Post-Iranian election, a Mousavi supporter speaks
Moussavi supporter with candidate's image (Ben Curtis-AP)
As the post-election protests and rallies continue, I contacted a number of dear friends in Iran to check in with them and glean their thoughts, specifically seeking out the views of both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad supporters. This friend, whose views here are represented anonymously and with little editing, is a Mousavi supporter in Tehran who has been kind enough to allow me to post our email correspondence.
President Ahmadinejad is denoted as AN and I started by asking about the blocking of sites like YouTube, which had only recently been unblocked, and what news sites my friend could access:
Yes youtube is blocked and the net is very slow. I wasn’t able to post a comment on my own blog last night. We have the BBC Persian and the VOA – also in Persian.
They pass the info about gatherings …. this is 30 years ago revisited, then it was BBC radio which was synchronizing! I don’t mean that they are the cause of all this. But now that it happens they obviously have an interest in its continuation.
You saw the crowd, it isn’t about “elites” vs “the people”.
AN attracted crowds with: state-owned TV advertisements, by bringing people from around Tehran by organised transportation (Fisk mentions this), civil servants and the army are required to participate.
Here people gathered despite the fact that the info came in some websites, while some other websites said that the gathering was canceled – that the government announced that any gathering was illegal, and the fact that people knew they might be beating and all with the police, the “plain clothes” guys and special forces.
Anyway according to our government “thugs” rallied, and according the the progressive blogosphere “elites”! :)
I am amazed that our own government doesn’t even try to find a Plausible Compromise regarding the legitimate frustration it has generated and does all to provoke the people with its arrogant commentaries and announcement.
They have attacked universities and students again.
And we know that the US and co will interfere or are interfering in one way or another.
Moussavi is the only available compromise for more civil liberties, it is sort of the new Khatami and backed by him. It is a compromise that people accepted, within the system with no demands toward larger stuff such as foreign policy.
AN has alienated most of the population, his arrogant speech after the election didn’t help.
A second email exchange ensued in which I specifically queried the confusion about Mousavi allegedly being informed that he was the victor, and/or announcing victory, and I received this interesting response (boldface editorial):
You know I have voted in all the 5 last Presidential elections. I have a feeling. With no reformist candidates – toward whom we have no illusion but just someone who doesn’t use the hate speech and promises a better rule of law – there is never much participation.
The first great election was the first term of Khatami. Again despite the fact that he didn’t have much publicity, a highest number of people participated. Same during his second term.
When AN was elected, the participation dropped. In fact you were almost encouraged not to participate so they could get their way.
This time it was a Khatami-like election. The whole country was mobilised.
If they had cheated and got something like 45% versus 47% again one might think it is plausible, but 63 -32? NO WAY!
They were too greedy.
My guess is that M announced early anticipating the cheating. The only way he had at that time to do something as negotiations were fruitless.
More rallies are planned in the days ahead.
ADDENDUM. In a third email exchange, our friend reflects:
I am not really a M supporter, in the sense that I am rooting unconditionally for him.
I am definitely the supporter of the aspirations of the Iranian youth and students. AN and his clan were involved in incidents such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_student_protests_July_1999 with no accountability.
There is also a disconnect: His foreign policy which is much appreciated elsewhere, which is perceived as a diversion from internal problems. With his populist style of speeches such serious matters sound like one more slogan and one more bashing – instead of a thoughtful policy.
Defying an official ban, hundreds of thousands of Iranian supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi demonstrate in Tehran on Monday, June 15, 2009 (Behrouz Mehri/AFP)
will there be any interviews of AN supporters?
desimaj
June 16, 2009 at 7:49 am
I hope so. Iranians with bona fide views (ie only representing their private views, not a party line one way or the other) are also most welcome to write in.
peoplesgeography
June 16, 2009 at 8:01 am
asking for them to write in creates the self-selecting sample that is prevalent in western media coverage, innit?
of course, if you dont know anyone, you dont know anyone.
but just trying to point out the correlation between views presented, the ability to access those views (personal networks, language, travel, etc.), the class of people those abilities represent, and subsequently the scope of media messaging and framing.
desimaj
June 16, 2009 at 8:20 am
but fyi: http://southissouth.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/conversation-with-grandma-after-irans-elections/
desimaj
June 16, 2009 at 8:20 am
Thanks Desimaj. I see your point that provincially based Iranians, who were more likely to vote for AN, are harder to access than Tehranians who were more likely than their regional counterparts to vote for Moussavi. My first interview, to date, with a Tehranian friend underscores this fact that the animosity towards AN tends to be more pronounced in Iran’s capital city.
That said, I found the following interesting in your link, which I’ll highlight:
peoplesgeography
June 16, 2009 at 8:28 am
On Mousavi’s connections with Mossad,Michael Ledeen,Ghorbanifar the arms dealer et al go to Angirfan.
Follow the links to Xymphora’s Iran Election Wrap and Axis of Logic piece on “the old Langley 123″ you’ll get the full picture.
With a team of Jewish apostates among the theocratic establishment around Ahmadinejad and a “People Power” candidate with long-standing back-channel links to Washington the NWO agenda is on track.
The game is rigged and Iran is being primed for take-down.
Freeborn
June 16, 2009 at 10:00 am
I’ve taken the liberty of embedding Freeborn’s links above. The second link, originally posted at Moon of Alabama and added to at Axis of Logic, can also be found here.
Readers might also be interested in considering:
Wishful thinking from Tehran (Guardian) — previously pointed out here
and
Ahmadinejad won. Get over it (Politico)
peoplesgeography
June 16, 2009 at 10:22 am
To add to the mix, I’d like to quote a few comments made by an intelligent, well-informed Iranian friend of mine.
She says:
“Not sure this is special ops and destailisation. That has been going on in the provinces with the ethnic conflict stuff (which is what the US has openly borrowed/learned from the British). I really think this is genuine intra-iranian (even more specific: intra-regime) conflict that has a lot more to do with struggle over the character of Islamic Republic as Khamenei gets old and the older generation of revolutionaries die/give way to the younger ones than it does with transnational politics.
The fact that the Iranian guy (Ataollah Mohajerani) who paid for Hizbullah to train the Hamas/Jihad fighters that were deported to Lebanon in 1992/1993 is actually a Mousavi supporter, should give you a sense that this is not really about US or Israel, but about how power will shape up in Iran.
Also, just FYI, I have received a very large number of emails from Iran all saying Ahmadinejad has imported Hizbullah fighters from Lebanon to beat people up: combination of usual iranian anti-Arab racism, and, I suspect, information operation by the US. I have challenged every single one of the emails I have gotten in this regards, but to just let you know there are people on both sides claiming external intervention!
Also, another thing: the methods of struggle chosen are exactly the same as the revolution in 1978/1979 (demonsrtations; going up onto the roof in the dark and screaming in unison Allah-u-Akbar; sit-ins, poetry-readings; etc.) but the method of suppression is different: The Shah brought the tanks out. Ahmadinejad is bringing out loads and loads of plain-clothes security officers on motorcycles with truncheons. Essentially, counterinsurgency methods come to the streets of Tehran.”
qunfuz
June 16, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Ok I get they don’t accept the results but why the violence noting that it is wrong for the police to beat people up but something is amiss. Good to know that the parliament is looking into the violence and hopefully in the next few days things will become clearer.
“Ahmadinejad has imported Hizbullah fighters from Lebanon to beat people up”
How can anyone believe that?!
Does anyone have any doubt that this is not about election results.
I think the same thing would have happened if the opposition won in Lebanon…constructive chaos is still on…
realistic bird
June 16, 2009 at 3:02 pm
[...] match urban protesters who are being contained could go several ways. Pulse has some more coverage here and here, the comments are interesting too. As I said before, I think both interpretations can be [...]
Iran Caution « Ten Percent
June 16, 2009 at 4:54 pm
The humble, humble President Ahmedinejad….what a guy
The Fox News TV (USA) asked the Iranian President Ahmedinejad, ‘When you look into the mirror in the morning what do you say to yourself’?
He answered: I see the person in the mirror and tell him ‘Remember’ you are no more than a small servant, ahead of you today is the heavy responsibility, and that is to serve the Iranian nation’.
Ahmedinejad, the Iranian President who astonished many when he first reached to the office of the Presidency by donating all the high valued Iranian carpets to one of the mosques in Tehran by replacing them with the low cost ordinary carpets. He observed that there was a huge extravagant lounge for receiving and welcoming the VIPs and he ordered it to be closed and asked the protocol office to arrange for an ordinary room only with wooden chairs.
On many instances he joins the cleaning staff of the municipality for cleaning the streets in the area where his home and the Presidency are located.
Under his authority whenever he appoints any minister to his post he gets a signed document from him with many points particularly highlighting that he shall remain poor and that his personal and his relatives accounts will be watched and the day he leaves the ministry shall be with dignity, and therefore it is not lawful for him or his relatives to take any advantage of his office. First of all he declared himself for all the ‘Big’ wealth and the property he owned was a Peugeot 504 car, model 1977, an old small house inherited from his father 40-years ago in one of the poorest zones in Tehran . His accounts with a zero balance and the only money comes in to his a/c was from his salary from the university as a lecturer with an amount of US$ 250 only.
For your information the President still lives in that same house. This is all what he owns; the president of one of the world’s important countries; strategically, economically, politically and with regard to its oil and defense. He even doesn’t take his personal salary with the argument that all the wealth belongs to the nation and he is the safeguard over it.
One of the things that impressed the staff at the presidency is the bag the President brings with him every day, which contains his breakfast; some sandwiches or bread with olive oil and cheese prepared by his wife and eats and enjoys it with all happiness.
One of the other things he changed was his personal carrier ‘the President’s Aircraft’ to a cargo aircraft in order to save the spending from the public treasury and he ordered that he will be flying with the ordinary airline in the economy class. He organizes meetings every now and then with all the ministers to know their activities and efficiency and he closed down the office of the Manager of the president and any minister can enter to his office without any permission. He also stopped the welcome ceremonies like the red carpet, the photo session or any personal advertisement or respect of any kind while visiting any place in the country.
Whenever he has to stay in any of the hotels he asks them to make sure not to give him a room with any big bed because he doesn’t like to sleep on beds but rather likes to sleep on the floor on a simple mattress with a blanket..
Refer to some of the attached photographs which also confirm the above. The Iranian president is sleeping in the guest room of his house after getting away from his special guards who follow him wherever he goes and photo is taken by his small brother according to the Wifaq Newspaper which published this photo and the next day the photo was published in most of the world’s newspapers and magazines and particularly the Americans. During the prayer you can see that he is not sitting in the first row. And the final photo is of his dining room where the president is busy eating his simple meal.
MAY GOD BLESS HIM
Ahmadinejad won. Get over it — Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
JUNE 16 — Without any evidence, many US politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election on Friday, with 62.6 per cent of the vote, as fraud.
They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 per cent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 per cent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.
Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive elections at the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. Manipulation has always been there, as it is in many other countries. But upsets occur — as, most notably, with Mohammed Khatami’s surprise victory in the 1997 presidential election. Moreover, “blowouts” also occur — as in Khatami’s re-election in 2001, Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 2005 and, we would argue, this year.
Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mirhossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More important, they were oblivious — as in 2005 — to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American “Iran experts” missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents — especially his debate with Mousavi.
Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad’s provocatively impressive performance and Mousavi’s desultory one had boosted the incumbent’s standing. Ahmadinejad’s charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani’s sons — widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures — seemed to play well with voters.
Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s criticism that Mousavi’s reformist supporters, including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment programme and had won nothing from the West for doing so tapped into popular support for the programme — and had the added advantage of being true.
More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s election by a Western organisation that was transparent about its methodology — a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 — found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly.
American “Iran experts” assumed that “disastrous” economic conditions in Iran would undermine Ahmadinejad’s re-election prospects. But the International Monetary Fund projects that Iran’s economy will actually grow modestly this year (when the economies of most Gulf Arab states are in recession).
A significant number of Iranians — including the religiously pious, lower-income groups, civil servants and pensioners — appear to believe that Ahmadinejad’s policies have benefited them.
And, while many Iranians complain about inflation, the TFT poll found that most Iranian voters do not hold Ahmadinejad responsible. The “Iran experts” further argue that the high turnout on June 12 — 82 per cent of the electorate — had to favour Mousavi. But this line of analysis reflects nothing more than assumptions.
Some “Iran experts” argue that Mousavi’s Azeri background and “Azeri accent” mean that he was guaranteed to win Iran’s Azeri-majority provinces; since Ahmadinejad did better than Mousavi in these areas, fraud is the only possible explanation.
But Ahmadinejad himself speaks Azeri quite fluently as a consequence of his eight years serving as a popular and successful official in two Azeri-majority provinces; during the campaign, he artfully quoted Azeri and Turkish poetry — in the original — in messages designed to appeal to Iran’s Azeri community. (And we should not forget that the supreme leader is Azeri.) The notion that Mousavi was somehow assured of victory in Azeri-majority provinces is simply not grounded in reality.
With regard to electoral irregularities, the specific criticisms made by Mousavi — such as running out of ballot paper in some precincts and not keeping polls open long enough (even though polls stayed open for at least three hours after the announced closing time) — could not, in themselves, have tipped the outcome so clearly in Ahmadinejad’s favour.
Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral fraud even by American legal standards. And, compared with the US presidential election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran’s electoral process seem less significant.
In the wake of Friday’s election, some “Iran experts” — perhaps feeling burned by their misreading of contemporary political dynamics in the Islamic Republic — argue that we are witnessing a “conservative coup d’état,” aimed at a complete takeover of the Iranian state.
But one could more plausibly suggest that if a “coup” is being attempted, it has been mounted by the losers in Friday’s election. It was Mousavi, after all, who declared victory on Friday even before Iran’s polls closed. And three days before the election, Mousavi supporter Rafsanjani published a letter criticising the leader’s failure to rein in Ahmadinejad’s resort to “such ugly and sin-infected phenomena as insults, lies and false allegations.” Many Iranians took this letter as an indication that the Mousavi camp was concerned their candidate had fallen behind in the campaign’s closing days.
In light of these developments, many politicians and “Iran experts” argue that the Obama administration cannot now engage the “illegitimate” Ahmadinejad regime. Certainly, the administration should not appear to be trying to “play” in the current controversy in Iran about the election. In this regard, President Barack Obama’s comments on Friday, a few hours before the polls closed in Iran, that “just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities” was extremely maladroit.
From Tehran’s perspective, this observation undercut the credibility of Obama’s acknowledgment, in his Cairo speech earlier this month, of US complicity in overthrowing a democratically elected Iranian government and restoring the Shah in 1953.
The Obama administration should vigorously rebut any argument against engaging Tehran following Friday’s vote. More broadly, Ahmadinejad’s victory may force Obama and his senior advisers to come to terms with the deficiencies and internal contradictions in their approach to Iran. Before the Iranian election, the Obama administration had fallen for the same illusion as many of its predecessors — the illusion that Iranian politics is primarily about personalities and finding the right personality to deal with. That is not how Iranian politics works.
The Islamic Republic is a system with multiple power centres; within that system, there is a strong and enduring consensus about core issues of national security and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear programme and relations with the United States. Any of the four candidates in Friday’s election would have continued the nuclear programme as Iran’s president; none would agree to its suspension.
Any of the four candidates would be interested in a diplomatic opening with the United States, but that opening would need to be comprehensive, respectful of Iran’s legitimate national security interests and regional importance, accepting of Iran’s right to develop and benefit from the full range of civil nuclear technology — including pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle — and aimed at genuine rapprochement.
Such an approach would also, in our judgment, be manifestly in the interests of the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East. It is time for the Obama administration to get serious about pursuing this approach — with an Iranian administration headed by the re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. – http://www.politico.com
Flynt Leverett directs The New America Foundation’s Iran Project and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State University. Hillary Mann Leverett is CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. Both worked for many years on Middle East issues for the US government, including as members of the National Security Council staff. The views expressed are their own.
What if Twitter is leading us all astray in Iran?
Joshua Kucera
Here are a few of the things that we’ve “learned” the last few days about the Iranian elections and their aftermath:
— 3 million people protested Monday in Tehran
— the losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was put under house arrest
— the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid on Saturday
These are just a handful of data points that have been shooting around the Internet, via Twitter or the opposition-friendly blogs. And all have been instrumental in building a public opinion case against the Iranian government for undercounting the support for Mousavi.
The problem is, none of them appear any longer to be true. The crowd was in the hundreds of thousands, most newspapers reported. Mousavi’s own wife said he wasn’t under house arrest Sunday, and Monday he appeared in person at the protest. And if the president of the election monitoring commission has gone over to the opposition, no serious reporter has reported it.
Also courtesy of the blogosphere, we have two sets of “real” vote counts “leaked” from the Interior Ministry; one set had Ahmedinejad getting 28 percent, and another gave him 13 percent. These are just a few examples I was able to come up with quickly.
Andrew Sullivan, who has been leading the charge in the U.S. to try to get us all to wear green and support the opposition, says that “[t]his event has been Twitter’s finest hour.” One of his commenters tells him: “You are gathering information from a myriad of sources and putting it out there for a cohesive message. CNN, NY Times, et al are merely running an article about ‘thousands’ of protesters. Its a canned message from just a few stale sources.”
But instead, it looks like the Internet is the medium for a lot of unfounded rumors by a lot of (understandably) passionate people in Iran. This is a chaotic situation, and rumors flourish in that environment. I’ve been there: I remember spending a morning in Iraq, during the war, trying to track down confirmation that Tariq Aziz was killed in a hail of bullets trying to run a roadblock while attempting to flee into Kurdistan. Everyone was convinced it had happened. Later in the day he gave a press conference to demonstrate that he was still alive. In Serbia in 2001, as word began to spread that Slobodan Milosevic was going to be arrested soon, a crowd gathered in his backyard, and rumors spread several times that Milosevic had killed himself, or that it was the CIA who was going to make the arrest.
But in the pre-Twitter age, those sorts of rumors petered out quickly if they weren’t true. If they were true, then journalists found out about them and reported them as fact. Now, the latter is still happening, which is why the journalists in Tehran now are writing pieces with considerably more nuance than what you see on blogs. But the former isn’t true any more – rumors can have a longer lifespan on a network of sympathetic blogs, Facebook postings and Twitter feeds.
At this point, we don’t know if there was election fraud or not. The AP has a story describing the current state of play on the fraud allegations (the speed of the announcement is now the main point of debate), and although the evidence for fraud is all in the beginning of the story and the evidence against is at the end, it’s a pretty balanced look that probably isn’t going to convince anyone to change their mind. So no need to rehash the arguments here.
None of this is to excuse the behavior of the government after the election results came out. Or to diminish the bravery and courage of the people who are out in the streets in Tehran getting beaten. But what if it’s based on a lie? A Twitter-fueled, mass delusion of a lie? That the one third of people who voted for Mousavi convinced themselves, via a social media echo chamber that selectively picked rumors and amplified them until they appeared true, that they in fact represented two thirds of the country? And then tried to bring down the government based on that delusion? Maybe it’s not the case this time. But doesn’t this entire episode seem to show how such a thing could happen? And then what?
I’m a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., published in Slate, The Atlantic and Time. But before that I was a high school teacher in Bulgaria, an illegal day laborer in Tel Aviv, a wire service reporter in South Dakota, a war correspondent in Iraq and a Pentagon hack. And as often as I can, I try to get myself on a bus or train in a new country, looking out the window and trying to figure out what it all means. (See more at http://www.joshuakucera.net)
mahhadi
June 18, 2009 at 7:16 am