Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News The Election Aftermath in Iran

In the name of God

People of Iran

These last days, we have witnessed the lively efforts of you brothers and sisters, old and young alike, from any social category, for the 10th presidential elections.

Our youth, hoping to see their rightful will fulfilled, came on the scene and waited patiently. This was the greatest occasion for the government’s officials to bond with their people.

But unfortunately, they used it in the worst way possible. Declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe, and despite all the evidence of crafted results, and to counter people protestations, in front of the eyes of the same nation who carried the weight of a revolution and 8 years of war, in front of the eyes of local and foreign reporters, attacked the children of the people with astonishing violence. And now they are attempting a purge, arresting intellectuals, political opponents and Scientifics.

Now, based on my religious duties, I will remind you :

1- A legitimate state must respect all points of view. It may not oppress all critical views. I fear that this lead to the lost of people’s faith in Islam.

2- Given the current circumstances, I expect the government to take all measures to restore people’s confidence. Otherwise, as I have already said, a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy.

3- I invite everyone, specially the youth, to continue reclaiming their dues in calm, and not let those who want to associate this movement with chaos succeed.

4- I ask the police and army personals not to “sell their religion”, and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before god. Recognize the protesting youth as your children. Today censor and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth.

I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.

As the aftermath of the contested Iranian election continues, it's worth remembering that it isn't a military attack by the U.S. or Israel that the Islamic Republic of Iran fears most. It's a bloodless toppling of the regime as the result of reform and closer ties to the West.

The trademark green of Mr. Mousavi's campaign, while in theory representing of Islam, aggravated those fears, as many in power saw parallels with the "Orange" and "Rose" revolutions that overthrew repressive regimes in Georgia and the Ukraine.

Ironically, the bogeyman pointed to by fundamentalist Iranian clerics is the same one often cited by American right-wing conspriracists - liberal currency speculator and political philanthropist George Soros.

In 2007, Iran arrested and interrogated Haleh Esfandiari, an academic linked to Soros' Open Society Institute. The Iranians accused her of plotting to lure Iranian reformers and dissidents into a network aimed at devising a non-violent overthrow of the Islamic government.

I am comforted that a great number of Iranians seemingly prefer a more progressive type of government...

I have followed CNN’s coverage of the demonstrations since Monday. The only known poll, according to CNN, had Ahmadinejad well ahead of Green party candidate Mousavi just a couple weeks prior to the election.

However, scrutiny of the data posted at Terror Free Tomorrow (www.terrorfreetomorrow.org) fails to support Ballen and Doherty’s interpretations. Their findings, from a telephone survey conducted four weeks before the election, are based on the responses of only 57.8% of the 1,731 people who were successfully contacted by telephone from outside of Iran. Among these, 34% said they would vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 14% for Mir Hussein Mousavi, 2% for Mehdi Karoubi, 1% for Mohsen Rezaie, and 27% did not know. (These figures add up only to 78% in the Ballen report.) In other words, of 1,731 people contacted, well over half either refused to participate (42.2%) or did not indicate a preferred candidate (15.6%) While we cannot guess at the political preferences of this nonresponding/ noncommitting group, we do know from these data that just 19.7% of all those contacted indicated they planned to vote for Ahmadinejad. This polling figure is very low for an incumbent – particularly for a self-described populist candidate – and cannot be responsibly interpreted as representing a clear harbinger of election victory.
....

How then do we explain Balen and Doherty’s legitimization of the declaration from Iran’s Interior Ministry that Ahmadinejad prevailed with 63.62% of the votes? The absurdity of the government’s election engineering is that none of the candidates managed to get more than a fraction of the votes even in their hometowns.

Our op-ed published on Monday has drawn much attention -- and misunderstanding. Our nonprofit organizations conducted the only independent and transparent nationwide public opinion survey in Iran before the June 12 vote. The poll found that Ahmadinejad was leading his nearest opponent, the more reform-minded candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, with almost a third undecided.

Nearly 80 percent want the right to vote for all their leaders, including the all-powerful supreme leader, while nearly 90 percent chose free elections and a free press as the most important goals they have for their government -- virtually tied with the top priority of improving the Iranian economy.

And here is the most important fact of all: More than 86 percent of those who told us they support Ahmadinejad also choose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their leaders. In other words, in our survey, Ahmadinejad supporters back real democratic reforms in Iran as much as supporters of the more avowedly reform candidate Moussavi.

Zakaria: In the past the protests were always the street against the state, and the clerics all sided with the state. When the reformist president, Mohammed Khatami, was in power, he entertained the possibility of siding with the street, but eventually stuck with the establishment. The street and state are at odds again but this time the clerics are divided. Khatami has openly sided with the challenger, Mir Hossein Moussavi, as has the reformist Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. So has Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament and a man with strong family connections to the highest levels of the religious hierarchy. Behind the scenes, the former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now head of the Assembly of Experts, another important constitutional body, is waging a campaign against Ahmadinejad and even the supreme leader himself. If senior clerics dispute Khamenei's divine assessment and argue that the Guardian Council is wrong, it is a death blow to the basic premise behind the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is as if a senior Soviet leader had said in 1980 that Karl Marx was not the right guide to economic policy.

Yeah...me too! Instead of 'Death to America' - it's 'we really, really, don't like you.'
That's change I can believe in!