- Since the June 12 Iranian presidential elections, Iran
"experts" have mushroomed like bacteria in a Petri dish. So here
is a quiz for all those instant experts. Which major country has elected
more presidents than any in the world since 1980? Further, which nation
is the only one that held ten presidential elections within thirty years
of its revolution?
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- The answer to both questions, of course, is Iran. Since
1980, it has elected six presidents, while the U.S. is a close second with
five, and France at three. In addition, the U.S. held four presidential
elections within three decades of its revolution to Iran's ten.
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- The Iranian elections have unified the left and the right
in the West and unleashed harsh criticisms and attacks from the "outraged"
politicians to the "indignant" mainstream media. Even the blogosphere
has joined this battle with near uniformity, on the side of Iran's opposition,
which is quite rare in cyberspace.
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- Much of the allegations of election fraud have been just
that: unsubstantiated accusations. No one has yet been able to provide
a solid shred of evidence of wide scale fraud that would have garnered
eleven million votes for one candidate over his opponent.
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- So, let's analyze much of the evidence that is available
to date.
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- More than thirty pre-election polls were conducted in
Iran since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main opponent, former
Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, announced their candidacies in early
March 2009. The polls varied widely between the two opponents, but if one
were to average their results, Ahmadinejad would still come out on top.
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- However, some of the organizations sponsoring these polls,
such as Iranian Labor News Agency and Tabnak, admit openly that they have
been allies of Mousavi, the opposition, or the so-called reform movement.
Their numbers were clearly tilted towards Mousavi and gave him an unrealistic
advantage of over 30 per cent in some polls. If such biased polls were
excluded, Ahmadinejad's average over Mousavi would widen to about 21 points.
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- On the other hand, there was only one poll carried out
by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC
and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center
for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. The CPO has a reputation
of conducting accurate opinion polls, not only in Iran, but across the
Muslim world since 2005. The poll, conducted a few weeks before the elections,
predicted an 89 percent turnout rate. Further, it showed that Ahmadinejad
had a nationwide advantage of two to one over Mousavi.
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- How did this survey compare to the actual results? And
what are the possibilities of wide scale election fraud?
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- According to official results, there were 46.2 million
registered voters in Iran. The turnout was massive, as predicted by the
CPO. Almost 39.2 million Iranians participated in the elections for a turn
out rate of 85 percent, in which about 38.8 million ballots were deemed
valid (about 400,000 ballots were left blank). Officially, President Ahmadinejad
received 24.5 million votes to Mousavi's 13.2 million votes, or 62.6 per
cent to 33.8 per cent of the total votes, respectively. In fact, this result
mirrored the 2005 elections when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 per cent to
former President Hashemi Rafsanjani's 35.9 per cent in the runoff elections.
Two other minor candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee, received
the rest of the votes in this election.
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- Shortly after the official results were announced Mousavi's
supporters and Western political pundits cried foul and accused the government
of election fraud. The accusations centered around four themes. First,
although voting had been extended several hours due to the heavy turnout,
it was alleged that the elections were called too quickly from the time
the polls were closed, with more than 39 million ballots to count.
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- Second, these critics insinuated that election monitors
were biased or that, in some instances, the opposition did not have its
own monitors present during the count. Third, they pointed out that it
was absurd to think that Mousavi, who descended from the Azerbaijan region
in northwest Iran, was defeated handily in his own hometown. Fourth, the
Mousavi camp charged that in some polling stations, ballots ran out and
people were turned away without voting.
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- The next day, Mosuavi and the two other defeated candidates
lodged 646 complaints to the Guardian Council, the entity charged with
overseeing the integrity of the elections. The Council promised to conduct
full investigations of all the complaints. By the following morning, a
copy of a letter by a low-level employee in the Interior Ministry sent
to Supreme Guide Ali Khamanei, was widely circulating around the world.
(Western politicians and media outlets like to call him "Supreme Leader"
but no such title exists in Iran.)
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- The letter stated that Mousavi had won the elections,
and that Ahmadinejad had actually come in third. It also promised that
the elections were being fixed in favor of Ahmadinejad per Khamanei's orders.
It is safe to assume that the letter was a forgery since an unidentified
low-level employee would not be the one addressing Ayatollah Khamanaei.
Robert Fisk of /The Independent/ reached the same conclusion by casting
grave doubts that Ahmadinejad would score third garnering less than
6 million votes in such an important election- as alleged in the forged
letter.
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- There were a total of 45,713 ballot boxes that were set
up in cities, towns and villages across Iran. With 39.2 million ballots
cast, there were less than 860 ballots per box. Unlike other countries
where voters can cast their ballots on several candidates and issues in
a single election, Iranian voters had only one choice to consider: their
presidential candidate. Why would it take more than an hour or two to count
860 ballots per poll? After the count, the results were then reported electronically
to the Ministry of the Interior in Tehran.
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- Since 1980, Iran has suffered an eight-year deadly war
with Iraq, a punishing boycott and embargo, and a campaign of assassination
of dozens of its lawmakers, an elected president and a prime minister from
the group /Mujahideen Khalq Organization/. (MKO is a deadly domestic violent
organization, with headquarters in France, which seeks to topple the government
by force.) Despite all these challenges, the Islamic Republic of Iran has
never missed an election during its three decades. It has conducted over
thirty elections nationwide. Indeed, a tradition of election orderliness
has been established, much like election precincts in the U.S. or boroughs
in the U.K. The elections in Iran are organized, monitored and counted
by teachers and professionals including civil servants and retirees (again
much like the U.S.)
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- There has not been a tradition of election fraud in Iran.
Say what you will about the system of the Islamic Republic, but its elected
legislators have impeached ministers and "borked" nominees of
several Presidents, including Ahmadinejad. Rubberstamps, they are not.
In fact, former President Mohammad Khatami, considered one of the leading
reformists in Iran, was elected president by the people, when the interior
ministry was run by archconservatives. He won with over 70 percent of the
vote, not once, but twice.
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- When it comes to elections, the real problem in Iran
is not fraud but candidates' access to the ballots (a problem not unique
to the country, just ask Ralph Nader or any other third party candidate
in the U.S.) It is highly unlikely that there was a huge conspiracy involving
tens of thousands of teachers, professionals and civil servants that somehow
remained totally hidden and unexposed.
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- Moreover, while Ahmadinejad belongs to an active political
party that has already won several elections since 2003, Mousavi is an
independent candidate who emerged on the political scene just three months
ago, after a 20-year hiatus. It was clear during the campaign that Ahmadinejad
had a nationwide campaign operation. He made over sixty campaign trips
throughout Iran in less than twelve weeks, while his opponent campaigned
only in the major cities, and lacked a sophisticated campaign apparatus.
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- It is true that Mousavi has an Azeri background. But
the CPO poll mentioned above, and published before the elections, noted
that "its survey indicated that only 16 per cent of Azeri Iranians
will vote for Mr. Mousavi. By contrast, 31 per cent of the Azeris claim
they will vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad." In the end, according to official
results, the election in that region was much closer than the overall result.
In fact, Mousavi won narrowly in the West Azerbaijan province but lost
the region to Ahmadinejad by a 45 to 52 per cent margin (or 1.5 to 1.8
million votes).
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- However, the double standard applied by Western news
agencies is striking. Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern in his native
state of South Dakota in the 1972 elections. Had Al Gore won his home state
of Tennessee in 2000, no one would have cared about a Florida recount,
nor would there have been a Supreme Court case called Bush v. Gore. If
Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards had won the states he was born
and raised in (South and North Carolina), President John Kerry would now
be serving his second term. But somehow, in Western newsrooms Middle Eastern
people choose their candidates not on merit, but on the basis of their
"tribe."
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- The fact that minor candidates such as Karroubi would
garner fewer votes than expected, even in their home regions as critics
charge, is not out of the ordinary. Many voters reach the conclusion that
they do not want to waste their votes when the contest is perceived to
be between two major candidates. Karroubi indeed received far fewer votes
this time around than he did in 2005, including in his hometown. Likewise,
Ross Perot lost his home state of Texas to Bob Dole of Kansas in 1996,
while in 2004, Ralph Nader received one eighth of the votes he had four
years earlier.
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- Some observers note that when the official results were
being announced, the margin between the candidates held steady throughout
the count. In fact, this is no mystery. Experts say that generally when
3-5 per cent of the votes from a given region are actually counted, there
is a 95 per cent confidence level that such result will hold firm. As for
the charge that ballots ran out and some people were turned away, it is
worth mentioning that voting hours were extended four times in order to
allow as many people as possible the opportunity to vote. But even if all
the people who did not vote, had actually voted for Mousavi (a virtual
impossibility), that would be 6.93 million additional votes, much less
than the 11 million vote difference between the top two candidates.
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- Ahmadinejad is certainly not a sympathetic figure. He
is an ideologue, provocative, and sometimes behaving imprudently. But to
characterize the struggle in Iran as a battle between democratic forces
and a "dictator," is to exhibit total ignorance of Iran's internal
dynamics, or to deliberately distort them. There is no doubt that there
is a significant segment of Iranian society, concentrated around major
metropolitan areas, and comprising many young people, that passionately
yearns for social freedoms. They are understandably angry because their
candidate came up short. But it would be a huge mistake to read this domestic
disagreement as an "uprising" against the Islamic Republic, or
as a call to embark on a foreign policy that would accommodate the West
at the expense of Iran's nuclear program or its vital interests.
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- Nations display respect to other nations only when they
respect their sovereignty. If any nation, for instance, were to dictate
the United States' economic, foreign or social policies, Americans would
be indignant. When France, under President Chirac opposed the American
adventure in Iraq in 2003, some U.S. Congressmen renamed a favorite fast
food from French Fries to "Freedom Fries." They made it known
that the French were unwelcome in the U.S.
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- The U.S. has a legacy of interference in Iran's internal
affairs, notably when it toppled the democratically elected government
of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. This act, of which most Americans
are unaware, is ingrained in every Iranian from childhood. It is the main
cause of much of their perpetual anger at the U.S. It took 56 years for
an American president to acknowledge this illegal act, when Obama did so
earlier this month in Cairo.
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- Therefore, it would be a colossal mistake to interfere
in Iran's internal affairs yet again. President Obama is wise to leave
this matter to be resolved by the Iranians themselves. Political expediency
by the Republicans or pro-Israel Democrats will be extremely dangerous
and will yield serious repercussions. Such reckless conduct by many in
the political class and the media appears to be a blatant attempt to demonize
Iran and its current leadership, in order to justify any future military
attack by Israel if Iran does not give up its nuclear ambition.
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- President Obama's declarations in Cairo are now being
aptly recalled. Regarding Iran, he said, "I recognize it will be hard
to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude,
and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries,
and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of
mutual respect."
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- But the first sign of respect is to let the Iranians
sort out their differences without any overt or covert - interference.
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- ________
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- Esam Al-Amin can be reached at alamin1919@gmail.com
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- http://us.mc365.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=alamin1919@gmail.com
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