Laura Secor: Iran’s Stolen Election (New Yorker)

[struggle4progress]

... From 3:30 P.M. until 4:15 P.M., the scene at the Hyatt was festive, despite the news earlier in the day that the reformist headquarters had been sacked and prominent reformists arrested. Everyone had a story about a relative who had never voted before, who was a royalist or an all-purpose skeptic, who was wearing green in the streets or simply casting a vote for Mousavi. There was only one way this could go. Turnout, we heard, was over eighty per cent.

But then the first ominous Facebook update came in. The Ministry of Interior had announced that of twenty-five million votes counted thus far, sixteen million were for Ahmadinejad. The time, in Tehran, was just past midnight. The polls in the cities had just closed. It was not time to panic yet; maybe this was just the rural vote. But the mood in our little circle darkened. It wasn’t true, came another update; only five million had been counted, and of them, both candidates were claiming sixty per cent. Then the tally reached ten million, with sixty-seven per cent for Ahmadinejad. And then the most sinister news of all: the public had been told that if anyone approached the Interior Ministry, which would be the obvious site for a protest of the vote count, the police had orders to shoot.

There can be no question that the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential election was stolen. Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of President Ahmadinejad and is responsible for the mechanics of the polling and counting of votes, have reportedly issued an open letter saying as much. Government polls (one conducted by the Revolutionary Guards, the other by the state broadcasting company) that were leaked to the campaigns allegedly showed ten- to twenty-point leads for Mousavi a week before the election; earlier polls had them neck and neck, with Mousavi leading by one per cent, and Karroubi just behind. Historically, low turnout has always favored conservatives in Iranian elections, while high turnout favors reformers. That’s because Iran’s most reliable voters are those who believe in the system; those who are critical tend to be reluctant to participate. For this reason, in the last three elections, sixty-five per cent of voters have come from traditional, rural villages, which house just thirty-five per cent of the populace. If the current figures are to be believed, urban Iranians who voted for the reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001 have defected to Ahmadinejad in droves.

What is most shocking is not the fraud itself, but that it was brazen and entirely without pretext. The final figures put Mousavi’s vote below thirty-five per cent, and not because of a split among reformists; they have Karroubi pulling less than one per cent of the vote. To announce a result this improbable, and to do it while locking down the Interior Ministry, sending squads of Revolutionary Guards into the streets, blacking out internet and cell phone communication and shuttering the headquarters of the rival candidates, sends a chilling message to the people of Iran—not only that the Islamic Republic does not care about their votes, but that it does not fear their wrath. Iranians, including many of the original founders and staunch supporters of the revolution, are angry, and they will demonstrate. But they will be met with organized and merciless violence. Already, Youtube clips are streaming out of Iran, many of them showing riot police savagely beating protestors.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371089501&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[DFW]

1. The Iranian hard-liners had plenty of "how to" manuals

Provided by such experts at "winning" elections as Karl Rove and Josef Stalin.

It appears they have apt students, indeed.

[Daveparts]

2. There is absolutely no proof

of a stolen election. Only the wishful thinking of those who wish it was so.
Ironically these same people find no fault in either election of George Bush