Iran: Don’t Lead, Don’t Follow, And Instead Get Out Of The Way

[babylonsister]

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/06/13/iran-dont-lead-dont-follow-and-instead-get-out-of-the-way/

Iran: Don’t Lead, Don’t Follow, And Instead Get Out Of The Way
By: Spencer Ackerman Saturday June 13, 2009 4:12 pm


In my previous post, I wondered whether the Obama administration would need to make a stronger statement about Iranian electoral fraud or consider other measures for dealing with the regime. The strongly anti-Ahmedinejad Hadi Ghaemi, New York-based spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, explains why that's a mistake.

Robert Gibbs' White House statement may not fully capture the depth of the crime committed against the Iranian people. "But I think it's wise for the U.S. government to keep its distance," Ghaemi says. The White House can and should "show concern for human life and protesters' safety and promote tolerance and dialogue." But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would "instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there's no reason to give that unfounded allegation" any chance to spread.

Ghaemi continues to say that the international community should present a united front that gives "no legitimacy" to the election. In particular, he wants U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to express "serious grievances" about how the election was conducted. "Sanctions and military threats, all these things are counterproductive," Ghaemi says. The initiative has to be expressed and promoted by the Iranians themselves, particularly from Mir Hossein Moussavi and other exponents of popular Iranian outrage. "It very much depends on what leading reformers, including Moussavi, ask them to do, and how much responsibility do they take for exposing them to danger. If they put their tails between their legs and walk away, it will be very sad."

After years of being told in this country that no initiative for the expansion of global human rights will occur absent active U.S. support, Ghaemi's advice can come across as passivity or indifference. But that reflects a certain arrogance, and occurs at the expense of the goal in question. "We should not have the U.S. lead," says Ghaemi. Instead, the Iranian people have to lead, and the international community, with the U.S. in a background and muted role, ought to refuse acceptance of the regime's contentions, and not offer positive endorsements of the dissidents and the protesters.

Update: Andrew passes along a Farsi report saying the head of the election-monitoring commission has ruled that the results should be declared invalid and a new election be held. An English translation is available from the National Iranian American Council's new blog collecting and translating Farsi-language tweets, which I am obsessively refreshing. And don't miss the excellent, excellent work that Laura Rozen is doing on Iran, a subject she knows extremely well.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Interesting.

[Aloha Spirit]

2. I'm kind of surprised that facebook has the latest news

6:14 update: Through Facebook we have received news that Mir Hossein
Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Gholamhossein Karbaschi are under house arrest.

from that "tweets" hyperlink.

I mean, I know the press was restricted for the election, but the fact that msm isn't covering this more means they didn't expect it to be a major news topic.
Even without the apparent scandal, this would have been the major news story of the weekend, imo.

[stevenleser]

3. I'm not. I've told people here before not to underestimate the power of Facebook

... as a tool it really has the ability to have an impact.

[Aloha Spirit]

7. I don't really get facebook yet...

are there like hubs to visit, or are all pages necessarily just one person, if you know what I mean.
I guess your own page is the only hub?

[janx]

4. Therre was a rumor that Iranians were blocked from Facebook

for awhile. In any case, most of the Facebook content came from this site:

http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/13/alerts-from-tehran/

[Aloha Spirit]

5. Thank you so much for that link

It's weird to see those images coming from a place that's so technologically advanced.

[wildeyed]

10. I have a few Iranian FB friends.

They have been posting insane video all day. Twitter has been great for up to the moment video and updates, too. I was getting good stuff there this AM before any of the US MSM was saying much. This guy has been good. https://twitter.com/mousavi1388 He has a Flickr feed, too.

[Aloha Spirit]

12. Wow "ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops..."

"... and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest " (allaho akbar means God is Great)

It's one thing to try to pull off a stunt like this in the third world... but to do it in a place like Iran, I guess you need to disable mobile networks and the internet.
Thanks for the link.

[Cha]

6. Exactly! And, I didn't need

this article to tell me..

"But I think it's wise for the U.S. government to keep its distance," Ghaemi says. The White House can and should "show concern for human life and protesters' safety and promote tolerance and dialogue." But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would "instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there's no reason to give that unfounded allegation" any chance to spread."

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. EXACTLY!! ANY appearance that that the reform and democracy movement are stooges of America

would be the kiss of death for democracy and reform.

[invictus]

9. K&R

[jeanpalmer]

11. Does he have any proof there was fraud?

If not, he's just blowing smoke. My guess is he's just blowing smoke.

[Douglas Carpenter]

13. Imagine Barack Obama loosing the African-American vote to John McCain in Chicago

Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province. The reported results from Iran show Moussavi being trounced by Ahmadinejad among Azeri voters in Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan province. Azeri's almost always vote for one of their own even when the candidate has absolutely no chance of winning.

salon.com has a great article by Juan Cole on some real implausible results. Juan Cole's blog also raises some of the same questions.

Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud

By Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran /

"Obama administration officials were privately casting doubt on the announced vote tallies. They pointed out that it was unlikely that Ahmadinejad had defeated his chief opponent, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, by a margin of 57 percent, in Moussavi's own home city of Tabriz. Nor is it plausible, as claimed, that Ahmadinejad won a majority of votes in the capital, Tehran, from which he hails. The final tally also gave only 320,000 votes to the other reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, who had helped force Ahmadinejad into a runoff election when he ran in 2005. It seems odd that he get less than 1 percent of the votes in this round. Karoubi, an ethnic Lur from Iran's west, was even alleged to have done poorly in those provinces.

The final vote counts alleged for cities and provinces, even more so than the landslide claimed by the incumbent nationally, strongly suggest a last-minute and clumsy fraud. A carefully planned theft of the election would at least have conceded Tabriz to Moussavi and the rural western Iranian villages to Karoubi."


snip: "The primary challenger to incumbent Ahmadinejad, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi, was widely thought to have a number of crucial constituencies behind him. Urban youth and women, who had elected a reformist president in 1997 and 2001, showed enthusiasm for Moussavi. He also showed an ability to bring out big crowds in his native Azerbaijan, where a Turkic language, Azeri, is spoken rather than Persian. (Azeris constitute about a third of the Iranian population.) It was expected that if the turnout was large, that would help Moussavi.

But not only did Iran's Electoral Commission announce that Ahmadinejad had won almost two-thirds of the general vote, it also gave him big majorities in major cities such as Tehran and Tabriz (the latter is the capital of Azerbaijan). These results seemed unbelievable not only to Moussavi supporters but to many professional Iran observers."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran /

Saturday, June 13, 2009
Stealing the Iranian Election
by Juan Cole ]

Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen

1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.

2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.

3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.

link to full article:

http://juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.html

[jeanpalmer]

16. Looks like a lot of people believed

the propaganda coming out before the election that this race was close or even. But it may have been wishful thinking. Or it may have been part of a program orchestrated by the West to disrupt Iran's political process. If Ahmadinejad really won 63% to to 332%, where did all those stories come from that the election would be close. Because they were way off the mark. But apparently a large number of people fell for them. That's why I say it looked like a psy ops campaign run by the CIA and its affiliates. It's the standard disruptive stuff they do all the time.

"Obama administration officials were privately casting doubt on the announced vote tallies...." Are these the same officials who lied to us recently about that attack in Afghanistan that killed 140 civilians? Said the Taliban had thrown grenades, when in fact the US had dropped bombs.

Don't believe anything your government tells you. It has a history of lying and you can't trust anything it says.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. it is hardly just the U.S. questioning the results...pretty much everyone is

I follow the Middle East media and they are raising the same questions.

I don't think Juan Cole or Al Jazeera or endless numbers of Iranian observers are all part one big CIA conspiracy.

I would be the first to fear that reactionary forces might want to play up these highly questionable results for nefarious purposes. As I stated above, absolutely nothing in the world would undermine democracy and reform in Iran than for the pro-democracy and pro-reform movement to be seen as stooges for the United States. I am well aware that the U.S. has tried to cause trouble in Iran of a military and paramilitary nature. I don't know of any evidence that they are working with the pro-democracy and reform movement other than the accusations of their most reactionary hardliners,

Is there yet absolute proof that this election was stolen? Probably not yet. But if we were to have woken up on election day last November and discovered that John McCain had won by a two-to-one landslide and had absolutely trounced Obama among African-American voters in Chicago, it would most certainly raise suspicions.

[newspeak]

14. are you going to go on every discussion and say the same thing?

I do know that yesterday the MSM stated the Maumoud was 15 points behind. Usually when you have an unprecedented turnout it is not to keep the incumbent in. I'll wait and see, but this is looking like one of Saddam's elections. In Amerikka, it seems the voting "irregularities" happen, but they at least keep it close to steal.

[newspeak]

15. Douglass, that question was for JeanPalmer

who apparently has gone on several discussions on the Iranian elections with the same old, same old.

[jeanpalmer]

18. Why do you assume the election results are wrong

Maybe the MSM was wrong. It looks like they may have been completely wrong. Being wrong by 45% can't happen by mistake. It takes an effort. The US media is generally anti-Iran, so there's reason to believe they were spewing propaganda.

[babylonsister]

19. Did you pay attention 3 days prior to the election, where millions

came out for Mousavi? Millions of young people, and the country is composed of about 3/4s of the population being under 30.

Why do you assume the results are right? Because the 'gov't' says so? :rofl:

[PretzelWarrior]

20. there was fraud. why wouldn't they report results by region?

I think you know why. Don't be obtuse.