Iranians may be ready to vote Ahmadinejad out of power

Don't expect change in Iran unless people go to the streets but that would be detrimental for the US cause and the war against terror.

I wonder why they dont do what Jimmy Carter did back in the day, sending tapes of Khomenei's speeches to the general populace, they could do that with a person who can change iran. but jimmy carter was an evil man, what he did in El Salvador, in Iran and countless other countries is still what we feel today.

 

Dadash, I understand. I feel helpless here in America, but it seems as though Iranians aren't doing much to help their situation anyway.

Do you know why there is such a strong atmosphere of complacency within the population? All of a sudden students and the rest of the youth get riled up for these elections... as though it even matters! Those candidates are all the same ****.

 

because they watch the elections in the united states, were inspired and thought that change could and in most instance should happen, but nothing does happen.

 

But I'm talking about their overall reaction to the IR in general? After such a long time of distrust and detachment from the people towards the government, why has there been no legitimate attempt at getting rid of it?

 

there has been, there was a student rally during Khatami's reign, before they could they were killed off, the leader of the student uprising was shot dead during his sleep.

a lot of attempts have been made but the majority of it have been nonviolent almost Gandhi like, I always laugh when I say that, Jimmy Carter always saw Khomeini as a Gandhi like figure, look how that turn out.

 

I suggest reading this: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/12/obama_on_the_iranian_elections

 

Rafsanjani is worthless, a liar and a piece of poop, Id rather vote for a tortoise than this man, he is vile, evil and despicable./

 

Again, I ask you why it seems completely ridiculous? If the guy the West wanted would have won like this, nobody would be saying any of this stuff. People can't even fathom the idea that a large majority actually support the winner.

This article sums the election pretty well:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/iranian-election


Wishful thinking from Tehran

Since the revolution, academics and pundits have predicted the collapse of the Iranian regime. This week, they did no better


* Abbas Barzegar
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday 13 June 2009 11.40 BST
* larger | smaller
* Article history

I have been in Iran for exactly one week covering the 2009 Iranian election carnival. Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.

Of course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day's events.

As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting. It is true that Mousavi supporters jammed Tehran traffic for hours every night over the last week, though it was rarely mentioned that they did so only in the northern well-to-do neighborhoods of the capital. Women did relax their head covers and young men did dance in the street.

On Monday night at least 100,000 of the former prime minister's supporters set up a human chain across Tehran. But, hours before I had attended a mass rally for the incumbent president that got little to no coverage in the western press because, on account of the crowds, he never made it inside the hall to give his speech. Minimal estimates from that gathering have been placed at 600,000 (enthusiasts say a million). From the roof I watched as the veiled women and bearded men of all ages poured like lava.

But the failure to properly gauge Iran's affairs is hardly a new phenomenon. When the 1979 revolution shattered the military dictatorship of America's strongest ally in the region few experts outside of the country suspected that the Islamic current would emerge as the leading party.

But in Iran, even the secular intellectual Jalal Al-e Ahmad, author of the infamous Occidentosis predicted the collapse of the regime at the hands of Islamic movement well over a decade before the fateful events of 1979. The maverick French philosopher, Michel Foucault, also made the right bet as he reported the events from the street – an insight that his many admirers still shy from. Since the revolution, academics, intellectuals and pundits have predicted the imminent collapse of the regime. As of today, they have done no better.

Such anomalies can only be explained by a longue duree. Iran is a deeply religious society. Of the Shah's mistakes nepotism, autocracy, and repression were fought by communists and liberals for decades with no success, but it was his attack on the religious establishment that led to his almost overnight demise.

Since then common Iranians have applied their ideals through the ballot box. In 1997 as the ashes of the Iran-Iraq war settled and the country saw a decade relative stability, voters came out in mass to support the former president-cleric Khatami against his rival, Natiq Nouri, a senior member of the establishment. Western reporters saw this in terms of a grand generational divide: young freedom loving liberals against elder conservative clerics. But it was really a vote for the ideal of honesty and piety against allegations of entrenched corruption. Many of those same Khatami supporters voted for Ahmedinejad yesterday, despite the fact that Khatami's face was on every one of Mousavi's campaign posters.

For over a week the same social impulses of anti-corruption, populism, and religious piety that led to the revolution have been on the streets available to anyone who wanted to report on them. Ahmedinejad, for most in the country, embodies those ideals. Since he came into office he has refused to wear a suit, refused to move out of the home he inherited from his father, and has refused to tone down the rhetoric he uses against those he accuses of betraying the nation. When he openly accused his towering rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanji, a lion of the revolution himself, of parasitical corruption and compared his betrayal to the alleged deception against the Prophet Muhammad that led to the Sunni-Shia split 1,400 years ago, he unleashed a popular impulse that has held the imagination of the masses here for generations. That Rafsanji defended himself through Mousavi's newspaper meant the end for the reformists.

In the last week Ahmedinejad turned the election into a referendum on the very project of Iran's Islamic revolution. Their street chants yelled "Death to all those against the Supreme Leader" followed by traditional Shia rituals and elegies. It was no match for the high-spirited fun-loving youth of northern Tehran who sang "Ahmedi-bye-bye, Ahmedi-bye-bye" or "ye hafte-do hafte, Mahmud hamum na-rafte" (One week, two weeks, Mahmoud hasn't taken a shower).

Perhaps from the start Mousavi was destined to fail as he hoped to combine the articulate energies of the liberal upper class with the business interests of the bazaar merchants. The Facebook campaigns and text-messaging were perfectly irrelevant for the rural and working classes who struggle to make a day's ends meet, much less have the time to review the week's blogs in an internet cafe. Although Mousavi tried to appeal to such classes by addressing the problems of inflation and poverty, they voted otherwise.

In the future, observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability. It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith – Ahmedinejad – four years ago, and the same yesterday.

• Abbas Barzegar is a PhD candidate in religious studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

 

I guess those who want change in Iran are still a minority.

I can gather that there will be zero progress in Iran-US relations in the next four years.

 

Probably because the polls didn't show this type of result, and extremely high turnout basically always favors challengers because the elections are referendums on the current leadership. Not to mention the fact that the reformer guy came out and bluntly claimed victory while Ahmadinejad stayed silent much of the day. It probably doesn't help that even Ahmadinejad's own people say that they didn't expect a result anything like this...

That's not to say it's not a legitimate result, but it certainly was not anything like what was expected.

 

So are you saying it's a ridiculous result or not? Wikipedia entry on the elections says that all the polling data was unreliable for a whole host of reasons. From what I've read all of yesterday, both were claiming victory. I haven't read anything where Ahmadinejad's own people said they didn't expect this. If you have a link, I'd be interested in reading it. It just seems like the so-called experts and Western media got it wrong again when it came to Iran like the article I posted above says. I'm no expert, but from what I can gather, the incumbent here had a much broader base of support which led to his comfortable margin of victory. The challenger seemed to have the middle and upper class vote along with the support of the urban youth while Ahmadinejad had the rural (including the youth) and lower class vote. Again, from what I understand, the latter two greatly outnumber the former three.

 

I told you guys he would win.

 

Out of the 100 or so people that I know that voted...all of them voted for Mousavi. The lesser of two evils.

Definitely rigged.

 

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There were some 30-35 voting stations here in the US for Iranian expats, I wonder if there is any voting data or exit polling from that?

Anyone?

 

I do hope they really start a revolution this time.

 

reminds me of how most Americans reacted with Saddam Hussein over Khomeini

 

Its funny how Iran is, 2500 years of history, the first declaration of human rights and at that time, the practice of religion wasnt really questionable, you could be a believer of Baal and still be given the same rights as a believer of Ahura Mazda. But, right now, its excellent, if you are a Bahai, you are considered worse than a puddle of mudd, if you are a Zoroastrian, your rights arent equal as those of a Shia... the freeing of the Jews from Babylon after the Persian Babylonian wars, another funny story, now the government of Iran wants Israel to cease to exist... the first woman general recorded, she fought during the Greo-persian wars and was the only general of the Persian forces to defeat the Greeks in the water and now women are considered lesser citizens. Really funny how things are...

if you guys have any questions about the iran-iraq war or how I like calling it, the first Persian Gulf war. ask away. I fought in the war when I was 17. I feel so old now...

 

Back then, most American citizens weren't informed about how radical Saddam Hussein was. When Saddam started the Iran/Iraq war shortly thereafter, Americans were blinded by their hatred of Iran because of the hostage crisis and anybody against Iran was considered a friend of this country.

If you took a poll in the 80s and asked people who started that bloody war, probably 75% of people here would have answered Iran.

 

Here is a joke: Mousavi supposedly lost the vote in his hometown. Yeah, right.