What if the Iran vote was not rigged? The counter-argument is here. This echoes my argument that Iran and US are awfully similar. Recall that Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000, and John Kerry won the urban areas but lost out in the rural ones. For the record, I am not saying the elections were not rigged, I am saying I don’t know and no one really does. Were the US elections in 2000 and 2004 fair? Not if you ask Florida and Ohio, respectively. Anyway, some of James Petras’ points below:
- There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.
- What is astonishing about the West’s universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count.
- This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009).
- the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class.
- The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class. The ‘youth vote’, which the Western media praised as ‘pro-reformist’, was a clear minority of less than 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the ‘North Tehran Syndrome’, for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box.
- The open attacks by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the ‘market’, which represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption.
- Recent events suggest that political leaders in Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media line of ‘stolen elections’. The White House has not suspended its offer of negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed ‘serious concern about violence’ and called for the “aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected” (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU leader has questioned the outcome of the voting.
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Tags: Elections, Iran|
Posted By: admin | Jun 28th
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In 2000, Al Gore was believed to have won the Elections, but Florida proved otherwise and George W. Bush was chosen as the winner by the Supreme Court in what was a political decision to maintain peace and order.
In 2004, John Kerry was expected to defeat the allegedly unpopular George Bush, but surprising to many and shocking to foreigners, Bush retained the Presidency.
In 2008, change was the theme, and leveraging technology, Barack Obama was swept into power.
Reading the post mortems in US and British media, you cannot help but realize that there is
- a brewing hatred for the sitting President in the respective periods (Ahmedinehad in Iran and Bush in USA)
- a power struggle going on amongst the clericals (who basically represent the neoconservatives in American politics).
I think this just reiterates the role of religion in politics. During Bush’s regime, the US swayed towards right wing religion, Iran did the same thing at the government level even though the population sought more secularism and democracy. What is happening now is the friction between the forces of religion and secularism. America had its own struggle in the 2008 elections, Iran tried to in 2009, to no avail… but don’t expect those lingering issues simply disappear.
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Could this be the end of the beginning?
Behind the scenes Khamenei’s arch rival, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is believed to be working to remove the Supreme Leader and is even reported to be considering abolishing the post of Supreme Leader altogether in what would be the biggest constitutional change since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Rafsanjani is the head of Iran’s Expediency Council and crucially the Assembly of Experts which is responsible for overseeing and if necessary removing the Supreme leader. He is also a prominent backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate who has become the focal point for protestors.
(…)
According to Al-Arabiya, high-up sources say that Rafsanjani has already gained enough support within the Assembly for the removal of Khamenei, but has found less of a positive response to the proposal to replace the position of Supreme Leader altogether.
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Tags: Iran, Religion|
Posted By: admin | Jun 24th
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If the rumors that Iran has turned to members of Hamas and Hezbollah are true, then the protesters on the ground will only get more enraged.
On the one hand, Iranians both in Iran and outside of it are shocked, appalled, embarrassed [insert any other corresponding adjective here] to see Iranians attack one another like animals, that it almost would make sense - and be reassuring in a sad way - to think that these attacks are carried out by foreigners.
Of course, this is not plausible for many reasons as well, one being that if members of either [heavily-surveiled] Hamas and Hezbollah were moved from Palestine and Lebanon respectively, it would be picked up by US and Israeli intelligence who are itching to see the Iranian Regime fall, and, while hesitating to do anything to overtly overthrow the regime now, would not sit still if foreign forces would be moved in to the country to crush dissent that could lead to regime change.
In other words, while Israel and the US supported both Iraq and Iran at various stages of the disastrous Iran-Iraq war (in order to weaken both sides, though clearly the US and other Western nations favored Saddam Husseim), I doubt that in this scenario, both US and Israeli surveillance would turn a blind eye to foreign agents infiltrating into Iran to crush the protesters.
With no confirmed news coming out of Iran, we’re left to wonder what’s fact and what’s fiction.
From Jerusalem Post:
“The most important thing that I believe people outside of Iran should be aware of,” the young man went on, “is the participation of Palestinian forces in these riots.”
Another protester, who spoke as he carried a kitchen knife in one hand and a stone in the other, also cited the presence of Hamas in Teheran.
On Monday, he said, “my brother had his ribs beaten in by those Palestinian animals. Taking our people’s money is not enough, they are thirsty for our blood too.”
It was ironic, this man said, that the victorious Ahmadinejad “tells us to pray for the young Palestinians, suffering at the hands of Israel.” His hope, he added, was that Israel would “come to its senses” and ruthlessly deal with the Palestinians.
When asked if these militia fighters could have been mistaken for Lebanese Shi’ites, sent by Hizbullah, he rejected the idea. “Ask anyone, they will tell you the same thing. They [Palestinian extremists] are out beating Iranians in the streets… The more we gave this arrogant race, the more they want… [But] we will not let them push us around in our own country.”
From an admittedly random iReport post on CNN:
Currently, there are either two or three maybe four groups who are suppressing the students on the ground that you’ll read about throughout this thread:
1. The Basij
2. Ansar (Iranian) Hizbullah(which I will refer to as Ansar)
3. Lebanese Hizbullah.Der Spiegel, based on a Voice of America report, says that 5,000 Hizbullah fighters are currently in Iran masquerading as riot police, confirming the independent reports.
4. Lebanese Hamas.This rumour has been cropping up all day, with some of the most twitter feeds saying they had visual confirmation of Lebanese Hamas fighters along with Lebanese Hizbullah member.
- The Basij are Iran’s regular paramilitary organization. They are the armed hand of the clerics. The Basij are a legal group, officially a student union, and are legally under direct orders of the Revolutionary Guard. Their main raison d’être is to quell dissent. They are the ones who go and crack skulls, force people to participate in pro-regime demonstrations, and generally try to stop any demonstrations from even starting. They are located throughout the country, in every mosque, every university, every social club you can think of. They function in a way very similar to the Nazi brown shirts. They were the ones who first started the crackdown after the election, but it wasn’t enough. While they are violent and repressive, they are still Persian and attacking fellow citizens. A beating is one thing, mass killings another.
- The Ansar. There is a lot of cross-membership between the Basij and Ansar, though not all are members of the other group and vice-versa. The vast majority of Ansar are Persians (either Basij or ex-military), though a lot of Arab recruits come from Lebanon and train with them under supervision of the Revolutionary Guard. They are not functioning under a legal umbrella, they are considered a vigilante group, but they pledge loyalty directly to the Supreme Leader Khamenei. They are currently helping the Basij to control the riots, but due to the fact that they are Persians and in lower numbers than the Basij, they are not that active.
Being unable to repress the protesters, Khamenei’s regime imported members of the:
- Lebanese Hizbullah is a direct offshoot (and under direct control) of the Iranian Hizbullah (itself under direct control of the Supreme Leader Khamenei) and cooperates closely with Ansar. Though Ansar occupies itself only with Iran’s domestic policies, while Hizbullah occupies itself only with Iran’s foreign policy unless there is a crisis like right now. However, Hizbullah has been called to stop violent riots in Iran in the past. Hizbullah flew in a lot of their members in Iran, most likely a good deal even before the elections in case there were trouble. They are the ones who speak Arabs and are unleashing the biggest level of violence on the Persians so far. Another wave arrived recently and there is chatter that yet another wave of Hizbullah reinforcements are coming in from Lebanon as we write. According to Iranians on the ground, they are the ones riding motorcycles, beating men women and children indiscriminately and firing live ammunitions at students.
- The Lebanese Hamas is a branch of Hamas set-up in Lebanon. Like Hamas in Gaza, Hamas in Lebanon is directly under the orders of the Hamas council of Damascus known as Majlis al-Shurah. While it is surprising to hear that they might be involved, it is not illogical either. Iran has become the main benefactor of Hamas in the last years, branching out from only supporting Islamic Jihad. They now provide Hamas with the bulk of their budget, with advanced weaponry and training by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Not only do Hamas own them a lot, but if the Republic falls, Hamas finds itself in dire trouble. It is very likely that, at the call of Iran, the Majlis al-Shura would have decided to send fighters from their Lebanese Hamas branch along with Hizbullah fighters if it was requested of them.
Of course, not only are the Jerusalem Post or some random post on CNN’s iReport not exactly credible sources, I would add, I am not sure which one is least credible, so I decided to do some digging.
I searched for Iran and Hamas on Twitter and found the following, via this blog, from Robert Fisk:
Now for the very latest on the fantasy circuit. The cruel “Iranian” cops aren’t Iranian at all. They are members of Lebanon’s Hizbollah militia. I’ve had this one from two reporters, three phone callers (one from Lebanon) and a British politician. I’ve tried to talk to the cops. They cannot understand Arabic. They don’t even look like Arabs, let alone Lebanese. The reality is that many of these street thugs have been brought in from Baluch areas and Zobal province, close to the Afghan border. Even more are Iranian Azeris. Their accents sound as strange to Tehranis as would a Belfast accent to a Cornishman hearing it for the first time.
Fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows, but once they are combined and spread with high-speed inaccuracy around the world, they are also lethal. Sham elections, the takeover of party offices, a massacre on a university campus, an imminent coup d’état, the possible overthrow of the whole 30-year old Islamic Republic, the isolation of an entire country as its communications are systematically shut down.
I am reminded of Eisenhower’s comment to Foster Dulles when he sent him to London to close down Anthony Eden’s crazed war in Suez. The secretary of state’s job, Eisenhower instructed Dulles, was to say “Whoah, boy!” Good advice for those who believe in the Twitterers.
But the no-smoke-without-fire brigade has a point. Look at the extraordinary, million-strong march against the regime by Mousavi’s supporters on Monday. Even the Iranian press was forced to report it, albeit on inside pages. Yes, the authorities have indeed closed down the local SMS service. Yes, they have slowed down – but not closed – the internet. My Beirut roaming phone now rarely reaches London, although incoming calls arrive – unfortunately for me – round the clock. The Iranian government is obviously trying to interfere with the communications of Mousavi supporters to prevent them from organising further marches. Outrageous in any normal country, perhaps. But this is not a normal country. It is a state as obsessed with the dangers of counter-revolution as the West is obsessed with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Supreme Leader’s speech yesterday was proof of that.
But then we had the famous instruction to journalists in Tehran from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance that they could no longer report opposition street demonstrations. I heard nothing of this. Indeed, the first clue came when I refused to be interviewed by CNN (because their coverage of the Middle East is so biased) and the woman calling me asked: “Why? Are you worried about your safety?” Fisk continued to spend 12 hours a day on the streets. I discovered there was a ban only when I read about it in The Independent. Maybe the Guidance lads and lassies couldn’t get through on my mobile. But then, who had cut the phone lines?
I could go on, but right now, as proud as I am of the Iranian demonstrators and as embarrassed as I am about the Regime’s reaction if I had to trust a) JPost and a random iReport post or b) Robert Fisk, darn it, I have to go with Robert Fisk.
But at the same time, how could Iranians be attacking one another with axes, I ask? Are we really using axes to hack protesters in Tehran? There can’t possibly be a God, can there? I am convinced that those who are attacking the protesters in such a callous and vicious manner are not true Iranians, figuratively speaking, but until we have proof, then we do need to exert caution before jumping to conclusions.
And yes, that means not listening to the same folks who lied to us about Iraq, namely Michael Ledeen. In all fairness, his views on Iran are fairly nuanced, relative to the Neocon Cabal… though once he suggests that Hugo Chavez exported some thugs to Tehran, as well, then he sort of lost all credibility. Judge for yourself:
There are reports of members of the Revolutionary Guards defecting to the dissidents. There is this report from an Iranian website (the only place i’ve seen it) according to which 16 senior Revolutionary Guards officials have been arrested:
“These commanders have been in contact with members of the Iranian army to join the people’s movement. Three of the commanders are veterans of Iran-Iraq war. They have been moved to an undisclosed location in East Tehran.”
If true, it’s very important, but, as I have often noted, the regime has distrusted them for some time. The young Islamic revolutionaries of the late 1970s are now middle aged, and do not wish to slaughter their neighbors. That is why the mullahs have imported killers from abroad: the five thousand or so Hezbollahis who, according to Der Spiegel, have been brought in from Lebanon and Syria. Dissidents on Twitter report clashes with security forces who do not speak Farsi, and there are even some rumors suggesting that Chavez has sent some of his toughs from Venezuela. Who knows?
Who knows? Told you.
And of course, what to make of those who simply assume that the thugs are Arabs because of they way they look, seriously, namely, Gateway Pundit: Hezbollah & Hamas Thugs Photographed in Tehran (Pics). To quote Saturday Night Live: really? I mean, really?
It’s a shame the Regime doesn’t understand where the world - and technology - is at. But as the brutal and horrifying scenes of today prove, they’re interested in going backwards, not forward.
By censoring the media and expelling foreign press, they are letting fiction proliferate on the Web: they have not only lost the information war, but lost total control of the situation.
Like a wounded animal, the Regime is perhaps most dangerous now, but it is a matter of time before it takes its last breath.
Tags: Iran|
Posted By: admin | Jun 24th
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Roger Cohen of NY Times, then my two cents:
I said the Islamic Republic has been weakened. Why? I see five principal factors.
1) The first is that the supreme leader’s post — the apex of the structure conceived by the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — has been undermined. The keystone of the arch is now loose.
Khamenei, far from an arbiter with a Prophet-like authority, has looked more like a ruthless infighter. His word has been defied. At night, from rooftops, I’ve even heard people call for his death. The unthinkable has occurred.
2) The second is that the hypocritical but effective contract that bound society has been broken. The regime never had active support from more than 20 percent of the population. But acquiescence was secured by using only highly targeted repression (leaving the majority free to go about its business), and by giving people a vote for the president every four years.
That’s over. Repression will be broad and ferocious in the coming months. The acquiescent have already become the angry. You can’t turn Iran into Burma: The resistance of a society this varied and savvy will be fierce.
3) The third is that a faction loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fiercely nationalistic and mystically religious, has made a power grab so bold that fissures in the establishment have become canyons.
Members of this faction include Hassan Taeb, the leader of the Basiji militia; Saeed Jalili, the head of the National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the reclusive but influential son of the supreme leader.
They have their way for now, but the cost to Iran has been immense, and the rearguard action led by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a father of the revolution, and Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, will be intense.
4) The fourth is that Iran’s international rhetoric, effective in Ahmadinejad’s first term, will be far less so now. Every time he talks of justice and ethics, his two favorite words, video will roll of Neda Agha Soltan’s murder and the regime’s truncheon-wielding goons at work. The president may prove too much of a liability to preserve.
5) The fifth is that, at the very peak of its post-revolution population boom, the regime has lost a whole new generation — and particularly the women of that generation — by failing to adapt.
Thirty years from the revolution, the core question of this election was: Must Iran stand apart from the forces of economic and political globalization in order to preserve its Islamic theocracy?
Or is it confident enough of its Islamic identity, and its now firmly established independence from America, to trash the nest-of-spies vitriol and an ultimately self-defeating isolation?
The answer has been devastating.
Read more. I think Cohen is being shy. I’ll add to his 5 reasons/signs:
1 - No Street Cred: Unlike Khomenei, Khamenei lacks real authority. The man who helped him become the Supreme Leader has turned against it, what does that say about all of the clerics who were never really all that “into him?” So to take Cohen’s argument one step further, it’s not so much that Khamenei has lost authority, I daresay he never had it.
2 - Regression to the Mean: the 1979 Revolution was a just movement to ridden Iran of the US’ puppet. But, the religious movement hijacked the Revolution due to a lack of options. This movement is all about evening that extreme movement.
3 - It’s the Demographics, Stupid: 70% of Iranians are below 30 years old, meaning they are connected via technology to the rest of the world. To them, the concept of not having democracy or freedom is absurd. This is a matter of when, not if.
4 - The Religious / Military Matrix: This was a coup d’etat not so much by the Religious Crazies, but by those who seek both a further Militarization and more Religion in society. That’s pushing it. It’s possible that Ahmedinejad would have won 50%+1, but the Regime got greedy by saying it won 60%+. In Iran, some might want religion, others might want a strong military, but few really want both.
5 - Bearded Men Make Way for Courageous Women: Cohen does hit the nail on that one, but he fails to recognize the true extent of Iran’s women who will seal the deal. The Revolution in 1979 was about bearded men who grew tired of the Shah’s subservience to the US and his corruption. The soon-to-be-dubbed Revolution of 2009 will be driven by women who will provide a shield and beacon for the rest of the nation to follow.
Tags: Iran|
Posted By: admin | Jun 23rd
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The following doesn’t even need to be true to enrage Iranians; but if the Regime is importing Arabs to fight off protesters in Iran, then this will only ignite the movement further, from Independent.co.uk:
The Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi is under 24-hour guard by secret police and no longer able to speak freely to supporters, according to the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
Mr Makhmalbaf, 52, an informal spokesman abroad for the protest in Iran, said that Mr Mousavi was not under arrest but “he has security agents, secret police with him all the time. He has to be careful what he says.”
In a telephone interview, Mr Makhmalbaf, the director of the 2001 film Kandaha, denied suggestions that the protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were losing steam.
“The regime, arguably, is losing ground, not the protests,” he said. “Ordinary Iranians are openly rejecting the legitimacy and power of Ayatollah Khamanei. That is entirely new, unheard of.”
Mr Makhmalbaf, a friend of Mr Mousavi for 20 years, said that there were reports from Iran that some of the militia deployed to suppress protest were “speaking Arabic”. “That is unconfirmed but it suggests that the regime is unable to trust its own security forces to repress the Iranian people,” he said. “It suggests that people are being used from abroad.”
Iranians have an affinity with Arabs because of their shared religion. But beneath that veneer, lies two major rifts with Arabs:
- even within the religious affinity, Iranians are (like Iraqis, who are Arab) largely Shiite,
- nationalistically speaking, Iranias are Persians, ie. non-Arabs, and many still resent how the Muslims came to their country and imposed Islam onto them.
Any suggestion that the Regime is bringing in Arabs to fight off the Iranians taking to the street will backfire.
None of this is PC per se, but it is real: while an Iranian and an Arab will exchange pleasantries, an uneasy tension will exist between them, as well.
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