News Iranian Elections: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wins by Landslide

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a second term as President of Iran with 62.6% of the vote amid an 85% turnout, significantly defeating reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who received 33.75%. The election results have sparked allegations of fraud, with Mousavi and others contesting the legitimacy of the outcome. Reports suggest potential internal dissent, including rumors of Ayatollah Rafsanjani resigning in protest and calls for a re-election. The Supreme Leader and Guardian Council's authority to invalidate election results raises questions about the election's integrity, with some speculating a coup may have occurred. The situation has led to protests and a crackdown on media coverage, complicating the narrative surrounding the election.
  • #91
LowlyPion said:
I found this video stunning insofar as how quiet so many people could be. This was apparently from Wednesday. I see reports of vandalism being caused by the basiji plain clothes forces, so the government can apparently condemn the protesters and attack them. This would certainly be no way to win the people over and lessen the tension. Discouraging to be sure, but for the demonstrations to be continuing, at this scale, in the face of such seemingly purposeful widespread communication outages, ... The genie looks to be out of the bottle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo_6Qp1eTk

The NYT shows the same demonstration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html

No kidding, considering what loudmouths we can be. HAHahaha.

The problem is that Ahmedinijad has equally large gatherings just across the street.
 
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  • #92
Cyrus said:
The problem is that Ahmedinijad has equally large gatherings just across the street.

I don't think so after the first demonstration for Ahmadi-Nejad. There was another much smaller one yesterday, but these demonstrations in protest look to be widespread and much larger. BBC World News has been pretty good about calling it both ways.
 
  • #93
LowlyPion said:
I don't think so after the first demonstration for Ahmadi-Nejad. There was another much smaller one yesterday, but these demonstrations in protest look to be widespread and much larger. BBC World News has been pretty good about calling it both ways.

This has been making the rounds... Someone with a keen eye noticed something about one of those pro-Ahmadinejad rallies:
http://boingboing.net/2009/06/17/ahmadinijad-sucks-at.html

Unverified reports (via Twitter) indicate that government employees and local people have been 'encouraged' to show up at the rallies by the Bassij.
 
  • #94
MATLABdude said:
This has been making the rounds... Someone with a keen eye noticed something about one of those pro-Ahmadinejad rallies:
http://boingboing.net/2009/06/17/ahmadinijad-sucks-at.html

Unverified reports (via Twitter) indicate that government employees and local people have been 'encouraged' to show up at the rallies by the Bassij.

This wouldn't be the first Photoshopped image out of Iran. I recall their 4 or 5 rocket launch that amazingly managed identical contrail exhausts.

Today it seems the theme is black. Black for mourning those killed by the basiji. If people weren't dying, these ham-handed basiji, would be a joke for their clumsy ineptness in resorting to violence, intimidation and deception to control the population.
 
  • #95
  • #96
From the looks of things, Iran is in a bit of a pickle. Both sides are at a stand-off. The Opposition is not escalating any violence, but neither are they backing down. The government has exposed themselves with this ill-conceived, inept vote reporting. They can't admit they were wrong in the counts, or they are admitting they are frauds and not fit to rule, whatever the vote count. They can't escalate the violence overtly, or there will surely be the Devil to pay. Instead, they nibble at the edges, discouraging, heckling, provoking, threatening ... but the lessons of Gandhi and India are clear. The Government cannot remain against the will of the people forever. Making martyrs will serve the Government no good at all.

I guess the question is who will blink first.
 
  • #97
The BBC is currently reporting that arrests have escalated. That there are now hundreds arrested. As many as 800. Reform activists.

Also Iranian state sponsored hackers are apparently trying to hack the blogosphere to stifle dissent - closing access to sites, etc. But their efforts are difficult because there are so many pores that news leaks through. They can't shut down the Internet because, the country and the Government itself relies on it to function.
 
  • #98
LowlyPion said:
The BBC is currently reporting that arrests have escalated. That there are now hundreds arrested. As many as 800. Reform activists.

...
That would be inline w/ the techniques of the Chinese security people they use: don't bust heads initially, take a lot a photographs and identify leadership; later, single them out and arrest them, disappear them.
 
  • #99
Two children of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a political opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been barred from leaving Iran, the semi-official Fars News Agency said on Thursday.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090618/tpl-uk-iran-election-rafsanjani-sb-43a8d4f_2.html

Now comes this rubbish claim by Iran:
Iran says thwarted election day bomb plot

... It said this plot was uncovered on election day.

State television said members of the plot had planned to place bombs in polling stations in 20 districts of Tehran.

It aired statements by four people with pixellated faces.

One of them said: "We had contacts with the Americans in Iraq and they wanted to have information from inside Iran about the situation. They gave us formula to build bombs."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090618/tpl-uk-iran-election-plot-sb-43a8d4f_3.html

Dick Cheney hasn't left the country in months.
 
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  • #100
LowlyPion said:
The BBC is currently reporting that arrests have escalated. That there are now hundreds arrested. As many as 800. Reform activists.

Also Iranian state sponsored hackers are apparently trying to hack the blogosphere to stifle dissent - closing access to sites, etc. But their efforts are difficult because there are so many pores that news leaks through. They can't shut down the Internet because, the country and the Government itself relies on it to function.
If you are not familiar with Iranian politics, here is a take. Ironically, the government system is based on the US one. Both are presidency and both have two large parties. These parties are just like the US the Reformers (Republicans) cater for the rich, business (bazaar in case of Iran), affluent... etc. But in case of Iran the more liberal mined (opposite of US) have aligned themselves with Reformers although they do not strictly agree with the system. This is the Reformers sell to the system in exchange for privileges (very similar to US except Republicans sell “DEFENCE” to the system). On the other hand, Fundamentalists backed by the majority poor, lower class, rural…etc. sell “DEFENCE” to the system in exchange for more government care and power. The competition is intense but both belong to the system, just like the US. But it may take some modification to make it work more smoothly.
 
  • #101
Haha, I heard on CNN that hackers are infiltrating the systems that are intended to block or limit internet access.
 
  • #102
Ivan Seeking said:
Haha, I heard on CNN that hackers are infiltrating the systems that are intended to block or limit internet access.

I hope hackers infiltrate every single one. I can hardly think of a more grotesque way for a government to censor its people than to try to stop worldwide communications such at the internet. It really angers me that their government knows it did something wrong, and is so scared that it attempts to mute them to the rest of the world.
 
  • #103
Pupil said:
It really angers me that their government knows it did something wrong, and is so scared that it attempts to mute them to the rest of the world.

There is a practical reason to interrupt their internal access. It's to cut down on the organization of more demonstrations and dissent.

But when you have 100,000 people a day demonstrating, word gets out without any internet needed I'd guess.

As far as the government goes, I'm thinking there are no good outcomes available. Short term "winning" will only fester into further real resentment. Without moral authority, I don't see how they can hope to maintain a state theocracy.
 
  • #104
Apparently Khomeini has taken a hard line.
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's supreme leader said Friday there was "definitive victory" and no rigging in disputed presidential elections, offering no concession to protesters demanding the vote be canceled and held again.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rare speech at Friday prayers at Tehran University, said the election dispute was nothing more than a family disagreement within the frame of the Islamic Republic. He added that the legitimacy of the regime was never at question and all candidates had a shinning track record of serving the Islamic Republic.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124540205628930963.html

Apparently there is no middle road between a rock and a hard place. Our prayers should be with those that will surely face greater violence going forward.
 
  • #105
LowlyPion said:
Apparently Khomeini has taken a hard line.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124540205628930963.html

Apparently there is no middle road between a rock and a hard place. Our prayers should be with those that will surely face greater violence going forward.
Notice that he offered only limited reviews of the polling, and then called the election a "definitive victory" without allowing the reviews to be conducted. He's stuck, but unless he is removed from power, he has the authority to approve the election results.
 
  • #106
Today I was talking with a good friend who grew up in Iran. He has been in contact with family members in Iran and he is worried. I asked him if this could be another revolution. He thinks it may be. In his words: "This is a big fork in the road for Iran. It is just like what happened in 1979." He was there in '79.
 
  • #107
Ivan Seeking said:
Today I was talking with a good friend who grew up in Iran. He has been in contact with family members in Iran and he is worried. I asked him if this could be another revolution. He thinks it may be. In his words: "This is a big fork in the road for Iran. It is just like what happened in 1979." He was there in '79.
Is there any justification for that talk? Or is it wishful thinking for those who dislike the system and they are in the minority, and any opportunity is good enough.
 
  • #108
qsa said:
Is there any justification for that talk? Or is it wishful thinking for those who dislike the system and they are in the minority, and any opportunity is good enough.
From what I've heard, there is just a little bit of justification for such talk but mostly, it seems too early to tell. For comparison, the 1999 protests were not this widespread with as many participants and they had no political support to speak of. But I think there's also a fair amount of wishful (or should I say 'hopeful'?) thinking as well as a psychological tendency to diminish the enormity of things that happened in the past that is contributing to the tone of the commentary today.
 
  • #109
qsa said:
Is there any justification for that talk? Or is it wishful thinking for those who dislike the system and they are in the minority, and any opportunity is good enough.

I can only tell you what he said. Also, why do you assume which side he is on? In fact he was complaining about Iranian Americans in Los Angeles who are flying the old flag of the Shah. He was insistent that this is a very bad thing to do. IF you mean to imply that he was a fan of the Shah, then you are wrong. He is the first to denounce the events that brought the Shah to power.

It sounds a bit to me like you are the one taking sides here. What is your interest in this matter?

I think his point was that the pattern of events is the same. Also, many involved in the original revolution are once again with the opposition.
 
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  • #110
qsa said:
Is there any justification for that talk? Or is it wishful thinking for those who dislike the system and they are in the minority, and any opportunity is good enough.
Who say's they're in the minority? All we know for sure is they are not in power.
 
  • #112
BAD BAD INTERNET!

freedombabe.jpg


Here, take my ISP number and connect me to the world wide web! Me, connect me!
 
  • #113


This is a bit tangential. The consequences of the current Iraqi republic versus a Saddam Hussein on Iran's border have not been addressed here. It is arguable that the rebellion in Iran is connected to the outcome in Iraq in two ways. First, Iranians see the real thing right on their border: vigorous Iraqi elections at local and national levels open to all comers, no weeding out by some mysterious supreme council, and all under comment by a rampaging free Iraqi press. (And they do know what's going on, they've been making pilgrimages to historic Iraqi sites since the Bathists fell). Second, a serious and known threat on the border in the form of a Saddam Hussein still in power and who previously killed or wounded 1 million Iranians would tend to chill internal dissent. It is an entirely different thing to take the streets in open rebellion when your country is under threat. Ahmadinejad uses the ruse of external threats now against his own regarding the US/UK; when Saddam was around it was the real thing. So it is arguable that absent the US intervention in 2003, Iran has no rebellion.
 
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  • #115


mheslep said:
This is a bit tangential. The consequences of the current Iraqi republic versus a Saddam Hussein on Iran's border have not been addressed here. It is arguable that the rebellion in Iran is connected to the outcome in Iraq in two ways. First, Iranians see the real thing right on their border: vigorous Iraqi elections at local and national levels open to all comers, no weeding out by some mysterious supreme council, and all under comment by a rampaging free Iraqi press. (And they do know what's going on, they've been making pilgrimages to historic Iraqi sites since the Bathists fell). Second, a serious and known threat on the border in the form of a Saddam Hussein still in power and who previously killed or wounded 1 million Iranians would tend to chill internal dissent. It is an entirely different thing to take the streets in open rebellion when your country is under threat. Ahmadinejad uses the ruse of external threats now against his own regarding the US/UK; when Saddam was around it was the real thing. So it is arguable that absent the US intervention in 2003, Iran has no rebellion.

I think the premise for this is flawed in three ways:

  1. Iran doesn't generally prevent its citizens from leaving (unless you happen to be a third class citizen like a believer of Baha'i--think of them as Shi'a schismatics--official persecution, no representation, and no access to higher education), nor once you've left (temporarily or permanently) from phoning home (in whatever sense you take this to mean), or returning. In my country (Canada), they're about to overtake India and China as the number one source of graduate students in the hard sciences and engineering. I have no idea how Iranians rank in terms of US graduate admissions, but I thought it was a quirk how there seemed to be so many from a purported enemy state.

    Their best and brightest are leaving for the west to pursue higher education, and having direct exposure to functioning democracies with all the institutions necessary for that: the rule of law, systems of checks and balances, general lack of official discrimination, and obvious corruption, and all around societal stability. They see what we have here, and they see that the institutions there are just a parody of the real deal. These institutions do not yet exist in Iraq. They also understand how things actually work over there, and have a generally negative sentiment towards it, along the lines of "We have elections, but the Supreme Leader is the real power."

    Who led the Tiananmen Protests? The Chinese kids who went abroad (to the west) for graduate school and then returned, or the ones who had western professors talking about what it was like 'back home'. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that when things shake down over there, that you'll see the same thing. Either those who returned from studies abroad, or those who had family that went abroad. I won't argue that this is purely a student movement--I don't believe that it is, and the protesters have come from many segments of Iranian society--but I'd argue that that's probably where the intellectual basis and organization is coming from.

    I have yet to meet a non-Reformist Iranian over here. Whether that's because they're all young and educated, generally from a middle-class background, or whether only the ones with Reformist-leanings would leave in the first place (or all of the above) is another matter of debate. Anyways, back to the point...

  2. I think the Bush-administration policy in regards to the middle east was that, with Iraq holding their own elections and being a shining beacon to the mid-east, you'd have a blossoming of democracy. They wanted liberal democracy, and they pushed hard for elections in the Palestinian Authority on the assumption that the good[er] guys would win, and carry the mandate of the people. Instead, Hamas won the West Bank! It wasn't so much that those in the PA were pro-Hamas as opposed to anti-PLO (which was viewed as being corrupt and ineffectual). Similarly, Lebanon, after the Cedar Revolution saw Hezbollah and Amal capture 30% of the Lebanese Legislature!

    Just because you have liberal democracy does not guarantee you liberal democrats (all used in the small l and small d sense, especially vis a vis the general mideast mindset).

  3. There is precedent for both reformers and anti-establishment protests in Iran. Just not on this scale. We may view the selection process as flawed (in the sense of pick-one-of-the-guys-we-allow-you-to democracy), but they've generally played by their rules. We know of Khatami as a reformist president, but the two-term guy before him, Rafsanjani, is also identified as a reformist (as others have mentioned here--though reformist here means less 'Death to America' and 'Export the Revolution' and more focusing on the economy, and letting people be.

    Ahmadinejad represented a hard (radical?) swing back to the clerical / conservative faction, which is ironic as he was the first non-cleric president.
 
  • #116
I just realized that my first point in the post above (pertaining to the Iranians you run into here) may be the most damning thing I've said against what I'd like to believe. In the OP, I briefly glossed over the third point, that Ahmadinejad may actually have won the election (just not to the extent that is claimed, nor with the surprising regional, ethnic, cultural, etc. uniformity).

Perhaps we've got a reverse bogeyman thing going on, and we've gotten into thinking that our Iranian friends, lab mates, and Iranian-your-nationality-heres represent Iranians as a whole (or at least, as a majority). As impressive and inspiring as the protests have been, what if, in the end, they really are just a minority?
 
  • #117
MATLABdude said:
I just realized that my first point in the post above (pertaining to the Iranians you run into here) may be the most damning thing I've said against what I'd like to believe. In the OP, I briefly glossed over the third point, that Ahmadinejad may actually have won the election (just not to the extent that is claimed, nor with the surprising regional, ethnic, cultural, etc. uniformity).

Perhaps we've got a reverse bogeyman thing going on, and we've gotten into thinking that our Iranian friends, lab mates, and Iranian-your-nationality-heres represent Iranians as a whole (or at least, as a majority). As impressive and inspiring as the protests have been, what if, in the end, they really are just a minority?

The real question is if the election results could be legitimate. The evidence suggests otherwise no matter who actually won. As for bias, I have no idea if one side would be any better than the other for US interests.
 
  • #118
I just realized that my first point in the post above (pertaining to the Iranians you run into here) may be the most damning thing I've said against what I'd like to believe. In the OP, I briefly glossed over the third point, that Ahmadinejad may actually have won the election (just not to the extent that is claimed, nor with the surprising regional, ethnic, cultural, etc. uniformity).

Keep in mind that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections in 2005 mainly due to indifference and boycotts by the reformists. The same reformists who catapulted Mohammed Khatami to power in 1997 and and 2001. Iran is not like Iraq, it does not split along ethnic and cultural lines as easily.

Today I was talking with a good friend who grew up in Iran. He has been in contact with family members in Iran and he is worried. I asked him if this could be another revolution. He thinks it may be. In his words: "This is a big fork in the road for Iran. It is just like what happened in 1979." He was there in '79.

It seems unlikely.The reformists are too entrenched in the system and lack charismatic leaders to bring about real change. Mousavi and Rafsanjani are the old crowd, very much a relic of the Islamic revolution. Secondly, the Shah was deeply unpopular amongst nearly all Iranians and even the Shah's heavily financed military were reluctant to deal with the protesters. Compare that to now where there is a considerable presence amongst protesters but not the kind of nationwide protests that swelled into the tens of millions in 1978-1979.

Thirdly, the clerics in Qom have stayed silent for now, they are normally well respected by the people and hold a lot of power. Before the revolution, they were instrumental in adding illegitimacy to the Shah's rule and wooing the religious conservatives. For a revolution to take place, you would need a serious split amongst the conservatives which has not taken place. Some infighting but no serious split about the ideals of the Islamic republic. The Iranian Army and Guards hold a good deal of power and only with conservative infighting will there be support for a revolution amongst the Iranian military which would add further legitimacy to any sort of overthrow of the Iranian regime. So in total, people power in Iran can only work with the support of powerful conservatives i.e; high placed regime officials, respected clerics and parts of the military. Otherwise it will be another Tiananmen square incident.
 
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  • #119
The real question is if the election results could be legitimate. The evidence suggests otherwise no matter who actually won. As for bias, I have no idea if one side would be any better than the other for US interests.

With Mousavi, America will not have to worry about inflammatory, racist rhetoric therefore it probably will be easier to negotiate. Also, Mousavi has indicated that he is ready to talk with the West and overall, is a pragmatist who believes that Iran needs to be more open with the rest of the world to lessen the damaging sanctions. Also, it seems that he wants Iran to be respected by the world, and not antagonized as a belligerent, rogue nation. Overall, a decent opening for Barack Obama to work with! :smile:

With Ahmadinejad, well...even with Obama, he has shown no signs of letting up. How can you negotiate with a president who calls your nation 'the Great Satan', goes to a anti racism conference and goes on an hour long racist tirade? :frown: The chances are definitely slimmer with Ahmadinejad in power.
 
  • #120
One of the more convoluted lines of reasoning I gleamed from Khomeini's speech was that there couldn't have been vote fraud, because the margin of victory was so great.

What good is it to educate people, if they would be expected to subscribe to such an argument? It seems that Khomeini's grasp on power is tied to seeing Ahmadi-Nejad remain. A rather tenuous position for a man of conscience, who would presume to be the ultimate power over all the people.
 

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