The surprising landslide victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his challengers--and some questions about the vote totals--has led to increasing unrest in Iran:
Mr. Moussavi made clear in statements on Saturday that he rejected the results and called on supporters and fellow clerics to fight them. But there were no reports of any public appearances by him through the day, leading to rumors that he might have been arrested.
In a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr. Moussavi said: "Today the people's will has been faced with an amazing incident of lies, hypocrisy and fraud. I call on my Iranian compatriots to remain calm and patient." [...]Mr. Moussavi's defiance seemed to fuel street resistance by his supporters -- a coalition including women, young people, intellectuals and members of the moderate clerical establishment -- who had united in opposition to Mr. Ahmadinejad's erratic economic stewardship, confrontational foreign policy and crackdown on social freedoms.
"Death to the coup d'état!" chanted a surging crowd of several thousand protesters, many of whom wore Mr. Moussavi's signature bright green campaign colors, as they marched in central Tehran on Saturday afternoon. "Death to the dictator!"
Farther down the street, clusters of young men hurled rocks at a phalanx of riot police officers, and the police used their batons to beat back protesters. There were reports of demonstrations in other major Iranian cities as well.
The authorities closed universities in Tehran, blocked cellphone transmissions and access to Facebook and some other Web sites, and for a second day shut down text-messaging services.
As night settled in, the streets in northern Tehran that recently had been the scene of pre-election euphoria were lit by the flames of trash fires and blocked by tipped trash bins and at least one charred bus. Young men ran through the streets throwing paving stones at shop windows, and the police pursued them.
More:
Some of the protests had to do with the vote totals, which were much lower for most of the challengers than was expected:
"The results of the 10th presidential election are so ridiculous and so unbelievable that one cannot write or talk about it in a statement," said Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric and candidate.
Mr. Karroubi came in last with 300,000 votes -- far fewer than analysts had predicted. "It is amazing that the people's vote has turned into an instrument for the government to stabilize itself," he said. [...]The turmoil on Saturday followed an extraordinary night in which the Iranian state news agency announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won by a vast margin just two hours after the polls closed. The timing alone provoked deep suspicion here, because the authorities have never before announced election results until the following morning. Mr. Moussavi also announced Friday night that he believed he had won by a wide margin. [...]
The official results prompted further skepticism, in part because Mr. Ahmadinejad was said to have won by large margins even in his opponents' hometowns. Mr. Rezai's hometown, for example, gave him less than a tenth of Mr. Ahmadinejad's total there, the Interior Ministry said.
The post-election turmoil in Iran is dismaying. Whether or not vote-rigging occurred, or changed the outcome of the election, the perception that it did might prove dangerous for Iran's present stability. The young people of Iran are especially upset with these election results, and Ahmadinejad's call for people to accept the results, while blaming foreign observers for the trouble and shutting down access to various forms of communication, is not likely to be well received.
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This is what happens when you repost from the Captcha "your comments are not lost." The actual post with all the quoted sections is reposted here:
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The inability to sort fact from fiction rears its head in this conservative blog.
The surprising landslide victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his challengers--and some questions about the vote totals--has led to increasing unrest in Iran:
Try this as an honest lede: "The fraudulent victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his challengers..."
Andrew Sullivan puts it bluntly:
Yes, the president of Iran's own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime's own electoral monitors beak ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy?
Saying that the victory was surprising, like Truman defeating Dewey, is to suggest that it was legitimate. The impression it leaves is that somehow this election should be as respected as the election in the United States in 2000.
The post-election turmoil in Iran is dismaying.
That would be Ahmadinejad's precise position. How disheartening to see an alleged conservative mouthing the regime's lies.
The Moussavi complaints remind me of the perhaps apocryphal story of the Manhattan liberal who did not understand how George W Bush could be elected as everyone he knew voted for Kerry.
Oh, believe me, Chris, I wanted to start the post that way. I had the words "unexpected" and "unbelievable" in that first sentence before I went for "surprising."
Why not leave the more loaded words, or start the way you did? Because, like it or not, the international community is likely to accept this election as legitimate, and as someone who is neither a citizen of Iran nor an expert in Iranian politics and elections I lack the standing and ability necessary to advance that opinion and then back it up with stats and history.
Which is why I went for "surprising," knowing that among this blog's readers there probably *are* people who are extremely well-versed in the history of the region and can outline the reasons why this happened--and why, perhaps, given the political realities, the whole thing isn't even as "surprising" as we might think. Steve and AnotherBeliever have begun that conversation.
As for the turmoil being dismaying--well, it is, because of what a destabilized Iraq might mean to the Middle East. Also, a lot of saber-rattling was going on during the Bush administration involving Iran, and while I think Obama's eye has been more on Pakistan there's no telling what might happen if Ahmadinejad uses his supposed "landslide" as a mandate for the kind of change that involves aggression toward Israel.
Voices in Israel are already saying that this election raises the danger of a nuclear Iran, for example. So while "dismaying" could have used some explanation, that's pretty much what I meant by it.
The following link contains a very interesting blog that is updated frequently with information about the ongoing events in Iran. The blog links to source information.
http://tinyurl.com/l2jbq3
It makes me very angry that Mitt Romney is attacking Obama for political reasons.
In addition, Joe Lieberman has made statements about the election being a fraud. While the election may well be a fraud, we do not have any proof at this point.
It certainly looks like a prelude to a revolution at this point - BBC coverage says they are bringing tanks into the streets now - but still the protestors are out there.
I think the legitimacy of the government - if it survives this - will be doubtful and that surely will weaken their position. Funny how CNN and the US media are sort of downplaying it while BBC has great coverage.
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