Iran "Elections(?)"-your thoughts

[Facade19]

The coverage has exasperated.
I think this is a hot topic, what are your thoughts on this?
I am going to curtail my thoughts, since to be transparent, I am in a whirlwind (emotionally and rationally). However, I would really enjoy your comments (if you have any). Please, let this be a civil discussion. To all of you who think I am insane, or a fascist, etc., nevermind your sentiments to me for this particular thread.
Thank you.

[Andruillius]

Ahmedinejad will win, insha'Allah.

[Lethalis]

Mousavi will win, insha'Allah.

[Musashi]

Developments will depend on two things:

1. How deep and widespread is the current discontent being demonstrated.

2. How the Iranian Supreme Council reacts to either calm down the protesters or suppress them.

[Uther Di Asturien]

I kinda have the feeling that the situation in Iran right now is being unfairly and biasedly reported. I mean, I've read at least half a dozen articles on it so far and not in a single one have I heard of or heard the opinion of someone who voted for Ahmedinejad.
I mean, even if the voting had been fixed, SOMEONE ought to have voted for him.
I'm not saying I support his policies or anything about the policies of Iran for that matter, I just think we should consider both sides of the argument on this topic but we only actually have any coverage of one.

Let's see the topic catch on fire now!

EDIT:

*grabs some popcorn*

[VictorK]

The reason no one is talking to Ahmadinejad supporters is because the outcome of the vote is not what the dispute is about.

It seems to be the consensus among most observers that the vote from the June 12 election was never actually counted. Ahmadinejad wasn't willing to risk it, and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spooked by the democratic outpouring during the election which included unprecedented public criticism of the regime although there were no direct threats to the Islamic system, allied with Ahmadinejad to fix the election by fabricating a vote count. This is interesting, the people who overthrew the system are not the people rioting and protesting in the streets, they aren't the people wearing green. The conservative wing of the government perpetrated a coup against the Islamic Republic. Prior to the June 12 elections I would have insisted that Iran was exactly what it said it was, a theocratic republic. There were functioning democratic systems, they were hardly up to the standard of liberal democracy that prevails in the west due to the theocratic element but the critical component of the regime's legitimacy which goes back to the spirit of the 1979 revolution was that the Iranian people would be allowed to choose some representatives, even if the power of those representatives was checked by the clerics. That changed on June 12, and if the coup is successful Iran will cease to be an Islamic Republic and will merely be yet another neo-patrimonial dictatorship where the democratic systems in the country, as in Iran before 1979, Nicaragua during the Somoza regime, Guatemala and El Salvador, are vestigial at best and all power is concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite or individual. What could emerge, if the popular demonstrations fail to change the fraudulent outcome of the election, is the rise of Ahmadinejad with the Revolutionary Guards and conservative militias (who have been committing the most violence in the period since the election including a widely publicized shooting death during rallies on Monday) as his enforcers. Khamenei's stock may fall in this.

This is the interpretation of events which I believe, based on information coming out of Iran, best represents the general feeling among the demonstrators. If this is a revolution it is because the elites betrayed the principles of the Islamic Republic. Moussavi, the reformist candidate who is widely believed to have won the actual vote, is not advocating an overthrow of the regime but a return to business as usual. In that sense it is the student protestors and others taking to the streets who occupy the conservative position. However, if the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council including the Assembly of Experts which has the sole power to remove the Supreme Leader prove unable to reverse Ahmadinejad's coup we may see real revolutionary sentiment.

Which is not to say that we're likely to see a revolutionary outcome. The history of political violence tells us that it is incredibly difficult to dislodge an entrenched power elite that is willing to us violent coercion to preserve its position in society. Historical examples from China to Nicaragua to El Salvador even to Iran during the reign of the Shah does not bode well for the immediate success of the protesters. It's incredibly difficult to maintain momentum and overcome collective action problems. Moussavi has called for a general strike, such strikes crippled Iran in the waning days of the Shah's rule and demonstrated the solidarity of the people in all sectors against the regime. Ultimately, when the United States abandoned the Shah, he lost his last supporter. We have not yet reached that point in Iran. Ahmadinejad still has supporters, the conservative bazaaris who were critical to the fall of the Shah are at best neutral and at worst disdainful of the youthful demonstrators. Some of the twitter feeds that came through (finally a use for that thing) seemed to indicate, and these are entirely anecdotal though pretty much everything is, that some people were worried about their studies, and that some people were going about business as usual. The regime definitely has an opportunity to solidify the new Iran that they are trying to create.

But there are some signs that things might not turn out that way. The elites are not united. Several Ayatollahs support the demonstrators, and Rafsanjani, the chair of the Assembly of Experts, is said to be counting votes to remove the Supreme Leader. The massive demonstration in Tehran today was officially prohibited, but when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators showed up anyway riot police stood down. The regular military is said to be neutral. There are parallels to Tiananmen, not in extremely broad terms of state suppression, but as an example of where this could go. Twenty years ago you could say there was a similar sentiment, students were pissed off, while the working classes in Beijing saw them as impudent and spoiled. The selfless nature of the demonstration in Tiananmen, which went on for weeks and included hunger strikes, eventually convinced them that their cause was just and proved to be the tipping point to where the regime, which was also experiencing levels of elite defection where some leaders sponsored the students in order to enhance their own position in the state, could no longer ignore what was going on and had to suppress the revolt. But, critically, in Tiananmen the troops who put down the demonstrators came from the countryside. The communists were not confident that soldiers in Beijing who were familiar with the demonstrations would obey the order to fire on them. We see the same thing in Iran, most of the violence is being perpetrated by conservative militias in the country, not the regular police or armed forces. There is a clear legitimacy crisis, and communications in Iran which the regime has not been entirely successful in suppressing have, as in China, spread demonstrations to every corner of the country. We may yet see a tipping point in Iran, if the general strikes are successful and Moussavi and his supporters can convince the wider population of their cause, that makes the effects of violent coercion diminishing with each application.

It will be very interesting to see where this goes. I think the Obama Administration has taken the correct approach in that they are skeptical of the official results but are not willing to weigh in rhetorically or otherwise on either side. This is a decision that rests in the hands of the Iranians, and given the history of interference by the US and the West it's best to stay on the sidelines. I don't know why the EU has decided to officially recognize the election results. It seems premature to me.

[Giladis]

I see it as a very simple thing actually that I see here in Croatia every time the elections come.

Before the elections why the pools are made the liberal, leftists partys are going strongly and when the actual elections come the rightwing, conservatives once more end as the most powerful option.

The main reason for that is where the pools are made. They are done mostly in cities where the population almost by definition is more liberal. That creates a false picture of popularity but in the end it is the "peasants" which are the post numerous and hold the keys in less developed countires(in terms that more people live in the country opposed to those living in the cities) such as Croatia and Iran.

[Ashnari Doomsong]

Giladis, you're wrong.

Merely looking at the two main candidates doesn't quite cut it. The best example of voter fraud is Kourabbi, the most leftist of the candidates.

He went from sizable support, both in polls and in 2005, to a few hundred thousand votes in this actual election. I can dig up some sources if people want me to, or they could take me at my word - this election is very much rigged.

That's not to say that A-jad mightn't have won in a regular election, but it isn't an actual election, which is why people are freaking out. Hopefully, there will be another revolution in Iran, and that country will dispense of its reactionary theocratic elements.
Probably not, though.

[Musashi]

In fairness, the Iranians are in a better position than the students in Tienanmen Square.

[Galengalad]

Well - there's a decision to make another count of votes. Opposition still demands new elections, but I'm not sure if they get it.
My opinion that there were significant frauds, but I suppose current president still has most votes. I guess he just didn't want to have a 2d round against his strong opponent.

We had similar development in Moldova recently at their parliament elections. Communists got majority of votes, Eurocommission accepted the result, but still there were riots, accusation of frauds (a truth in quite a number of occasions), votes were recounted, result was practically the same. Opposition, sure thing, didn't accept it.
Remark - opposition was positioning themselves as democratic and pro-western, so they got a good press in Europe.
...and at the moment they're going to have new elections as Parliament wasn't able to elect a president in time....

[VictorK]

In fairness, the Iranians are in a better position than the students in Tienanmen Square.

In reality the Iranian state has yet to even begin to crack down, despite the smattering of deaths across Iran and arrests of important figures.

[Musashi]

Not without risking considerable backlash and a public relations nightmare.

[Keith]

Not without risking considerable backlash and a public relations nightmare.

Sort of like risking the PR issues when they said they want to 'destroy Israel'? Ahmadinejad wants the US to sound threatening or promise to get involved, so he can make it an anti-US, anti-western thing, and paint the opposition as US allies. The ruling elite care only that they don't galvanize and unite the Iranian public against them, more importantly, the regular army and the police force, which so far, have not been used to quell riots and who have stood down when the protesters have shown up.

[VictorK]

Not without risking considerable backlash and a public relations nightmare.

I think they're already experiencing both. If the choice is between 'look bad in front of a world that has already isolated us and is hostile towards our regime' and 'give up power' there doesn't seem to me to be any real choice between the two. You crack down.

Tiananmen does provide a historical guide. Right now the elites in Iran are divided, and that's holding off a real surge of violence from the state. The same thing happened in Tiananmen, the protests were allowed to grow and spread over several weeks because the elite within the communist regime weren't sure how to respond and some were using the student movements to advance their own careers. When Deng Xiaoping reasserted authority and united the elites that's when the demonstrations were brutally crushed all over the country. If I was an Iranian, and I saw Khamenei or Ahmadinejad decisively reassert authority, I'd get the hell off the streets.

[Musashi]

Iran is not China, the power brokers legitimize their positions through the supposed benevolence of their direction of national policies, whose legitimacy is reaffirmed through lip service of periodic democratic elections; removal of that illusion will leave them open to not only international sanctions, ineffectual as they are, but also discontent among their supposed base, which actually is far more dangerous to their long term survival. And their wished for political and cultural legacy.

[VictorK]

Open to international sanctions? Have you been paying attention? The only two states that have 'good' relations with Iran are Russia and China, and do you think they're really going to care about a little bit of repression? Iran is about as isolated as it's going to get, all they're forgoing is an opportunity to improve relations.

And I'm not so sure the demonstrators really represent Iranian society. I use the Tiananmen example fully cognizant of the fact that Iran is not China, but we can use the case to identify critical aspects of political violence that allow it to be successful or repressed. The conservative elements of Iranian society, the bazaaris and the rural population, don't appear to be onboard. If this revolt remains of the young and the students it will fail, and likely fail in a moment of spectacular bloodshed. They're not a threat if they can't sustain the outrage over time and across different groups.

[Musashi]

The Chinese Communist Party offered a compromise, though unspoken. Political affairs to remain in their hands, and the opportunity to obtain wealth will be permitted to at least a portion of the masses. Such a promise to its Iranian citizens would ring fairly shallow. Current international sanctions against Iran are rather loose and cavalierly enforced.

[VictorK]

Offered a compromise to who? The people in the square? Again, I'm not saying that the two cases are /100 percent identical/, but that we can observe patterns.

As for sanctions, I don't see how there's much more you can do. Sanctions aren't going to hurt Iran any more than they're going to, especially without Russian and Chinese support, and I indicated earlier I don't see why those two nations would get bent out of shape by a regime suppressing popular revolt.

[Andruillius]

The Chinese Communist Party offered a compromise, though unspoken. Political affairs to remain in their hands, and the opportunity to obtain wealth will be permitted to at least a portion of the masses. Such a promise to its Iranian citizens would ring fairly shallow. Current international sanctions against Iran are rather loose and cavalierly enforced.

Seeing as Ahmadinejad has been giving them opposite, fucking up the economy on longterm by spending big on short term, that comment was rather lacking relevance, or detail. Much like most of your short posts lately.

In regards to comparing the riot with any previous ones, I think it is more relevant to compare it to the uproar that got the Shah ousted. Knowing that the Iranian people has overthrown regimes before, Khamenei and Ahmedinejad will be careful to cause more anger.

An important reason for this riot is Ahmadinejad's populist spending of oil money, which has driven up the inflation and is undermining the country's economy. To stay in his seat, Ahmedinejad will have to reform his way of spending money. And that ain't gonna be easy. So in fact, I'm contradicting Musashi's statement: Fixing the economy is exactly what Ahmedinejad needs to do. Whether the Iranians will believe he's capable of it, however...

[Musashi]

I can gush, I don't always feel the need to do so.

Violent suppression of unrest is not unique in the Islamic Republic's short history - much will depend upon how wide the dissatisfaction of the election result spreads out. It's easier to contain the discontent of students than a broadly based demographic. The Chinese economic "miracle" was demonstratively proven by the mid-90s, the same conditions that made it possible are not available to the Iranian leadership.

[Andruillius]

In the sense that Iran is at a higher level now than China was, that's true. However, there are many ways of handling the oil wealth responsibly that are far better than what Ahmadinejad's been doing - Norway being the prime example, of course. In that sense, responsble economic government could make Iran a lot better than it is today, economically.

[VictorK]

The Chinese economic "miracle" was demonstratively proven by the mid-90s, the same conditions that made it possible are not available to the Iranian leadership.

This consideration is wholly irrelevant, what happened in the mid-90s does not tell us anything about why the government chose (and it was a choice) to violently suppress the 1989 demonstrations. The students were demonstrating for political freedoms to go along with economic reforms that had taken place throughout the 80s. While thinking long term is nice, it doesn't tell us anything about how the regime will react to the current unrest or how sustainable that unrest will be in the short term.

[cidracin]

I don't think Mousavvi will be much better than Ahmadinejad from a foriegn policy standpoint but I think he can give the Iranian people a better quality of life. That is just my opinion which I based on the scattered news reports I have seen. But in the big picture the Ayaltolah is stll the supreme leader and until he leaves office I don't think much will change. Sorry for my spelling if I made any errors.

[EricJ]

There are things people (yes, including you) can do to help. Have a look at http://hackerswithoutborders.net/

[Prince Elileth]

At first I assumed these protests would be crushed within a few days as is the case in all modern authoritarian regimes posing as democratic nations. Call me a pessimist but I have a hard time believe revolution is possible in this day and age against governments with the resources like Iran or Myanmar last summer. While the Iranian people have clearly done more than I had expected I still have a hard time believing this will end in anything other than marshal law and forced compliance. If they do manage to create meaningful change then color me impressed. More power to them.

[VictorK]

At first I assumed these protests would be crushed within a few days as is the case in all modern authoritarian regimes posing as democratic nations.

Neopatrimonial dictatorships have been overthrown by popular movements the world over, from El Salvador to Iran to Chile...The list goes on. It's not impossible, it just take a long time and a lot of hard work.

Call me a pessimist but I have a hard time believe revolution is possible in this day and age against governments with the resources like Iran or Myanmar last summer.

It takes a long view. But there's nothing about the modern age that makes revolution any less likely given the right conditions.

[Allerion]

It takes a long view. But there's nothing about the modern age that makes revolution any less likely given the right conditions.

no, but the government in power has much more ability to fight the revolution then ever before. so while the revolution might happen, chances are smaller than before that it will actually succeed.

[VictorK]

no, but the government in power has much more ability to fight the revolution then ever before. so while the revolution might happen, chances are smaller than before that it will actually succeed.

This cuts both ways. What might have happened if the Chinese students in Tiananmen had twitter?

There's only so many ways you can reinvent a gun to shoot a protestor.

[Allerion]

This cuts both ways. What might have happened if the Chinese students in Tiananmen had twitter?

newsweek covered that. (political cartoon page, guy in front of tanks was on iphone)

[Giladis]

It takes a long view. But there's nothing about the modern age that makes revolution any less likely given the right conditions.

no, but the government in power has much more ability to fight the revolution then ever before. so while the revolution might happen, chances are smaller than before that it will actually succeed.

I agree on this with Vik.

Technological advancements mean little when critical mass is reached.