"raids on opposition newspapers" is putting it mildly.

Reuters:   "....Authorities, too, pushed back with ominous messages apparently seeking to undercut liberal voices: jamming text messages, blocking pro-Mousavi Web sites and Facebook and cutting off mobile phones in Teheran."


And this sort of stuff happened BEFORE the election:   WSJ 13 June 2009:   "The Ministry of Telecommunications imposed a nation-wide block of text messaging from mobiles. Mr. Mousavi's supervisors were planning to report discrepancies by text messages"

"Thousands of Mr. Mousavi's volunteer supervivsors were not issued credentials by the Interior Ministry, which runs the elections, and were barred from polling stations."

(Saturday) Mousavi's campaign said that "a group of people who identified themselves as intelligence officers entered Mr. Mousavi's campaign headquarters in northern Teheran on Friday evening demanding that the young strategists at the campaign, responsible for much of deploying new media techniques, leave the premises"

Mousavi's campaign lawyer said "in an interview that Teheran's chief prosecutor informed (him) that security agents would arrive Saturday morning with a court order to shut down all their communication operations".




As I said earlier, the thing to do now for the West (including Israel) is to KEEP OUT of this--except by reporting. Don't give Mr. A any excuse to claim the West is funding or otherwise backing (except by words) Mr. Mousavi.   And stop all saber-rattling.   Mr. A has plenty of juices in Iran to stew in without any help from us.

And this reeking "election" will, as I said, restrict his freedom to carry out his policies for the foreseeable future.



Question::   final outcome: supposedly 62.5% for Mr. A and 33.75% for Mr. Mousavi.   But there were several other candidates:    altogether they got virtually no votes? Somehow, not likely.