BS: Election in Iran

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 06:42 PM

This ain't Hungary, Eb... It's a siutaion where there are alot of folks who are liberal or moderate and even more who aren't... I don't see Russia or any other power coming in and comitting genocide... This will blow over in some regards and Iran's power base will have to make some consessions to get that to happen...

If it does become genocide then Khomeine has one heck of alot of folks in the world watching... That is why I think that it won't get out of hand...

But if it does, its gonna be one heck of a mess to clean up...

Right now, Obama is doing the only thing he can do... Congress, of course, will do the woff-woff... That is fine... It sends one message and Obama is sending another and that other message is that he realizes, as a pragmatist, that invading Iran ain't all that smart...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 06:41 PM

I'm suspicious of any articles in the mainstream US press that include calls for outside intervention from people within Iran. I've seen reports (can't remember where just now) that a lot of reports that appear to be coming out of Iran are actually coming from other places, including some countries that have an agenda of their own for wanting to attack Iran.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 03:53 PM

Khomeini has never seen a crisis like this

Well, he wouldn't have, since he's been dead a good few years. You mean 'Khamenei Has Never Seen a Crisis Like This' Not the same man at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 03:22 PM

This is truly scary. I do NOT want the US to unilaterally step in but remember Hungary 1956? We don't want to experience that again.

The Leader Speaks

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 01:39 PM

Khomeini has never seen a crisis like this, says Iran expert in der Spiegel.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: number 6
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 12:20 PM

banging your shoe on the table

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 12:15 PM

Iran was in the process of establishing itself as a democracy when the US, in a CIA backed coupe, crushed Iran's fledgling democracy and installed the Shah in its place. It's not that Iranians aren't capable of understanding democracy - but they understand the geopolitical realities that countries in the Middle East face with regards to Western powers. They understand that it's very difficult to establish a free and open democracy in the face of the efforts by Western governments to control all of the resource rich and militarily strategic regions of the world at the expense of the local populations.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: plnelson
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 08:22 AM

I have no idea why this story still has legs.   In terms of US and regional interests there is very little difference between candidates A and M.    The idiot US press has managed to convince lots of Americans that this was a contest between a hard-liner and a moderate, but they are both hard-liners!   And people are acting "shocked, shocked" that Iran might manipulate an election. The most amazing example of this idiocy is the Persian-American population, many of who were supporters of the Shah, so should certainly know the score.

One can only hope that Allatolah Khamenei's comments today will disabuse even the uninformed of any doubts about who's in charge in Iran.

The GOP has been calling on Obama to take a stronger position on the matter, but there's nothing useful that can come of that. Iran, like many of the countries in that region, including Iraq and Afghanistan, has no real cultural understanding of democracy and it's naive to think that we can change that by banging our shoe on the table.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 07:36 AM

Well, Obama is in a damed-if-you-do-damed-if-you-don't situation with Iran... Whomever wins (selected) will be the one with whom Obama will have to negotiate...

This is not a time for rah-rah, let's go to war, mentality... We had 8 years of cowboy foriegn policy...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ron Davies
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 07:19 AM

Anybody who really thinks that Obama would rather negotiate with Mr. A than with Mousavi should give his or her head a shake and actually start thinking.   If the shoe fits.....

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 09:34 PM

"Obama's policy now requires getting past the election controversies quickly so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government. This will be difficult as long as opposition protests continue and the government appears to be either unsettled or too brutal to do business with. What Obama needs is a rapid return to peace and quiet in Iran, not continued ferment. His goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.

If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what "realism" is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China's leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats -- though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest. We'll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate. "






Ron,

You'll have to do better than attacking the person. Try looking and commenting on what he said, instead of who is saying it.

Unless you can't find anything to disagree with, of course. Then continue to put the person talking down.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ron Davies
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 09:27 PM

Kagan co-founded "Project for New American Century", advised Kemp, then in 2008 advised McCain.

I'm not in the least disappointed in or surprised by Kagan's column--but it's painfully obvious how much weight to assign it.

Obama's desire to negotiate with Mr. A is all in the head of the columnist--and possibly also that of the illustrious poster who favored us with this column.

You'll have to do better, BB.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 04:27 PM

I was disappointed in the Robert Kagan piece as rather a shallow view of Obama's intentions and practise. The Bush attempt to address the 'people of Iran' over the heads of its leaders was likely to impinge on neither, meaning its true purpose was to address the American electorate. Obama supposedly pitching his address at the rulers of Iran was more likely aimed at the people of Iran.

I've likewise not been impressed by the reaction of McCain, also Lieberman, who want to see a stronger public stance on the part of the Obama administration. Obama has pitched his viewpoint precisely correct: the Administration has no intent to interfere, but wishes the Iranian people's democratic choices to be clear. The Ahmadinajad administration has tried to blame his problems on American interference once again. Obama has defused this in advance.

The people of Iran have thirsted for democratic freedoms for a long time. It was thwarted in '53 by Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA. Last week it was thwarted by the Iranian Council. It is not a delicate distinction, it is barely ironic.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 01:18 PM

here is a petition to get Google to go green for one day

http://www.whereistheirvote.x10hosting.com/

click

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 12:14 PM

Your Regime Is Finished (Afshin Ellian in an open letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei)

...every response you have given in the face of non-violent protest has been one of more oppression and more violence. ...Iran's semi-official anti-Semitism and tyrannical rule towards its own people reveals the moral failure of the regime that you lead. Millions of people in Teheran and other Iranian cities have condemned this moral bankruptcy by demonstrating and by voting for Mir Hossein Mousavi. Your regime is finished. Surely you realize that too, Excellency? And if you have not realized it yet, then surely you, just like the Shah some 30 years ago, must have heard the hundreds of thousands in Teheran shouting "Allahu Akabar, down with the dictatorship!...The truth is that the people despise the ruling elite. Your puppet Ahmadinejad is reviled. If you continue to use violence against your people, then you have obviously learned nothing from the tragic fate of the last Shah of Persia.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 10:23 AM

There clearly has been an organized effort to inflate the election returns in favor of Ahmadinejad. National protest of this apparent stealing of the election may in fact void the results. There even seems division within the Ruling Council on this question.

Kagan's opinion while interesting for discussion seems too cynical an assessment of what Obama is saying and doing. As "outsiders" our role needs to be circumspect, while monitoring what both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi's supporters are saying and doing.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 02:59 AM

"Robert Tait reports that a centrist website has found that voter turnout in at least 30 towns exceeded 100%.

In the most specific allegations of rigging yet to emerge, the centrist Ayandeh website – which stayed neutral during the campaign – reported that 26 provinces across the country showed participation figures so high they were either hitherto unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered electors.

Taft, a town in the central province of Yazd, had a turnout of 141%, the site said, quoting an unnamed "political expert". Kouhrang, in Chahar Mahaal Bakhtiari province, recorded a 132% turnout while Chadegan, in Isfahan province, had 120%."

from the www.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 02:12 AM

Commentary from an Iranian-Canadian on the subject of the election...

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/tehran-is-burning-but-who-is-fuelling-the-fires----based-on-opinion-polls-conducted-a-few-weeks-before-the-election-by-terr.html

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ron Davies
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 09:52 PM

Interesting the way people swing wildly from overenthusiasm about Mousavi to a dismissal of him as Ahmadinejad Lite.

It seems that if he were in charge he would certainly pursue nuclear power for Iran--but he has also been quoted as saying, that as for the nuclear question: "The second issue is related to concerns about the diversion of this program towards weaponization. Personally I view this second part, which is both technical and political, negotiable." (interview with Time magazine this past Friday, as reported in WSJ 17 June 2009 (today).

And I don't think he has denied the Holocaust.

Since one of the main goals here, perhaps the main one, is to convince Israel it need not attack Iran to deal with a perceived nuclear threat, Mousavi would be progress over Mr A. Especially if Mr. A is now trying to accumulate more power.

Perhaps the most significant question in all this, as I noted earlier, is Khamenei's views on these issues.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 07:12 PM

Obama, Siding With the Regime

By Robert Kagan
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The turmoil in Iran since last week's election has confused the foreign policy debate here in the United States in interesting ways. Supporters of President Obama, who until very recently had railed against the Bush administration's "freedom agenda" and who insisted on a new "realism," have suddenly found themselves rooting for freedom and democracy in Iran. And in their desire to attribute all good things to the work of President Obama, they have even suggested that the ferment in Iran is due to Obama's public appeals to Iranians and Muslims.

If so, this will be one of those great ironies of history. For, in fact, Obama never meant to spark political upheaval in Iran, much less encourage the Iranian people to take to the streets. That they are doing so is not good news for the president but, rather, an unwelcome complication in his strategy of engaging and seeking rapprochement with the Iranian government on nuclear issues.

One of the great innovations in the Obama administration's approach to Iran, after all, was supposed to be its deliberate embrace of the Tehran rulers' legitimacy. In his opening diplomatic gambit, his statement to Iran on the Persian new year in March, Obama went out of his way to speak directly to Iran's rulers, a notable departure from George W. Bush's habit of speaking to the Iranian people over their leaders' heads. As former Clinton official Martin Indyk put it at the time, the wording was carefully designed "to demonstrate acceptance of the government of Iran."

This approach had always been a key element of a "grand bargain" with Iran. The United States had to provide some guarantee to the regime that it would no longer support opposition forces or in any way seek its removal. The idea was that the United States could hardly expect the Iranian regime to negotiate on core issues of national security, such as its nuclear program, so long as Washington gave any encouragement to the government's opponents. Obama had to make a choice, and he made it. This was widely applauded as a "realist" departure from the Bush administration's quixotic and counterproductive idealism.

It would be surprising if Obama departed from this realist strategy now, and he hasn't. His extremely guarded response to the outburst of popular anger at the regime has been widely misinterpreted as reflecting concern that too overt an American embrace of the opposition will hurt it, or that he wants to avoid American "moralizing." (Obama himself claimed yesterday that he didn't want the United States to appear to be "meddling.")

But Obama's calculations are quite different. Whatever his personal sympathies may be, if he is intent on sticking to his original strategy, then he can have no interest in helping the opposition. His strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the government's efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in league with the opposition's efforts to prolong the crisis.

It's not that Obama preferred a victory by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He probably would have been happy to do business with Mir Hossein Mousavi, even if there was little reason to believe Mousavi would have pursued a different approach to the nuclear issue. But once Mousavi lost, however fairly or unfairly, Obama objectively had no use for him or his followers. If Obama appears to lend support to the Iranian opposition in any way, he will appear hostile to the regime, which is precisely what he hoped to avoid.


Obama's policy now requires getting past the election controversies quickly so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government. This will be difficult as long as opposition protests continue and the government appears to be either unsettled or too brutal to do business with. What Obama needs is a rapid return to peace and quiet in Iran, not continued ferment. His goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.

If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what "realism" is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China's leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats -- though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest. We'll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 10:39 AM

Carol-

You are correct with regard to "or."

And Obama's public statements yesterday also make the same point.

In general the expectations as broadcast by the mainline media prior to the election were amazingly overblown.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 10:28 AM

I think the suggestion is that he is neither. And that's what the "or" would be doing in that sentence.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 09:51 AM

With the "or" in it, it can be read as being two quite different things.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 09:15 AM

...a progressive candidate, or potential friend to the West...

Is the suggestion that those are the same thing?

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 02:44 AM

They'll have to find them first, Peace - 14 million ballot papers reportedly missing. And they'll have to get permission for the independent observers to enter the country - that could be a toughie. And then to get the Council of the 12 Wise Men to accept the results...

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 01:34 AM

Easy enough to fix the problem. Simply ask for three neutral countries to send observers and re-count the ballots.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 11:40 PM

I don't speak for the Palestinians. I speak for myself. I am paying for what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and what my government is doing to help what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. That gives me not only a right to speak up about the wrongs that are being done with my money, but a responsibility to do so.

When I read or hear Palestinians expressing their thoughts, feelings, and opinions, I do pass them along, because their voices are effectively silenced by the US media's complicity in these things by not giving what the Palestinians have to say equal coverage with what the Israeli government and the Israel first lobby in the US have to say. But that's not me speaking for them, its me passing their words along to others.

For instance, I do not try to speak for the Palestinians and try to promote either a one-state solution or a two-state solution to the problems they face. It's not my place to tell them which solution is the better one for them. But when they express a preference one way or another, I will definitely pass that along.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 09:09 PM

Well, it does look as if the election is still in play.

At the same time there is little in Moussavi's record that would lead one to believe that he is a progressive candidate, or potential friend to the West. This is Iranian politics and at best the Iranians will get a result that confirms the "will of the people" rather than a dictatorship's wishes.

However, I wish them well.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ron Davies
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 08:32 PM

"main questions..."

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ron Davies
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 08:31 PM

Ali Gharib has it right. Which is why some are shouting: "Death to the dictator" (meaning Mr. A).

As I noted earlier, the main question now are:

1)   Has Mr. A seized some power which used to belong to Khamenei?

2)   If so, how long will Khamenei put up with this?

I understand Mr A has already said he would appropriate some some land now held by various religious figures and give that land "to the poor".

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: C. Ham
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 02:24 PM

I would say that people who don't live in Iran certainly don't speak for the Iranians.

I love that line. It makes me wonder how someone in North Carolina, or whereever, thinks she speaks for Palestinians.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 01:30 PM

This is interesting...

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/ali-gharib-writesthe-regime-is-not-going-to-collapse-and-thats-not-the-goal-of-any-of-those-marching-tehrans-streetsthis-i.html

(There's video of people shouting from windows in the above link.)


Ali Gharib writes:

The regime is NOT going to collapse. And that's not the goal of any of those marching Tehran's streets.

This is not about ending the Islamic Revolution, it's about getting back to it. For all his talk of returning it to its roots, Ahmadinejad's slow crawl from a defacto dictatorship to a dejure one is a shift away from the Revolution, which was, let's not forget, first and foremost about getting rid of the dictatorial and tyrannical Shah, not about Islam and that state.

Moussavi has made clear that the people are behind him not for his sake, but for the sake of the Republic that they love. Likewise, the emerging ritual of standing at windows, balconies, and rooftops at around 10pm and shouting "Allah-o-akbar" is a call of hope for the idealism of 1979 -- hardly a time an anti-IRI movement would look to. I think it's the most moving thing to come out of the whole ordeal so far:

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 10:48 AM

I am following #Mousavi and @NextRevolution on Twitter, live, now. The latter is a TUMS medical student, trying to treat people. Harrowing stuff. Trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities who are blocking internet sites, twitter and facebook accounts...

You can help: If you have a Twitter acct, change the timezone to GMT+3:30 - tehran, and your location also to Tehran. By flooding it you can help confuse the censors...

This reminds me of Greece in 1974 - we did come out of that black tunnel eventually, and better than before, but it took lives to achieve it. And it looks like Iran is going through the same kind of catharsis. My heart goes out to them.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 08:04 AM

How do you count almost 40 million handwritten paper ballots in a matter of hours and declare a winner?

Well, that regularly happens in UK elections. You just need to have lots of people doing the counting in lots of places all over the country. In itself the speed of the count isn't a knockdown argument for cheating.

Which isn't to say it may not have been a fix - none of us (including the people writing comments columns in the media and online) have enough information to make it possible to reach any firm conclusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Wolfgang
Date: 16 Jun 09 - 07:56 AM

Like some times before, civil servants from the ministry of internal affairs in Iran have given information to journalists bypassing the upper management of the ministry who are loyal to Ahmadinejad. The official result was fixed long before the counting.

Ahmadinejad, according to that information, got about the same number of votes as Mousavi in the villages, but lost dismally in the towns. The real overall result was 28% for A. and 57 % for M.

That looks likely to me.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 11:51 PM

He could have told people about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 11:46 PM

If he'd received such information, what could he have done about it?

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 10:54 PM

Speed of Iran vote count called suspicious
         

Jason Keyser, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 16 mins ago

CAIRO – How do you count almost 40 million handwritten paper ballots in a matter of hours and declare a winner? That's a key question in Iran's disputed presidential election. International polling experts and Iran analysts said the speed of the vote count, coupled with a lack of detailed election data normally released by officials, was fueling suspicion around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory.

Iran's supreme leader endorsed the hard-line president's re-election the morning after Friday's vote, calling it a "divine assessment" and appearing to close the door on challenges from Iran's reformist camp. But on Monday, after two days of rioting in the streets, he ordered an investigation into the allegations of fraud.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's reformist challenger, claims he was robbed of the presidency and has called for the results to be canceled.

Mousavi's newspaper, Kalemeh Sabz, or the Green Word, reported on its Web site that more than 10 million votes were missing national identification numbers similar to U.S. Social Security numbers, which make the votes "untraceable." It did not say how it knew that information.

Mousavi said some polling stations closed early with voters still in line, and he charged that representatives of his campaign were expelled from polling centers even though each candidate was allowed one observer at each location. He has not provided evidence to support the accusations.

His supporters have reported intimidation by security forces who maintained a strong presence around polling stations.

Observers who questioned the vote said that at each stage of the counting, results released by the Interior Ministry showed Ahmadinejad ahead of Mousavi by about a 2-1 margin.

That could be unusual, polling experts noted, because results reported first from Iran's cities would likely reflect a different ratio from those reported later from the countryside, where the populist Ahmadinejad has more support among the poor.

Mousavi said the results also may have been affected by a shortage of ballot papers in the provinces of Fars and East Azerbaijan, where he had been expected to do well because he is among the country's Azeri minority. He said the shortage was despite the fact that officials had 17 million extra ballots ready.

Interior Ministry results show that Ahmadinejad won in East Azerbaijan.

The final tally was 62.6 percent of the vote for Ahmadinejad and 33.75 for Mousavi — a landslide victory in a race that was perceived to be much closer. Such a huge margin also went against the expectation that a high turnout — a record 85 percent of Iran's 46.2 million eligible voters — would boost Mousavi, whose campaign energized young people to vote. About a third of the eligible voters were under 30.

Ahmadinejad, who has significant support among the poor and in the countryside, said Sunday that the vote was "real and free" and insisted the results were fair and legitimate.

"Personally, I think that it is entirely possible that Ahmadinejad received more than 50 percent of the vote," said Konstantin Kosten, an expert on Iran with the Berlin-based German Council of Foreign Relations who spent a year from 2005-06 in Iran.

Still, he said, "there must be an examination of the allegations of irregularities, as the German government has called for."

But Iran's electoral system lacks the transparency needed to ensure a fair election, observers said. International monitors are barred from observing Iranian elections and there are no clear mechanisms to accredit domestic observers, said Michael Meyer-Resende, coordinator of the Berlin-based Democracy Reporting International, which tracked developments in the Iranian vote from outside the country.

He noted that the election was organized and overseen by two institutions that are not independent, the government's Interior Ministry and the Guardian Council, a 12-member body made up of clerics and experts in Islamic law who are closely allied to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Meyer-Resende said that to be sure of the results announced by the Interior Ministry, it must release data all the way down to the level of each polling station.

One of the central questions was how 39.2 million paper ballots could be counted by hand and final results announced by authorities in Tehran in just over 12 hours. Past elections took at least twice as long.

A new computerized system might have helped speed the process in urban centers, where most Iranians live, though it is unclear if that system was extended to every small town and village. And each ballot — on which a candidate's name was written in — would still have to be counted by hand before any data could be entered into a computer, aggregated and transmitted to the Interior Ministry in Tehran.

"I wouldn't say it's completely impossible," Meyer-Resende said. "In the case of Iran, of course, you wonder with logistical challenges whether they could do it so fast."

Susan Hyde, an assistant political science professor at Yale University who has taken part in election monitoring missions in developing countries for the Carter Center, agreed that would be uncharacteristically fast.

"If they're still using hand counting, that would be very speedy, unusually speedy," she said.

The Interior Ministry released results from a first batch of 5 million votes just an hour and a half after polling stations closed.

Over the next four hours, it released vote totals almost hourly in huge chunks of about 5 million votes — plowing through more than half of all ballots cast.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said a major rigging process would require the involvement of powerful advisory bodies, including those in which one of the other candidates and a key Mousavi backer are prominent figures.

"Given that Mohsen Rezaei, one of the other presidential candidates, is the head of the powerful Expediency Council, for instance, it is highly unlikely that he wouldn't have received any information of such a strategic plan to hijack the election," Adib-Moghaddam said.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 10:42 PM

Very interesting post, Carol! I think you raise a great many valid points.

When elections are held in Pakistan there is usually a lot of violence too, and much worse violence than is seen now in Iran, but Pakistan is still a USA ally for some reason...

America's allies are not chosen for their commitment to democracy. They are chosen for their willingness to sell their countries out to western corporate control...and for strategic reasons as well, in terms of planning future wars or maintaining existing wars.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 10:34 PM

I don't think Ahmadinejad was being described as a peacenik in that article. I think that was a device the writer was using to show how much of a warmonger Dennis Ross is.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: bobad
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 10:16 PM

From BBC News:

POST-POLL CRACKDOWN
*More than 100 opposition figures arrested, including the brother of ex-reformist President Khatami
*Local and international phone and text message services interrupted
*Social networking and newspaper websites blocked
*"Heavy electronic jamming" from inside Iran disrupts BBC Persian TV service
*International journalists arrested and asked to leave
*Iranian newspapers do not carry reports of the violence
Source: Various reports

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 09:57 PM

CarolC-

You've certainly expanded on my gut feelings as reflected in my very brief initial post to this thread.

However, there are more players involved than Mudcat posters, including the several hundred thousand who jammed the streets in Tehran today.

Oh, and evidently Khamenei is calling for an investigation into the tallying of the voting results, not something that Ahmadinejad wants to have done.

Which raises the question of what counts?

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 09:46 PM

Mr. A a peacenik---you have to have your head buried pretty far down to swallow that one.

Separate point:   I saw an interesting theory about the "election" and aftermath: WSJ columnist of Arab background says he thinks Khamenei's praise of Mr. A is so over the top, it sounds like it was written by Mr. A himself.    This indicates that Mr. A is no longer deferring to Khamenei, who is supposedly the supreme leader. So the question is how long Khamenei will put up with this--before making common cause with the dissidents.   If he does, Mr. A has big problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 04:27 AM

More interesting commentary...

http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/8020


Here's an excerpt...

A big issue in Iran - virtually never discussed in the U.S. media - is how to interpret Article 44 of the country's constitution. That article states that the economy must consist of three sectors: state-owned, cooperative and private, and that "all large-scale and mother industries" are to be entirely owned by the state. This includes the oil and gas industries, which provide the government with the majority of its revenue. This is what enables the government, in partnership with the large charity foundations, to fund the vast social safety net that allows the country's poor to live much better lives than they did under the U.S.-installed Shah.

In 2004, Article 44 was amended to allow for some privatization. Just how much, and how swiftly that process should proceed, is a fundamental dividing line in Iranian politics. Mousavi has promised to speed up the privatization process. And when he first announced he would run for the presidency, he called for moving away from an "alms-based" economy (PressTV, 4/13/09), an obvious reference to Ahmadinejad's policies of providing services and benefits to the poor.

In addition to their different class bases and approaches to the economy, Ahmadinejad presents an uncompromising front against the West, and especially against the U.S. government. This is a source of great national pride, and has produced some positive results. For example, President Obama has now actually admitted, at least in part, that it was the U.S. that in 1953 overthrew the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh.

The whole idea that tossing Ahmadinejad out of office would make it easier to change U.S. policy toward Iran is, in my opinion, very naive. Was Dr. Mossadegh a crazy demagogue? No, but he did lead the movement to nationalize Iran's oil industry. If Mousavi, as president, were to strongly state that he would refuse to consider any surrender of Iran's sovereign right to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes, that he would continue to support the resistance organizations Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, that he would continue to try and increase Iran's political role in the Middle East, and that he would defend state ownership of the oil and gas industries, would the Western media portray him as a reasonable man?

Further, there's the nature of Mousavi's election campaign. Obama called it a "robust" debate, which it certainly was, and a good refutation of the lie that Iran has no democracy. But it is also a political movement, one capable of drawing large crowds out into the streets, ready to engage in street battles with the president's supporters and now the police.

Is it possible that the U.S. government, its military and its 16 intelligence agencies are piously standing on the sidelines of this developing conflict, respecting Iran's right to work out its internal differences on its own? Could we expect that approach from the same government that still maintains its own 30-year sanctions against Iran, is responsible for three sets of U.N.-imposed sanctions, annually spends $70-90 million to fund "dissident" organizations within Iran and, according to the respected investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, actually has U.S. military personnel on the ground within Iran, supporting terrorist organizations like the Jundallah and trying to foment armed rebellions against the government?

The point has been made that U.S. neocons were hoping for an Ahmadinejad victory, on the theory that he makes a convenient target for Iran-bashers. But the neocons are no longer in power in Washington. They got voted out of office and are back to writing position papers for right-wing think tanks. We now have a "pragmatic" administration, one that would like to first dialog with the countries it seeks to control.

I think what is important to realize is that Washington wasn't just hoping for a "reform" candidate to win the election - it's been hoping for an anti-government movement that looks to the West for its political and economic inspiration. Mousavi backer and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is a free-market advocate and businessman whom Forbes magazine includes in its list of the world's richest people. Does Rafsanjani identify with or seek to speak for the poor? Does Mousavi?

What kind of Iran are the Mousavi forces really hoping to create? And why is Washington - whose preference for "democracy" is trumped every time by its insatiable appetite for raw materials, cheap labor, new markets and endless profits - so sympathetic to the "reform" movements in Iran and in every other country whose people have nationalized its own resources?

Would Iran be better off with a president who, instead of qualifying everything he says about the Holocaust, just came out directly and said, "Look, there's no question that millions of Jewish people were murdered in a campaign of genocide, but how does that justify creating a Jewish state on land that is the ancestral home of the Palestinians?" That would certainly make the job of anti-war activists much easier - and if you look hard enough, you can find something close to those words in Ahmadinejad's statements.

But it wouldn't be enough. The U.S. government and its complementary news media would just find another hook on which to hang their demonization of Iran and its government.

The days ahead promise to be challenging ones for all those who oppose war, sanctions and interference in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As we pursue that work, it would be good not to get caught up in what is sure to be a tsunami of criticism of a government trying to resolve a crisis that in all likelihood is not entirely homegrown.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 03:06 AM

More interesting commentary here (fingers crossed that it fits into the one screen limit)...

Dashing Fabricated Hopes: The Meaning of Ahmadinejad's Victory

It's been a little weird, if not embarrassing, to witness the reactions of the American press to the Iranian election in the last 24 hours.

There was the initial rush of expectation--that "change" was as much in the Iranian air as it had been in the American last fall, an equivalence so wrong on so many fronts that it managed to obscure the essential truth of the Iranian election: there never was a significant ideological difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi. Only a tonal one. But the Los Angeles Times was content to blare this headline: "Iranians ready to decide presidency -- and maybe much more."

There was the added irony of the LATimes' sub-headline: "The winner will play a key role in possible talks over Iran's nuclear program and support for militant groups," the implication being that if Mousavi were the winner, maybe he'd rein back the militants. But it was Mousavi who, as Iran's prime minister in the 1980s, helped build those militant groups into international terrorist forces, sending money, weapons and manpower to Lebanon to beef up Hezbollah and telegraphing their targets, including that string of American and European hostages Hezbollah held for most of the decade---and Mousavi traded for, haggling over anti-tank missiles and money with Oliver North and Bud McFarlane, in the infamous Iran-contra affairs.

Still, the paper in Los Angeles, not to mention the New York Times and the Washington Post, have blithely referred to Mousavi as a "moderate" throughout the election campaign, accepting at face value his apparent conversion, if only because he kept his antipathy for the United States relatively silent.

But Slate's Samuel Rosner was closer to reality: The Iranian president isn't the one who decides Iran's fate, or foreign policy, or domestic policy, for that matter. It's Ali Khamenei, the "supreme leader," who does. But the big papers kept up the charade ("As Iran Votes, Talk of a Sea Change," went The New York Times), as if willing the fantasy.

The Times' executive editor, Bill Keller an old hand at foreign correspondence (he won a Pulitzer for somewhat blandish reporting from South Africa, if I'm remembering correctly) even sent himself to Tehran for a bit of trench writing (or to escape the fallout of his embarrassing performance in a Daily Show bit).

"[F]or those who dreamed of a gentler Iran," Keller wrote from Tehran, "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."

All I can say is that they, and the amnesiac Western press, did it to themselves. A quarter of Iran's population is under 15, the median age is 26 (which means half the population is 26 or younger), which means the overwhelming majority of voters in Saturday's election have no memory of the 1980s when Mousavi was in charge of a country that was free neither economically nor in any other way. When others spoke of ending the Iran-Iraq war that had ravaged the country, Mousavi wailed, charging quitters that they were abandoning the ideals of the revolution.

This is the man the Kellers of the world so blindly put their hopes in.

So why was the West so self-deluded, both about Mousavi and the outcome of a foregone conclusion? I wish it was about misplaced hopes. No. It's something less honorable than that. It's about misplaced projections. It's about presuming that the West's agenda for Iran can somehow muscle its way over the agenda Iran reserves for itself. It's about reverting to pre-1979 assumptions that Iran would be as the West would want it to be. Which is to say that 30 years of history have taught the West next to nothing about Iran. That ignorance, those attitudes, those presumptions, are precisely why Iranians are still ready to vote for a man like Ahmadinejad, because for all his anti-Semitism, his belligerence, even his apparent stupidity on more than a few matters of state, he is the embodiment of an Iranian identity that brooks no imports, that needs no one else, certainly nothing western, not even (and above all not) Barack Obama, to define it. Mousavi would likely have been no different ideologically, but why chuck off a known quantity?

Reactionary editorial pages (what pages are left, anyway) will fold all over each other to claim that Iranians have embraced hate, that they've endorsed the destruction of Israel, that they've made their hostility clear. Stupid judgments, as I see them, if excusably America-centric: they're meant well. But they miss the point.

The point never has been for Iran to get a leadership the United States can deal with. That's the American perspective that's led nowhere for 30 years. The point is to get a leadership in the West willing to deal with whatever leadership Iran chooses for itself, on its own terms.

So here's where Obama's Norwuz message will prove its worth (or not). Here's where Obama gets to show the Iranian people that he meant what he said. That he wants a dialogue, not just with the Iranian people, but with the Iranian leadership. Especially one chosen by the Iranian people. (At some point all those allegations of fraud are going to have to make way for the reality: if the United States could survive the fraud of 2000, so can Iran in 2009, though chances are Iran's fraud is less obvious than that of Bush v. Gore).

Obama can, of course, punt. Decide that he now has an excuse not to deal with Iran. But he doesn't. He has even less of an excuse today than he did yesterday. Unless he wants to play the fraudulent-election card and go down that slink to perdition. Somehow I can't imagine him doing that. I can't imagine him thinking that he would be dealing with anyone but Ahmadinejad after the election anyway: he knew that bumping off Ahmadinejad was a long shot. He knew, or should have known, that even if Mousavi would have replaced him, the policy differences would have been nil. At least Ahmadinejad gives Obama, as Ahmadinejad does Khamenei, a foil, if things go wrong. And Ahmadinejad, freed of a elections' burden, could maybe find his inner Nixon and make the leap across ideologies.

Who knows. This could be as big or bigger (because more authentic) a chance for a breakthrough than either side imagined. If both sides are willing to seize it. Here's how Obama could start: send a congratulations message to Ahmadinejad. Then get to work.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 02:45 AM

Tonight I saw just the tail end of a interview. The Arab was asked why he was so sure that the electoin was fraudulent and he said that for one thing, the government announced the landslide victory before even 20% of the votes had been counted.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 01:40 AM

Some very interesting discussion here, including the comments section...

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2009/06/some-dots-you-may-connect.html

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 12:50 AM

I hope that's right, but I have to admit, from what I'm hearing and seeing, it looks like a lot of people don't even remember the last eight years.

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 12:48 AM

Carol - The American public was tricked into supporting an escalation of the war in Vietnam, and forty years later a similar thing happened in Iraq. I don't think it's probable that they'll support a war in Iran only 7 or 8 years later. A generation or two needs to go under the bridge first. Fool me once...

Subject: RE: BS: Election in Iran
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 09:19 PM

Well, some of the members of the US govenment, and probably all of the members of the Israeli government are trying to trick us into supporting an attack on Iran (just like they did with Iraq). Hopefully people won't fall for it this time. I posted this in another thread, but I think it should be in this one, too...


http://pulsemedia.org/2009/06/12/talking-to-iran-will-make-it-easier-to-sell-war/

As Iranians go to the polls to repudiate (it seems) some of the most pernicious aspects of Ahmadinejad's rule, America's Iran point man continues to make Ahmadinejad look like a reasonable peacenik.

The newly released book by Dennis Ross, President Obama's special adviser on Iran, reads like a how-to manual for launching a war on Iran, marketing the war successfully, and making sure the Iranians cop all the blame for it. Ross will have none of Bush's incompetent warmongering on flimsy pretenses of democracy and WMD's; when Ross launches his illegal war on Iran, it will be stage-managed to within an inch of its life.

"Tougher policies - either militarily or meaningful containment - will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran in a serious and credible fashion," writes Ross.

Note that there is no way to read this sentence but to see that the goal is to attack Iran. America trying to diplomatically resolve its differences with Iran is not a goal in itself; it is merely a means to more easily sell war and sanctions.

And, then, of course, we get the special Dennis Ross brand of peacemaking-as-warmongering--Ross's signature dish: derailing negotiations while making it appear to be the other party's fault.

"Such an approach may build pressures within Iran not to forgo the opportunity that has been presented, while also ensuring that the onus is put on Iran for creating a crisis and also for making conflict more likely."

The goal, of course, is not just to bring about a military conflict, but also to make sure that it appears that it was the Iranians who brought about this conflict.

This is exactly what Ross did as "mediator" of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, where he used diplomacy to further the aims of Israeli colonialism, as a cover for Israeli colonialism. As Norman Finkelstein shows in his meticulous destruction of Ross' previous book, it was Ross himself who derailed the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

Ross simply used his position as "mediator" to push for terms that were even more favorable to Israel than what the Israelis themselves wanted. During the negotiations, he became "furious" at Israelis for considering annexing less land in Palestine, and even said "if [Ehud] Barak offers anything more, I'll be against this agreement." The result was a "generous offer" on which then Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami himself commented: "if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David".

But when the Palestinians rejected this offer, of course, it was a green light for "Israel's Lawyer" to spend the last nine years blaming the Palestinians for rejecting his magnanimous offer. The result is a global green light for the Israeli regime to destroy the Palestinian people and their chances of ever attaining freedom�while placing the blame entirely on the Palestinians.

America can now look forward to seeing this mendacious brand of evil shaping their policy towards Iran over the coming years. Expect to continue to hear Ross talking about the failures of his heroic efforts at diplomacy, and then going on a WINEP-sponsored world tour blaming the Iranians for the conflict he worked so hard to precipitate.

This should leave no doubt that though the Obama Administration is mainly made up of sane humans who do not particularly want to nuke Iran, unreconstructed neocon fanatics like Ross will do all they can to bring about as bad an outcome as possible. Watch this space.