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Iran election: now come the caveats
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have won the election - and Mir Hossein Mousavi may not be the reformist that he’s cracked up to be
While supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi continue to protest at President Ahmadinejad's victory in last Friday's disputed election, two caveats are beginning to emerge: first, that Ahmadinejad may well have won fair and square; second, that the policies of Mousavi may not be nearly as reformist as his supporters and international observers would wish.
These factors explain why Barack Obama is resisting pressure to side with Iran's opposition.
The American President Mr Obama said in a TV interview that he believed Iranian voices should be heard, but added: "It is not productive, given the history of US and Iranian relations to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections."
He also said: "The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised."
This point was raised on British television last night by the Chicago-based Iranian human rights lawyer Lily Mazahery. She told Jon Snow on Channel 4 News that Mousavi's actual policies could be a big disappointment to his enthusiastic supporters, reminding viewers that Mousavi served as Ayatollah Khomeini's prime minister in the 1980s, "a time of egregious violations of human rights in Iran".
Mazahery believes the young people seen protesting in Tehran are fighting for greater rights and freedoms than Mousavi will ever offer them. "If he is elected president, he will carry out what he sees as the vision of Khomeini," she warned.
Another reason for Obama's reluctance to "meddle" are western intelligence reports which suggest that Ahmadinejad might have genuinely won the election.
This point about the election is made forcibly by the former CIA operative and Middle East expert Robert Baer in an article for Time magazine headlined 'Don't Assume Ahmadinejad Really Lost'.
He argues that too many Western commentators are looking at the crisis in Iran "through the narrow prism of Iran's liberal middle class - an intelligentsia that is addicted to the internet and American music and is more ready to talk to the Western press".
Baer writes: "Before we settle on the narrative that there has been a hardline takeover in Iran, an illegitimate coup d'etat, we need to seriously consider the possibility that there has been a popular hardline takeover, an electoral mandate for Ahmadinejad and his policies.
"One of the only reliable, Western polls conducted in the run-up to the vote gave the election to Ahmadinejad - by higher percentages than the 63 per cent he actually received."
Baer also makes the point that most of the images of protestors have come from areas of north Tehran where the educated and well-off live. "These are also the same neighbourhoods that little doubt voted for Mir Hossein Mousavi, who now claims that the election was stolen. But I have yet to see any pictures from south Tehran, where the poor live. Or from other Iranian slums." ·
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Ahmadinejad did not win even at the rural areas as they claim, because I have my relatives living in a rural area, the forms which were give at the rural area did not have the candidates codes like the ones we had, and pictures started with Ahmadinejhad,and end with Mosavi, so majority wrote number 4 as it was Mosavi as the last one and Ahmadinejads code was 44, so the computer will just read a code not a name,while Mosavis code was 77! the rural votes of Mosavi were coded 44 by the computer as it could not read 4!! who said he won at the rural areas is wrong! even the foreign living Iranians had the same problems! no one will want a president whos 4 years was full of crime,inflation, high percentage of drug addicted youths, people being executed without give achance to defend themselves! and a new law which says if your caught drunk three time you will be hanged!! which Verse from the Quran says that?! 80 whips are not enough, now there executing them, but no any punishment for aDrug addict person let them get more addicted until they die! no one wants this man!! he is a facist a dictator! down with Dictator!!
The only people who are hoping that Armadinejad really won by a landslide election of more than 63% are the Israelies, if a more liberal, democratic regime did arise from the ashes of the Islamic revolution they might be forced to hand over ALL of their nuclear weapons like the Libyans
It seems funny to me that the election was generally believed to be free and fair up to the time when it appeared that Ahmadinejad had won. I do not know who won - who does? but it doesn't seem impossible that the incumbent should win and just because it is POSSIBLE that he rigged the election does not mean that he did.
There does appear to be several indications of irregularities, such as Ahmadinejad declaring his winning percentage before the count occurred, and improbable wins in particular areas. Obama's restraint is probably more due to an acute awareness that, given the history of past US (and British) interventions in Iran to undermine democracy, any pressure on the part of the US may have the opposite to the intended effect, and consolidate support behind the existing regime. There is also probably a pragmatic recognition that, whatever the final outcome in Iran, there will be a need to continue to engage the Iranian government.
This is the first, (and only) account that I have read that advises dispassionate analysis, not only of the election itself, but also the correspondence between the result and the forecasts. Unless my memory fails me, the "experts" predicted an outcome pretty much in line with the actuality. It may not be what some of us would like to have happened, but it is surely none of our business...unless someone is contemplating another "revolution", like the "orange" and "tulip" so nicely engineered from overseas.
Utter nonsense. Crowds of tens of thousands of peasants kissing Ahmadinejad's photograph, hundreds of thousands filling the streets in opposition. To belittle this as 'areas of north Tehran where the educated and well-off live' belies the fact that demonstrations are occurring across Iran, and to dismiss them all as 'an intelligentsia that is addicted to the internet and American music' is an insult to people who want freedom from the oppressive Islamist ayatollahs who decided their peasant mouthpiece won. Is Horne 'addicted to the internet'? What a fatuous dilettante attitude.