Major Update: A letter from the probable winner, Mousavi, on the false election.

Update: Marc Ambinder has a list of good Twitter links to monitor Iran.

Update: I never agree with Juan Cole, but today things in Iran are so obviously bad and boiling over it seems only the news media (left and right) don’t get what is happening. Juan Cole speculated this is what happened just happened in Iran (and I agree with this speculation):

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi’s spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi’s camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.

What is irritating to me is none of the news media outlets are covering these amazing events with seriousness or detail. Fox was more focused on why the mainstream media had hoped this election would be a pivotal moment. From what I can see that happened, it is just being stolen by the thugs of the Iranian Mullacracy. The best reporting (the ONLY reporting on this) has been on the internet.

If the big news media is going to miss this story we really don’t need them anymore – and covers Fox to MSNBC. This is the biggest story of the decade and no one is reporting on it outside the internet. – end update.

 

 

Update: Iran’s Capitol is on fire because of post-election riots:

Huge swaths of the capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early morning Sunday as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second four-year term amid allegations of widespread fraud and a strident challenge of the vote results by his main challenger, who was reportedly placed under house arrest.

As Ahmadinejad promised a “bright and glorious future” for Iran in a televised address, supporters of his reformist rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi clashed with police and militiamen in riot gear and throughout Tehran in the most serious clashes in the capital since a student uprising 10 years ago.

Yeah, all is swell in Iran President “I’m-a-nut-job”. These people are on the way out, not on the way up. More here. – end update.

Well, it seems Iranian President Ahmedinejad did lose the Iranian Presidential elections, as his propaganda machine went into full BS mode and his Gestapo-like thugs spread out to try and beat back the cries of outrage. It was all so obvious even the NY Times was outraged instead of fooled or covering it up:

 

And she was gone, away through the milling crowds near the locked-down Interior Ministry spewing its pick-ups full of black-clad riot police. The “green wave” of Iran’s pre-election euphoria had turned black.

Down the street outside the ghostly campaign headquarters of the defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the baton-wielding police came in whining phalanxes, two to a motorbike, scattering people, beating them.

…

 

Within two hours of the closing of the polls, contrary to prior practice and electoral rules, the Interior Ministry, through the state news agency, announced a landslide victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose fantastical take on the world and world history appears to have added another fantastical episode.

Throughout the country, across regions of vast social and ethnic disparity, including Azeri areas that had indicated strong support for Moussavi (himself an Azeri), Ahmadinejad’s margin scarcely wavered, ending at an official 62.63 percent. That’s 24.5 million votes, a breathtaking 8 million more than he got four years ago.

…

He won as the Interior Ministry was sealed, opposition Web sites were shut down, text messages were cut off, cell phones were interrupted, Internet access was impeded, dozens of opposition figures were arrested, universities were closed and a massive show of force was orchestrated to ram home the result to an incredulous public.

 

 

Iran is now just like Nazi Germany under Hitler, Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the USSR under Stalin. Just like North Korea. But there is one difference in this case. The mythology surrounding extreme Islam as some wonderful vision of the future was destroyed year ago in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq – three nations that border the boiling cauldron that is Iran. There are very few who will see the Muslim on Muslim violence as the path to a greater future and a way to deal with the West (were not involved on this one).

One of our readers noted a similar perspective by Michael Totten, an expert on the region:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounds like Baghdad Bob right about now: “It was a free and healthy election,” he said.

“Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, the real power in Iran, sounds even more like Baghdad Bob than Ahmadinejad. He said the “election” was “an artistic expression” of “the joy and excitement of a nation.” Good grief.

…

“Don’t cry, be brave,” a man admonished her.

He was from the Interior Ministry. He showed his ID card. He said he’d worked there 30 years. He said he hadn’t been allowed in; nor had most other employees. He said the votes never got counted. He said numbers just got affixed to each candidate.

Totten notes a commenter or something over at Andrew Sullivan’s site (I despise the guy because of his obsession with Sarah Palin’s family – he makes Lettermen look like a gentleman – so no link) who makes a great observation:

Why did the clergy panic? Because they saw something much larger than just Mousavi being elected. They saw the beginnings of a wave that would sweep them out of power. This started with Khatami. and it won’t stop today just because they declared a fraudulent winner. Mousavi would have been the crowbar with which to pry open the tangled nest of corruption that came into power soon after the 1979 revolution. There is enough pent-up anger in Iran’s youth to fuel a complete wipeout of the regime.

If the electorate was ready to dump the regime (and Totten has videos indicating this could be the case) the violent attempt to handle the uprising will only ignite that wrath of the people. I had wondered how Amedinejad was able to ‘get permission’ to pull this stunt, but it is clear this person is right.

The Iranian regime could be on the verge of collapse, and they are taking all the wrong steps to stop it.

Tags: Ahmedinejad, Iranian Revolution