Jun 14 2009

Iran’s Elections Stolen, Civil Backlash On The Rise, Ruling Mullahs In Trouble

Published by at 11:29 am under Iran

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.

9 responses so far

9 Responses to “Iran’s Elections Stolen, Civil Backlash On The Rise, Ruling Mullahs In Trouble”

  1. Toes192 says:

    My Saturday opinion… quote… “The election will be stolen from the winner of the popular vote if that’s what they want…” [they being the “Guardians Council, a 12-member body of clerics and jurists”]…
    .
    The enforcement limb of the Mullah power would be the Iran Revolutionary Guard… [IRG is the acronym you will see] …
    .
    I opine that the IRG [and other misc police entities] will be ruthless and successful in putting down this uprising and that the Mullah’s will retain their power…
    .
    Perhaps I am influenced by 14 years of observing the passivity of Saudi public…
    .
    Hopefully the Iranians are made of better stuff… Pleeese be wrong, Toes…

  2. kathie says:

    My understanding is that both men are much the same on foreign policy. It was under Mousavi that the uranium project got started. Never the less, it would have given Obama a clean start with his face to face negotiations. The difference between the two men is that Mousavi is much more liberal socially, which is very attractive to such a young population.

    Who knows, Mousavi might have given up the bomb with some carrots, and the hope of a thriving nation that all the young could be proud of.

    So if this election stands, I can’t see how Obama can be in a better position then Bush found himself. The one he inherited from Clinton (just had to say that).

    But so much young energy was devoted to this election and it’s outcome, it seems improbable that there will be smooth sailing from this fraud. Many will die and many more put in jail as the establishment tries to curb the dissatisfaction. As Ahmadinejad tries to spin this he will sound more and more foolish and less and less credible at home and on the public stage. What will his rant sound like at the UN in September? Like the fraud he is I suspect.

  3. Terrye says:

    According to Powerline there is not a dime’s worth of difference between these two candidates, but apparently there are a lot of Iranians who do not see it that way.

    As for the mullahs, if they did not want this Mousavi to win, they could always have refused to let him run. After all, they get to decide who can and can not run for office.

    I am not sure what is going on. Perhaps this has more to do with corruption than it does with a softening of the hardline stance on nukes.

  4. Terrye says:

    You know what? People said that the region was hopeless, the US could not bring democracy to the Middle East, but right now Iraq is more stable than Iran.

  5. kathie says:

    Found at PAJAMAS MEDIA

    Reports are circulating that VENEZUELA has sent anti-riot troops to Tehran to help Ahmadinejad, joining Hezbollah members from Palestine and Lebanon who are employed by the Islamic government as anti-riot police — the reason such forces are being brought in is that some of the Iranian police are unwilling to hit people as ordered and some are even joining the protesters.

    NOT GOOD NEWS! WE NEED TO KEEP A GOOD EYE ON VENEZUELA.

  6. MerlinOS2 says:

    EuReferendum has their take

  7. AJStrata says:

    merlin,

    That crap is pure delusional fantasy. I thought better of you.

  8. gary1son says:

    Sorry to say, but Bush was wrong:

    Bush: Well, I would like very much for the Iranian people to realize that a society based upon rule of law and free speech and free worship of religion — there is nothing I would like to see more than a society in which young girls can grow up to realize their dreams, with a good education system. You know, this regime, however, is one that sometimes when people express themselves in an open way there can be serious punishment. This is a regime that says they have elections but they get to decide who’s on the ballot, which is not a free and fair election. So this is a regime and a society that’s got a long way to go. But the people of Iran can rest assured that the United States — whether I’m president or [it’s] the next president — will strongly support their desires to live in a free society.

    I’m thinking that IF any U.S. President’s words HAVE influenced what’s going on in Iran currently, it’s those of President Bush. It seems to me that the young bright people in Iran would have been nothing but discouraged, if not totally confused, by Obama’s stated policies and recent speeches — But of course that part of the world is so foreign and hard to understand that I might as well be speculating about the third planet from Alpha Centauri.

    However, I think having the largest possible amount of personal freedom is a pretty common desire within those inhabiting this and probably even other planetary systems. 🙂

  9. […] now you obviously know that Ahmadinejad has basically “stolen” the election in Iran.  Civil unrest is growing […]