Farsi than the those in the first group.
Misreading Sentiment in Iran

Limited to information on Iran from English-speaking opponents of the regime, both groups of Iran experts got a very misleading vision of where the revolution was heading — because the Iranian revolution was not brought about by the people who spoke English. It was made by merchants in city bazaars, by rural peasants, by the clergy — people Americans didn’t speak to because they couldn’t. This demographic was unsure of the virtues of modernization and not at all clear on the virtues of liberalism. From the time they were born, its members knew the virtue of Islam, and that the Iranian state must be an Islamic state.

Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization — a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook “iPod liberalism,” the idea that anyone who listens to rock ‘n’ roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran — a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.

There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand — but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.

Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would probably reach people who had phones and lived in Tehran and other urban areas. Among those, Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite different.

Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.
Ahmadinejad’s Popularity

It also misses a crucial point: Ahmadinejad enjoys widespread popularity. He doesn’t speak to the issues that matter to the urban professionals, namely, the economy and liberalization. But Ahmadinejad speaks to three fundamental issues that accord with the rest of the country.

First, Ahmadinejad speaks of piety. Among vast swathes of Iranian society, the willingness to speak unaffectedly about religion is crucial. Though it may be difficult for Americans and Europeans to believe, there are people in the world to whom economic progress is not of the essence; people who want to maintain their communities as they are and live the way their grandparents lived. These are people who see modernization — whether from the shah or Mousavi — as unattractive. They forgive Ahmadinejad his economic failures.

Second, Ahmadinejad speaks of corruption. There is a sense in the countryside that the ayatollahs — who enjoy enormous wealth and power, and often have lifestyles that reflect this — have corrupted the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad is disliked by many of the religious elite precisely because he has systematically raised the corruption issue, which resonates in the countryside.

Third, Ahmadinejad is a spokesman for Iranian national security, a tremendously popular stance. It must always be remembered that Iran fought a war with Iraq in the 1980s that lasted eight years, cost untold lives and suffering, and effectively ended in its defeat. Iranians, particularly the poor, experienced this war on an intimate level. They fought in the war, and lost husbands and sons in it. As in other countries, memories of a lost war don’t necessarily delegitimize the regime. Rather, they can generate hopes for a resurgent Iran, thus validating the sacrifices made in that war — something Ahmadinejad taps into. By arguing that Iran should not back down but become a major power, he speaks to the veterans and their families, who want something positive to emerge from all their sacrifices in the war.

Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad’s favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran — something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Upper East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn’t win.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it’s a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then proceeded to gut the constitution. Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.
The Road Ahead: More of the Same

The question now is what will happen next. Internally, we can expect Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and we suspect that Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

Certainly, hopes that a new political leadership would cut back on Iran’s nuclear program have been dashed. The champion of that program has won, in part because he championed the program. We still see Iran as far from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon, but certainly the Obama administration’s hopes that Ahmadinejad would either be replaced — or at least weakened and forced to be more conciliatory — have been crushed. Interestingly, Ahmadinejad sent congratulations to U.S. President Barack Obama on his inauguration. We would expect Obama to reciprocate under his opening policy, which U.S. Vice President Joe Biden appears to have affirmed, assuming he was speaking for Obama. Once the vote fraud issue settles, we will have a better idea of whether Obama’s policies will continue. (We expect they will.)

What we have now are two presidents in a politically secure position, something that normally forms a basis for negotiations. The problem is that it is not clear what the Iranians are prepared to negotiate on, nor is it clear what the Americans are prepared to give the Iranians to induce them to negotiate. Iran wants greater influence in Iraq and its role as a regional leader acknowledged, something the United States doesn’t want to give them. The United States wants an end to the Iranian nuclear program, which Iran doesn’t want to give.

On the surface, this would seem to open the door for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Former U.S. President George W. Bush did not — and Obama does not — have any appetite for such an attack. Both presidents blocked the Israelis from attacking, assuming the Israelis ever actually wanted to attack.

For the moment, the election appears to have frozen the status quo in place. Neither the United States nor Iran seem prepared to move significantly, and there are no third parties that want to get involved in the issue beyond the occasional European diplomatic mission or Russian threat to sell something to Iran. In the end, this shows what we have long known: This game is locked in place, and goes on.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=E47D1CF2-18FE-70B2-A8A86265132AF194

Ahmadinejad won. Get over it
By: Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
June 15, 2009 12:01 PM EST

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.

Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive elections at the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. Manipulation has always been there, as it is in many other countries.

But upsets occur — as, most notably, with Mohammed Khatami’s surprise victory in the 1997 presidential election. Moreover, “blowouts” also occur — as in Khatami’s reelection in 2001, Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 2005 and, we would argue, this year.

Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More important, they were oblivious — as in 2005 — to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American “Iran experts” missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents — especially his debate with Mousavi.

Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad’s provocatively impressive performance and Mousavi’s desultory one had boosted the incumbent’s standing. Ahmadinejad’s charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani’s sons — widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures — seemed to play well with voters.

Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s criticism that Mousavi’s reformist supporters, including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment program and had won nothing from the West for doing so tapped into popular support for the program — and had the added advantage of being true.

More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s election by a Western organization that was transparent about its methodology — a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 — found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly.

American “Iran experts” assumed that “disastrous” economic conditions in Iran would undermine Ahmadinejad’s reelection prospects. But the International Monetary Fund projects that Iran’s economy will actually grow modestly this year (when the economies of most Gulf Arab states are in recession). A significant number of Iranians — including the religiously pious, lower-income groups, civil servants and pensioners — appear to believe that Ahmadinejad’s policies have benefited them.

And, while many Iranians complain about inflation, the TFT poll found that most Iranian voters do not hold Ahmadinejad responsible. The “Iran experts” further argue that the high turnout on June 12 — 82 percent of the electorate — had to favor Mousavi. But this line of analysis reflects nothing more than assumptions.

Some “Iran experts” argue that Mousavi’s Azeri background and “Azeri accent” mean that he was guaranteed to win Iran’s Azeri-majority provinces; since Ahmadinejad did better than Mousavi in these areas, fraud is the only possible explanation.

But Ahmadinejad himself speaks Azeri quite fluently as a consequence of his eight years serving as a popular and successful official in two Azeri-majority provinces; during the campaign, he artfully quoted Azeri and Turkish poetry — in the original — in messages designed to appeal to Iran’s Azeri community. (And we should not forget that the supreme leader is Azeri.) The notion that Mousavi was somehow assured of victory in Azeri-majority provinces is simply not grounded in reality.



With regard to electoral irregularities, the specific criticisms made by Mousavi — such as running out of ballot paper in some precincts and not keeping polls open long enough (even though polls stayed open for at least three hours after the announced closing time) — could not, in themselves, have tipped the outcome so clearly in Ahmadinejad’s favor.

Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral fraud even by American legal standards. And, compared with the U.S. presidential election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran’s electoral process seem less significant.

In the wake of Friday’s election, some “Iran experts” — perhaps feeling burned by their misreading of contemporary political dynamics in the Islamic Republic — argue that we are witnessing a “conservative coup d’état,” aimed at a complete takeover of the Iranian state.

But one could more plausibly suggest that if a “coup” is being attempted, it has been mounted by the losers in Friday’s election. It was Mousavi, after all, who declared victory on Friday even before Iran’s polls closed. And three days before the election, Mousavi supporter Rafsanjani published a letter criticizing the leader’s failure to rein in Ahmadinejad’s resort to “such ugly and sin-infected phenomena as insults, lies and false allegations.” Many Iranians took this letter as an indication that the Mousavi camp was concerned their candidate had fallen behind in the campaign’s closing days.

In light of these developments, many politicians and “Iran experts” argue that the Obama administration cannot now engage the “illegitimate” Ahmadinejad regime. Certainly, the administration should not appear to be trying to “play” in the current controversy in Iran about the election. In this regard, President Barack Obama’s comments on Friday, a few hours before the polls closed in Iran, that “just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities” was extremely maladroit.

From Tehran’s perspective, this observation undercut the credibility of Obama’s acknowledgement, in his Cairo speech earlier this month, of U.S. complicity in overthrowing a democratically elected Iranian government and restoring the shah in 1953.

The Obama administration should vigorously rebut any argument against engaging Tehran following Friday’s vote. More broadly, Ahmadinejad’s victory may force Obama and his senior advisers to come to terms with the deficiencies and internal contradictions in their approach to Iran. Before the Iranian election, the Obama administration had fallen for the same illusion as many of its predecessors — the illusion that Iranian politics is primarily about personalities and finding the right personality to deal with. That is not how Iranian politics works.

The Islamic Republic is a system with multiple power centers; within that system, there is a strong and enduring consensus about core issues of national security and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program and relations with the United States. Any of the four candidates in Friday’s election would have continued the nuclear program as Iran’s president; none would agree to its suspension.

Any of the four candidates would be interested in a diplomatic opening with the United States, but that opening would need to be comprehensive, respectful of Iran’s legitimate national security interests and regional importance, accepting of Iran’s right to develop and benefit from the full range of civil nuclear technology — including pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle — and aimed at genuine rapprochement.

Such an approach would also, in our judgment, be manifestly in the interests of the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East. It is time for the Obama administration to get serious about pursuing this approach — with an Iranian administration headed by the reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Flynt Leverett directs The New America Foundation’s Iran Project and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State university. Hillary Mann Leverett is CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. Both worked for many years on Middle East issues for the U.S. government, including as members of the National Security Council staff.

 

Where was your concern when the media wasn't even allowed in Gaza while the Israelis were massacring Palestinians?

Nobody is crusading for anything. My motivation is the truth. I've got a BA and MA in political science but I focus mainly on quantitative methods and analysis and African politics. Any comments on the stuff I actually posted?

Did you know that no Iranian incumbent candidate for president has ever lost a re-election bid?

I think people just don't wanna admit how popular Ahmadinejad is. Look at the analysis in the articles above.

To say the election was rigged is really a slap in the face of the Iranian people in my opinion who came out in record numbers to participate in this election. All the so-called experts that are calling it a fraud, from what I've read, thought Rafasanaji was going to win the last election. None of them predicted Ahmadinejad's victory. They don't have much credibility in my eyes.

In my opinion, Iran, overall, is still a conservative Muslim country. The people in general are deeply religious. There's a reason Ahmadinejad is called a populist and appeals to the average person in Iran. This and the last election demonstrated that.

I think the poster Ari made this point earlier, but it's worth repeating, because of the irony. For the longest time the West hasn't even accepted the legitimacy of the Iranian government and said that elections don't matter in the country and that the President has no power. But now they're so focused on calling this one particular presidential election a fraud. Whether they realize it or not, they've tacitly accepted the legitimacy of the political system and subconsciously admitted that Iran is a democracy of some sort and that their elections matter.

So I'm just supposed to accept what everybody here says or the media or the so-called experts who didn't even know who Ahmadinjad was last election when they predicted Rafsanjani was going to run away with it? Apparently a majority of Iranians support the "lunatic" too. Cmon justtxyank my man, you can do better than that.

 

Kwame, I haven't said that there was fraud and I thought the incumbent would win. But if this leads to Iran loosening the reigns on the people, then let them think it was fraud.

 

"No one in their right mind can believe" the official results from Friday's contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi's charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers "in the worst way possible."

"A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy," he declared in comments on his official Web site. "I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to 'sell their religion,' and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God."

 

How/why in the world would you suppose Major wouldn't be upset about that, too???? I know the guy well enough to know that he'd be every bit as upset about that as he is about this.

 

Max, never stop posting.

 

People like Sweet Lou 4 2 never said it PROVES anything, just merely that those who are experts in elections said that even votes in the USA aren't counted that fast - and that with hand counting it's not possible to count votes that fast.

The only SPECULATION is on your part:

That my friend is the very definition of speculation. Please do two things if you want a response.

1. At least try not to be a hypocrit in the next sentence you write.
2. Please shorten your posts.

Thanks,
-People like Sweet Lou 4 2