Stealing the Election in Iran
I’m not going to try to be a good source of news regarding the latest developments in Iran, so you should just look elsewhere for that. But I did find that Juan Cole’s roundup of the key pieces of evidence of vote stealing was very compelling and would be of interest to people. The inverted pyramid format of newspaper coverage does not, in my view, do a good job of laying this kind of thing out. And then this this chart, pretty clear evidence of a nationwide, centrally directed fraud as opposed to isolated irregularities.
Of course for all we know, Ahmadenijad really did have more votes. Or maybe nobody had a majority and there should have been a runoff. But it seems that early returns were looking bad and they pulled the trigger on a theft. I wonder how this all is playing in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and other places where they don’t even bother to steal the elections.
109 Responses to “Stealing the Election in Iran”
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June 13th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I’ll agree that it’s extremely difficult to reconcile the reported reaction of the Iranian people with 85% turnout for a 25+ point landslide. And the other evidence we have tends to accentuate that disparity.
June 13th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Southpaw… are you talking about the opposition street action in Tehran which was called for before the polls even closed?
Sully’s graph proves nothing and even he is beginning to acknowledge the accuracy of pushback on his charges.
June 13th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
June 13th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Mousavi has been arrested, according to Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092304.html
June 13th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
What would have happened to him if Gore had called for rebellion and urged his supporters into the streets before the polls closed and then gone to ground as riots began in DC?
June 13th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
JT – I presume the pushback against Sullivan’s graph you’re referencing is Nate Silver’s post here:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/statistical-evidence-does-not-prove.html
But as the comments to that post show, Nate’s analysis there is somewhat flawed. (Nate’s since altered the title of the post and included an update to reflect this.)
June 13th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
JT: Gore probably would’ve been laughed at. He was already something of a comic figure by the election, the butt of many late-night jokes, before reinventing himself as global warming guru. The notion that someone as unimpressive as Al Gore would try to overturn two consecutive centuries of peaceful transfer of power would have been a laugh riot.
But, then again, if the real power in this country was in the hands of a theocrat, and our presidential candidates were hand-picked by a council of theocrats, then I guess anything’s possible, eh?
June 13th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
JT, yes, I’m referring to the massive protests.
As Hans said, Silver’s analysis is only persuasive if you assume the votes have been effectively randomized before their release (in Silver’s case, this was accomplished by pooling state-level results alphabetically).
Still, I don’t think Sully’s graph is the strongest evidence. Consider that Reagan only beat Mondale by ~18 points. In the largest landslide in US history, LBJ only beat Goldwater by ~23 points. Iran’s government claims that Ahmedinejad won by just shy of 30 points in an election where 85% of the people voted. They have Ahmedinejad crushing Mousavi in his Azeri homeland. If that’s the case, shouldn’t there be massive celebrations that dwarf the protests? Ahmedinejad’s supporters are, purportedly, twice as numerous as Mousavi’s. Where are they?
June 13th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I’ve been following this thing pretty closely, principally by following the amazing flow of information on the #iranelections twitter tag and from Saeed Valadbaygi’s must-see footage collections, and I can’t see any way that this isn’t both fraud and fraud executed so poorly that it threatens the regime itself. It’s astonishingly amateurish. Even the regimes that have those ludicrous 99% elections are straightforward about trying to intimidate the opposition. This is just, well, silly.
(Sully has been surprisingly solid on this. And I agree with Kevin Drum: It was panic. These things usually are.)
June 13th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
To me, the strongest evidence is the economy. Incumbents just don’t win by a landslide when the economy sucks and is getting worse. There is simply no way Ahmadinejad won by this margin. He might have won (I doubt it), but he didn’t win by this margin. The economy has to be doing great for an incumbent to win like this.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
How the hell did they count 39 millions in just a few hours? Are they really that good at tallying paper ballots?
June 13th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Where are Ahmedinejad’s supporters and why have they obeyed government orders to clear the streets and stay home?
Yes why aren’t the most conservative and pious members of society burning down their neighborhoods? Hmmmm, I wonders!
My point about “the graph” is that it is not dispositive as it has been treated by among many others Matty.
In order to answer the question “but why with their history of fraud would the Mullah’s do it so badly” the conspiracy theorists must now posit an early surge for the “reformers” of which there is no evidence but which was extreme enough to cause the government to panic. Too clever by half. You don’t think these people plan ahead?
Our counter-government information comes largely from the more well off and better educated North Tehranians who are “reformist” supporters. It is a self selecting group and so should be treated with caution.
The opposition clearly planned and called for the street riots two hours into the voting.
Al Jazeera, whose reporting I trust more than, as but one example, ABC’s, was never sanguine about the oppositions’ chances. Like everyone in the world I saw those interviews and polls with college students in Tehran… funny how I never saw them out in the sticks polling the farmers.
There are some things that are just true but never really reported here. We heard and saw all about the reformists 400,000 person rally in Tehran. Funny how we didn’t get the million person rally for the incumbent.
Anytime I see popular opinion so quickly coalesce around charges for which no proof is offered, and further charges which so neatly fit our self centered and frankly hegemonic fantasies I tend to immediately run in the opposite direction.
Call me stupid.
But not long ago 80% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq. Funny how few now admit to it.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Would some of those “farmers out in the sticks” be people in Tehran? Because, supposedly, they voted for Ahmedinejad too.
So did the people in Mousavi’s own hometown. And those in Karoubi’s region. And, apparently, Karoubi’s own campaign workers.
You’re making the same mistake so many others are when trying to (bizarrely) defend this. Nobody is arguing that Ahmedinejad could have pulled it out. But not with these numbers, and not with this distribution.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
It is interesting to me that we project onto the entire Iranian nation our own values and concerns. Oh and those of Tehran’s KosKids of course.
Their bad economy alone means the government loses!
Well, no…
Cheese and crackers we RE-elected Bushit!
My god! No people who did that can fairly claim a rational handle on the voting behaviors of a people and culture of which we are blindingly ignorant.
I am not going to defend Iranian democracy.
I am not going to say that the election was fair.
I am more than open to the fact that it might be as corrupt an electoral system as our own.
However before damning it as a fraud I want some evidence.
Evidence, not suspicion because we don’t like the announced winners.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Iran’s election of a figurehead president from among rigidly pre-vetted candidates has been stolen! Man the battlements!
June 13th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Al Jazeera, whose reporting I trust more than, as but one example, ABC’s, was never sanguine about the oppositions’ chances.
Okay, I’ll quote al Jazeera then:
So Tabriz and the rest of Azerbaijan votes for this nobody Mehralizadeh, but four years later they turn their backs on a highly credible Azeri candidate with widespread support?
June 13th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
JT these people don’t want open minds. They want blood. Thats all. Too bad the blood is going to be comming from college kids in a far away land. But hey, half of them supported the Iraq War too, so it’s pretty much par for the course.
Rich, you don’t get it. The pro-corporate candidate isn’t going to be President. Thats all that matters to them. If this were a 1% victory, they would be screaming theft too. Hell, they probably had a coup in the offing to make this guy the next Shah if he had won.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Fraud? Did Iran use voter caging and man in the middle computer technology?
June 13th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
The immediate reaction from the cognescenti is eerily similar to that after Colin Powell’s UN presentation on Iraqi WMD.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Exactly southpaw and thank you! Clearly Al Jazeera is not in tank for Ahmadenijad.
Now show me where Al Jazeera says their editorial board considers the election stolen.
If raised eyebrows, however well justified, were evidence of fraud then we have not had a truly fair national election ever.
Which by the way I believe is true but that’s la la land.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
It should be recalled that Juan Cole Has strenuously defended Amadinejad in the past so there is no evidence that he is biased against him.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
The immediate reaction from the cognescenti is eerily similar to that after Colin Powell’s UN presentation on Iraqi WMD.
Yup.
Matt, you’re going to have to explain to me why I should care about this election or I’m just gonna believe you’re trying to pump up another little war. Again.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Ok ok, you guys win!
The mullahs are sooooooo stupid that the only way they could figure out how to rig an election win was one so clumsy and crude and transparent that in our bizarro world those things alone become all the evidence needed by even a three year old to prove a fraud!
And damn but I’m just the dummy to fall for it!
Everyone have a great night, ’specially our brothers and sisters in Iran.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
You leftier than thou assholes are getting on my nerves. Matt is not arguing for this because he thinks we should go to war with Iran. In fact, he has repeatedly made clear that he thinks we should not go to war with Iran. Juan Cole’s Salon column published today argues that the election was stolen — and then goes on to say that the US should try to engage with Iran regardless. And why should we take anything seriously by a guy who consistently calls Obama “Obafuhrer”?
June 13th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
So the argument against this being a fraud is apparently that the Iranian government wouldn’t possibly have been so incompetent as to produce a fraud so obvious as the apparent situation here.
And also that there’s no evidence of fraud at all, so why is everyone jumping to the conclusion that there was?
Right?
June 13th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I’m struck by how much less interest was shown in the U.S. regarding potential vote fraud in two Mexican elections: 1988, when the Left pary was almost certainly cheated out of the Presidency by turning off the vote-counting computer, and 2006, when the Left party lost in a protracted vote-counting that followed the classic Illinois pattern of wait until the other guy shows all his cards, then have a truckload of uncounted ballots from your stronghold suddenly show up.
Granted, these dodgy events merely happened in a distant, unpopulated country with no impact on America called Mexico, a country that pales in comparison to nearby Iran.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
The more recent Mexican example was, I think, subtle enough as to not be too obvious. I was too young to really be aware of the Mexican incident. But I think the fact that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have been made into cartoon villains in the United States, whereas the PRI and PAN have both been pro-American is a major factor here. The massive protests in Iran are also sexy.
But all of that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a stolen election! The 1988 Mexican election was definitely stolen. The fact that Americans didn’t particularly care doesn’t mean that the 2009 Iranian election wasn’t also stolen.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Basically the globalist class thought that that guy who looks like Borat was going to lose because none of their friends in Iran were going to vote for him, much like how Pauline Kael was surprised when Nixon beat McGovern in 1972 because nobody she knew voted for Nixon.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
The usual pattern in the American press is that anti-American / anti-globalist candidates are automatically suspected of winning by fraud, while pro-American / pro-globalist candidates are usually assumed to have won by the Power of Democracy.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I don’t remember any allegations that Hamas won by fraud.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Yep, this sums it up pretty well. Juan Cole’s “compelling” evidence reads more like a classic enumeration of favorable circumstances, and his scenario for how the mullahs got caught with their pants down is utterly speculative. The chart being flogged by Andrew “Trig-gate” Sullivan is currently being debated by statisticians presumable more knowledgeable about such things than he. And many of the points I keep finding in comment sections are too 9/11-truther crazy to even comment on.
I’m with you. It may very well be that the Iranian election was stolen. And I’ll say it one more time, it may very well be that the Iranian election was stolen, because some idiot with reading comprehension difficulties will inevitably come back and say that I am claiming the election was clean. But the evidence presented thus far is not so “compelling” as Mr. Yglesias suggests.
Regardless of whether there was substantial fraud or not, let’s hope that the forces of rapprochement continue to gain momentum.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Al Jazeera:
June 13th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
As this chart shows, Iranian presidential elections are always won in landslides, especially by incumbents. This election was actually narrow by Iranian standards. In 1997 and 2001 especially these landslides occurred with similarly high turnout.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
John, is what you say supposed to make sense? You seem to have some knowledge, but combining that knowledge in a logical framework would be helpful.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
It was supposed to make sense, certainly.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
The Mexico examples show the point. Sure a lot of elections are styolen and a lot of gov’t are illegitimate and we, including diplomats, politicians, and pundits are willing to say so. They just don’t usually say so very publicly or very loud.
Because it is almost a duty for the citizens of a nation to overthrow an illegitimate gov’t, and if the illegitimacy is played up on the world stage, some kids will die in front of tanks in Hungary or T-Square, or saffron robes will burn in the street.
People die and Matt isn’t stupid.
I think the war is on. Dumping on Israel a little would be a necessary preparation.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Regarding the vote share graph: with only six data points and such a large number of voters, it does not mean anything.
Silver did not do a good job debunking it either. Silver’s analysis intuitively asks: If the votes came in from random sections of the country, is the variation in the cumulative vote shares in Iran consistent with what was observed in the U.S.? But Silver does not even attempt to calculate what the relative variation should be. He just says “hey look they are both close to one” But you would expect both to be very close to one. Assuming random arrival of votes, the variation in Iran should be bigger -but how much bigger? Silver does not do the critical calculation (and I don’t know what it would be off the top of my head).
And why do it with the cumulative vote? -each successive observation is not independent of the previous one. Better to look at the variation in each wave, but then you only have six data points.
And do we know each wave in the Iranian election was from a random selection of regions?
When more data become available, there are statistical specialists who understand how to identify cooked data, and best to wait for a real analysis.
Enough common sense stuff makes the election look very fishy, so why bother with statistics with insufficient data at this point?
June 13th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
AP:
Again, for the record, that’s a larger landslide than any presidential election in US history. And its announcement was greeted with protests and a brutal crackdown.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Hi JT,
You say, “I am more than open to the fact that it might be as corrupt an electoral system as our own. However before damning it as a fraud I want some evidence. Evidence, not suspicion because we don’t like the announced winners.”
Fair enough. So what was the evidence–and not mere “suspicion”–that convinced you that the US electoral system is corrupt? If we knew that, we would have a standard of evidence that we could apply fairly to the Iranian case.
If you set the terms of the debate in this way, people could then either argue that your standard of evidence is flawed, or that the facts indeed support their conclusion according to your own standard. But otherwise, I don’t think further exchanges on this thread will be very fruitful.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I think the war is on. Dumping on Israel a little would be a necessary preparation.
Jesus Christ, Bob, give it a rest. You spent all of 2007-8 swearing up and down that Dick Cheney would *never* leave office without bombing Iran. And now Juan Cole is supposed to be shilling for the Neocons? As one Seymour Hersh fan to another, give it a fucking rest.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I never thought I’d say it, but Steve Sailer has a point here.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
It’s worth considering the danger of emboldening what might be a small minority of Iranians who voted for Mousavi and are willing to resist the announced outcome. There’s no hard evidence of fraud. If it actually *is* only 30% or so of the vote, and we assume that only 10% or so are going to join any rebellion, that’s a recipe for a humanitarian nightmare. By buying and supporting the “obvious fraud” line, we’re also providing protesters with a sense that they’ll get material support from the West if their movement grows. Given our current entanglements, this is doubtful.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Rob says: ” The notion that someone as unimpressive as Al Gore would try to overturn two consecutive centuries of peaceful transfer of power would have been a laugh riot”
Unimpressive…jesus, I don’t have the energy to even..Make sure you clean Mom’s basement asshole.
Sorry to hijack.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Zach– I’m fairly sure that discussion of the election on a not terribly famous English language blog is going to embolden anyone in Iran.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
@Townleybomb – Way to diss MY. By “we” I’m talking about the Western media in general and not a bunch of blog commenters. I don’t see much danger in recycling the same insufficient appeals to statistics and anecdote here.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
“I wonder how this all is playing in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and other places where they don’t even bother to steal the elections.”
The Egyptians definitely do bother to steal their elections.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
“I never thought I’d say it, but Steve Sailer has a point here.”
Steve’s a smart guy. Yes, he’s a racist lunatic, but that doesn’t mean he’s not smart. As for the elections, well the results are highly abnormal. Nobody wins a fair election by thirty points. Even Goldwater didn’t lose by that much. And an incumbent winning like that with a bad economy? No way. I can imagine Ahamdinejad winning, but it would be close. I think he rigged an election he might have won anyway. It reminds me of OJ Simpson. You don’t need to frame a guilty man.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
It really amazes me. If the religious theocracy in Iran would have just let the election of Mousavi take place instead of letting Ahmadinejad steal it, then they would have still retained power. As it stands now, they may just find themselves out of a job soon.
Someone here wanted proof of a thrown election? Well, I don’t think we’ll ever have concrete proof of it. But here is some real strong evidence of a country about to erupt into a civil war…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8099115.stm
How sad I feel for the people of Iran
June 13th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Or Richard Nixon in ‘72.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Does anybody here actually know anything about Iranian elections? I sure don’t. I know a little bit about Mexican elections, and I thought there was at least a 30-40% chance that the party of the Left got ripped off in the 2006 Presidential election, but nobody in America seemed to care much.
Mexico 2006 looked a lot like the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election in which neither party reported their safest precincts for a couple of days. The Democrats finally folded and reported their totals, after which the Republicans in Dupage County, knowing the number they needed to beat, brought in some amazing results. Eventually, five GOP operatives in Dupage were convicted, but Jim Thompson stayed governor. (This, by the way, is the mirror image of what happened in the famous 1960 Presidential election, as reported in Teddy White’s autobiography, in which the GOP machine in downstate Illinois caved first and reported, leaving the Kennedy entourage ecstatic because now Mayor Daley knew the number he needed to beat, and you could always count on Richard J. Daley to deliver a number.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Strangely enough, Sailer, twice today I proposed watching how U.S. establishmentarian discourse discussed two different Presidential candidates who refused to concede to an election whose results they (and many others) deemed stolen: Mousavi of Iran, right now, and Lopez Obrador, of Mexico.
The latter was told pretty consistently by the punditariat here that he needed to just shut up and go away; and whether it has made any difference or not, AMLO did not just fade away, and went on grassroots organizing tours around the nation highlighting many neglected issues. (Which is about the most positive things I have ever heard of an officially non-winning Presidential candidate to do.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Anyway, the American press cared a lot more about proper vote counting in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia than in Mexico, even though the U.S. has a 1950 mile border with Mexico.
Nowadays, a lot of parties like to act like they have American muscle on their side. For example, when the Luo tribal leader Raila Odinga didn’t like the results in the Kenyan elections 18 months ago, he told the BBC that Barack Obama, who had just won the Iowa cacuses, was his first cousin. (Odinga had made sure to get in the TV camera frame for just about every shot of Obama on his visit to Kenya in 2006.) It’s unlikely that they are that closely related, but after a lot of people got killed, Odinga wound up Prime Minister.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Remember Serbia? The American-supported opposition candidate announced he’d won 57% of the vote. The official election board announced he’d won only 49.8% so there’d be a runoff with Miloscevic. Then the opposition guy said he’d won 53% so there shouldn’t be a runoff. The board kept saying 49.8%. The opposition candidate then said, well, maybe he got only 51.5% but that’s still a majority. The board said 49.8%.
So, then a huge mob of the opposition candidate’s backers burned down the parliament building and seized power. This was trumpeted in the American press as a triumph of democracy and nonviolence over violence (although most of the violence was on the side of the pro-American candidate — Miloscevic’s goon squads didn’t bother to shoot).
June 13th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Today has been a real eye-opener for me.
I can’t believe how many self-proclaimed progressives are willing to shut their eyes to a stolen election, just because the thief is anti-American.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Or how about the Rose Revolution in 2003 in Georgia after disputed elections, which was funded by George Soros to the tune of $42 million? It brought to power American media favor Saakashavili (sp?), who then went on to launch an invasion of Russian held territory in 2008.
The American media coverage was particularly telling:
1. Initial wire service stringer reports: “George invades South Ossetia”
2. Big foot pundits for the rest of the week: “Russia’s unprovoked attack on Georgia is historic crime”
3. Reporters writing investigatory pieces weeks later when nobody was paying attention anymore: “Georgia started it.”
June 13th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
It reminds me of OJ Simpson. You don’t need to frame a guilty man.
Indeed. And nobody framed OJ Simpson.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Going to so much trouble to link the 2006 Mexico election to 1960 Illinois kind of explains why it’s unreasonable for foreigners to get too upset over it. If we’re talking about one corrupt machine giving themselves a little nudge to defeat another corrupt machine, so that somebody who was supposed to get 49.9 gets 50.1 instead, that sort of thing is, unfortunately, par for the course. Maybe next time around today’s losers can vote and cheat a little harder than today’s winners and pull it off.
But if it appears there’s simply wholesale fraud, that there’s simply no relationship between votes and results, then that’s quite a different story. And that’s where the circumstantial, incomplete evidence is pointing.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Joe from Lowell,
Elections are much overrated.
Fostert,
Thirty point margins are unheard of _in the United States_, but they’re not uncommon in developing countries, especially when there is a sharp ideological division between the candidates (which in the US, there typically isn’t). In the last Venezuelan election for example, the margin was almost 30 points (63/37, if I recall correctly), even though the American pollsters had been predicting that Chavez would lose.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
“Thirty point margins are unheard of _in the United States_, but they’re not uncommon in developing countries”
Yes, but those countries don’t have fair elections. That’s my point. These numbers are very strange for a country that has fair elections, but not unusual for a country with unfair elections. This election is likely to be unfair given the results. These results would be way out of line for Thailand, where they pay people to vote for a candidate. You couldn’t even buy these results in Thailand, and in Thailand, the results are bought.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
So what’s up with Rafsanjani? I hear he resigned his posts in protest. I can see resigning from the Expediency Council, but the Assembly of Experts? That’s crazy. He could have appointed the next Supreme Leader. Who gives up that job? Some bad shit is going down if a political insider like Rafsanjani is bailing.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
joe from lowell: I know that I have suspicions and intuitions in many directions, but right now a lot of us are seeking more information in order to make what we think are informed decisions. I wasn’t following this in great detail before today, so I think that, yeah, it certainly seems like it could be a massive election fraud, but other than that, I’d just be repeating what others more informed than I are saying.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:20 am
It occurs to me that even those inclined to see the CIA or Soros or whatever behind the color revolutions, Burma, etc should note that the current protests in Iran don’t resemble those at all–there seem to be explicit violent clashes with police and Western media doesn’t really seem all that interested.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Consumatopia
I think the term “Western media” is some kind of twisted oxymoron at this point.
A moment ago I turned on CNN and a solemn female anchor-voice intoned, “when we come back, the controversy that has the whole world’s attention, it’s Sarah Palin vs David Letterman, and it is getting heated.”
June 14th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Joe from Lowell:
see El Cid at #61. Nobody knows for sure what happened yet, including you. Eventually it may well turn out that the election was stolen, and then we’ll all get on board with your crystal balls or whatever.
Seriously, you’re a smart dude, as I know from your other comments here; chill out a bit.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:44 am
More like some kind of twisted joke, Max. The vacancy of U.S. news coverage–even from PBS–is just disheartening. They’ve forgotten how to cover world events. If the Berlin wall fell today, it’d be mentioned in a half-hour news break with a couple iReport photos as background art.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:26 am
If there has been massive fraud, there will be one of two outcomes:
1) It gets revealed and the government has to back down and rerun the election; or
2) It gets revealed and the government does not back down and reruns the election. What happens then depends on whether enough Iranians care to actually start a fight over it. A few riots do not mean a revolution is about to take place.
I doubt ANYBODY here in the US, including Juan Cole, is sufficiently informed about either Iranian politics or Iranian election procedures as to be able to say that massive fraud occurred. I doubt even anybody at Al-Jazeera knows. It’s all speculation at this point based on the size of the numbers.
Nobody here has mentioned how the polls were observed and by whom, how the votes were counted under what constraints, who has reported how many instances of fraud from where, etc., etc. Without such evidence, there is nothing but suspicion.
If the CIA admits they have next to no intel sources in Iran, I think it’s presumptuous to suggest we know that the election is fraudulent based on the fact that some people inside and outside of Iran THINK it is fraudulent. OF COURSE the OPPOSITION thinks it’s fraudulent! This is a Third World country with a history of dictatorial government! Who here is surprised that the opposition thinks they were robbed when they lose?
Not to mention, as others have here, that MOST elections are fraudulent to some degree, the only question being whether a given election was sufficiently fraudulent to affect the outcome.
Wait until it plays out over the next few days or couple weeks, then make “pundit” remarks, hopefully based on real information.
From the US standpoint, it’s irrelevant anyway. The US has to deal with the Iran government it gets, not the one it wants. And as people have continually pointed out over the so-called nuclear “crisis”, Ahmadinejad DOES NOT CONTROL THAT. So who cares what Iran’s internal political problems are? If Obama can’t make security guarantees to the Supreme Leader, it won’t matter if one or the other Presidential candidates got in power.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Re: fostert
Rafsanjani’s reported resigning from *both* posts is pretty crazy! There’s some maneuvering happening behind the scenes for sure, but the damned system is so complicated to understand. Multiple power bases, etc. I’m still a bit unclear how the militias and the revolutionary guard align with the political and clerical establishments, and I assume that will have a non-trivial role in how this all plays out.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:01 am
Check out Robert Fisk’s on-the-spot report here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-iran-erupts-as-voters-back-the-democrator-1704810.html . The results may not be as far fetched os many think.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:06 am
I don’t think Joe from Lowell was saying, “Anyone who doesn’t say that this election was clearly stolen is fooling themselves.” I think he was referring, and I agree, to the people who are actively dismissing evidence pointing in that direction because of their ideological commitments: I’m thinking of Zach, bob mcmanus, soullite, and JT in ascending order of lunacy.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:16 am
69:Dude, learn to read. I never said the Iranian election wasn’t stolen.
I’m just wondering why everyone is getting so excited about it.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:18 am
I remember the result of 2004 presidential election in the US didn’t make sense to me at all. I couldn’t imagine Bush getting more than 5%.
June 14th, 2009 at 5:39 am
I agree. All was confusion until I read Juan Cole’s article.
June 14th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Check out Robert Fisk’s report from Tehran, a good reminder of the impportance of good analysis and reporting.
June 14th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Re: can’t believe how many self-proclaimed progressives are willing to shut their eyes to a stolen election, just because the thief is anti-American.
Not to mention, the “winning” candidate is the equivalent of someone from the far-out wing of our Religious Right.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:21 am
So, since the Left wants us to believe that the election was stolen by at least 10 million votes why is the nation quiet today?
A couple thousand KosKids in North Tehran raised a ruckus then went home to watch tv and eat cheetos in their parents basement and we are told this is proof of… what?
If you read the Al Jazeera and Tehran Times archives this morning you will learn a few interesting points including:
The spread of announced vote for Ahmadenijad was 7% over the course of the day, hardly the straight line presented by “the graph”.
At more than one Interior Ministry presser reporters noted that the announcement was not a new vote tally but a recount of the previous total which varied by a small amount.
This alone accounts for some of the seemingly identical and carefully selected figures in “the graph” which it seems is a mix of percentage count extrapolated to vote count and actual announced vote count.
I have yet to see a single piece of evidence proving fraud.
The best offered is a manipulated and misdrawn graph using carefully selected figures, and of course only figures that fit the distortion.
Does no one care that the size of the diamonds which should be single points has been carefully chosen to allow the connection of portions of them all on a straight line?
Why a blithe acceptance that the purported data is accurate? Because it comes from the opposition?
Finally we have Juan Cole and others telling us what should be the result based on past elections and certainly that contributes to the debate and I hope raise all our eyebrows.
But it is not dispositive, nowhere near.
See that flaming fascist Brezinski on Iranian elections before extrapolating to a verdict from Cole’s factoids.
It is up to the opposition, who were allowed observers at every polling place, to provide proof of fraud.
They have none.
They cry that it was rigged because the government results were announced too early but fail to note that THEY were the first to claim a result only two hours into the voting.
Then to cover their jumping the gun they want us to believe they were informed by the interior ministry that they had won, the same ministry they accuse later of stealing their 10 million votes!
Shall we talk about improbable?
But no surprise! This is all the same as our own KosKids claim that New Hampshire was stolen because their ObaFuhrer just HAD to have won!
And just as lacking in ANY actual evidence.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:23 am
soullite said:
” Rich, you don’t get it. The pro-corporate candidate isn’t going to be President. Thats all that matters to them. If this were a 1% victory, they would be screaming theft too. Hell, they probably had a coup in the offing to make this guy the next Shah if he had won.”
It’s post like this that make me wish leftist scum like you were the ones who are tied and whipped until their skin is ripped off and then thrown in jail with no rights and tortured for speaking your mind, and not those brave souls out in the streets.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:24 am
How would the board/US/West feel if Hamas had been cheated out of its election in 2006 in the fashion widely assumed in this case?
k1
June 14th, 2009 at 7:25 am
JT,
If the elections weren’t rigged in, say Egypt, why aren’t the people out int he streets everywhere burning the country down?
if the election was taken over in a coup by a bunch of judges, then why didn’t people go out in the streets and throw out the US government?
The only answer of course is that Egypt is a democracy and the 2000 election was a fair one. Why, the people are in their basements eating cheetos!
June 14th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Another flaming Fascist, Robert Fisk writes today in the Independent:
An interval here for lunch with a true and faithful friend of the Islamic Republic, a man I have known for many years who has risked his life and been imprisoned for Iran and who has never lied to me. We dined in an all-Iranian-food restaurant, along with his wife. He has often criticised the regime. A man unafraid. But I must repeat what he said. “The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad.”
June 14th, 2009 at 7:35 am
My point dear GeneralOreo (are you being obtuse by choice?) is that yesterday the KosKid riots were held up as proof that the will of the masses had been suppressed.
Those unidentified ten millions (!) would not be denied!
Where is that “proof” today?
And what did it prove?
You demand I prove a negative, that the election was not stolen.
Yet offer no proof of your accusations.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Who the fuck is this JT douchebag?
June 14th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Not only did they steal the election, but they also trained Al Qaeda, blew up federal building in Oklahoma city, killed an abortion doctor in Kansas, and bankrupted Lehman Brothers.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:42 am
Yeah, perfectly quiet JT.
Go find another dick to suck.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/14/iran.election/index.html
Fresh clashes broke out between police and protesters Sunday as Ahmadinejad prepared to hold a victory rally and opposition supporters claimed ballot fraud in the presidential election.
Riot police fired tear gas and brandished batons to disperse about 100 stone-throwing protesters in central Tehran.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:42 am
…although this guy disagree, for some reason.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:43 am
A 100 protesters? That’s HUGE.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:46 am
So now it’s n”othing happened” to “it’s just a few people”
Troll harder. Facts do help.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:46 am
About a hundred protesters – wow!
June 14th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Silly Derek!
The opposition claims ten millions votes stolen nationwide and what? a whole 100 KosKids rouse themselves?
This is your evidence?
HaHaHaHa!
But hey, thanks for proving my point!
June 14th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Nah, you right, Derek, I don’t care about protests.
Like I said, in 2004 I thought Bush would get 5% at most. He got 51% and I was upset. But I didn’t immediately assume it was a massive election fraud; I figured there must be something out there I didn’t quite understand.
Maybe you should try this approach too.
June 14th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Like I said, in 2004 I thought Bush would get 5% at most.
Then you are clearly an idiot. Why should we listen to any of your prognostications or analysis?
June 14th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Ha-ha, you’ve been listening to my analysis of something? Talk about idiots.
Get real, brother, where do you think you are? This is a comment thread.
June 14th, 2009 at 8:42 am
There has been zero interest in the U.S. regarding potential fraud in the Iranian elections, so I don’t see how interest in the Mexican elections could have been less.
June 14th, 2009 at 8:43 am
But yeah, to put it another way: in 2004 I felt Bush shouldn’t get more than 5%. Is it better?
June 14th, 2009 at 8:58 am
JT,
Thanks for your insightful posts. These protesters are for the most part a bunch of cosmopolitan p*ssies who don’t have the stomach for a real uprising. They’ll quiet down soon enough. ‘KosKids’, that had me laughing. Iran can’t afford instability at this point, and the losers should just shut up and sit down. Hopefully this will not turn into another farce like one of those ‘color revolutions’ that had ‘Made in Washington’ stamped all over them.
Obama should make a deal with Ahmadinejad that in exchange for recognizing Israel’s right to exist and the existence of the Holocaust, America will divert troops from Iraq and send them into Iran to help the government crush the protests.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Good one, Medium Lobster.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I’m just wondering why everyone is getting so excited about it.
Oh, Bob, you and your rhetorical questions! When Mexico has a fishy election, we don’t get all hot and bothered about it because our political class has no desire to overthrow the government of Mexico. With Iran, though? We’ve been toying with the idea of overthrowing their government – or actively trying to do so – for decades now. Who cares if our reasons for doing so make sense?
All of this is made even more laughable by the fact that the person in charge of Iranian foreign policy – that is, the one area of Iranian policy any American would have any excuse to care about – will remain the same regardless of this election’s outcome.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Mofo please! Let’s compare these comments to what we saw on boards like this the day after the 2004 election, shall we? And there is a hell of a lot more evidence of fraud in yesterday’s election than in Ohio 2004.
Oddly selective skepticism.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Clearly, you’re somebody whose opinion about elections needs to be taken seriously.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Well, is it my fault that at least 50% of you happen to be brain-dead?
But I adjusted my opinion with that in mind now, don’t worry. Unless the other half of you went brain-dead too in the last few years (which is a possibility), you can trust my judgment.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:47 am
No, it isn’t. And I don’t give a shit what other people were saying in 2004, I thought that, yeah, maybe it was stolen, but mostly it looked like a coalition of idiot scared fucktards re-elected Bush Jr.
I don’t give a shit who draws a line in the sand and calls it ‘progressive’ or ‘leftist’ that we have to listen to a few preliminary analyses from weak sources that say that this was definitively a stolen election. Maybe it was. As I’ve said repeatedly, this seems likely.
If that’s the way you want to go right now, then do it, but don’t make this some bullshit single issue that either we accept that the hasty and fairly shitty analysis that has come out so far (along with the shitty and incredibly anti-Ahmadinejad reporting in advance of the elections) as an argument that the elections were substantially stolen or somehow we’re a bunch of cowards unwilling to be progressive and have some sort of freaking secret agenda to dismiss Mousavi or back Ahmadinejad.
I’m not a robot. If you don’t like the fact that what you obviously see as overwhelming, gob-smackingly clear evidence, others see as pretty preliminary and weak arguments, fine, but it’s not a moral distinction. I’m sorry. It is in no way greater courage on your part or greater commitment to democracy and democratic values nor a greater solidarity with the Iranian peoples (however defined).
Right now when I read Juan Cole who makes a historical and demographic and cultural argument that it must have been a stolen election, that seems very convincing. And then when I read contrasting arguments, they seem pretty weighty too.
In Mexico of 2006 it was different, because I could read the local press (via Internet) every single day and follow each discussion of each ballot box or statistical count or whatever and really felt I could easily come to my own conclusions.
Right now I think it very well may have been a stolen election. And I know that the protests are being used as an opportunity by the tyrants (and they were tyrants whatever the elections results were, because of the nature of the Iranian state) to slam down on the culturally non-conservative opposition further.
On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of elections nearly exactly parallel to the Iranian elections, like the Venezuelan elections, where the elections really did go for the candidate (Chavez) but a coalition of locals (in this case elites and college students) and U.S. media supporters ranted without evidence that the elections were a clear theft.
In other words, I’ve seen this scenario before and I don’t give in to any mass which seems to form around one side or another.
Here’s some reporting from Robert Fisk, who has a very solid reporting background in the region, with the serious, serious caveat that he does not speak Farsi, and more courage than most of us put together, giving the contrast as seen within Iran as well:
Personally, I don’t see any institution within Iran that might even be willing to review any challenge to this election. It looks like Khamenei is siding completely with Ahmadinejad, which should not be surprising, and I am assuming without evidence that the Council of Guardians is following. Not to mention the fact that the scumbag psycho-hawks of both Israel and the U.S. preferred Ahmadinejad win so that they could continue without challenge their demonization of Iran as the devil of the entire Mid-East.
If I felt it were as easy as “Do the opposite of whatever Elliot Abrams and Daniel ‘Crack’ Pipes do,” things would be easy, and overall that’s not a terrible rule if you have no other information.
But the protests and demonstrations could possibly, if organized faithfully and intelligently, be a force for good in and of themselves, and deserve support and solidarity if they are demanding decent reforms and challenges to illegitimate authority no matter who ‘actually’ won or if this will ever serve the slightest chance of being able to be determined objectively.
If this isn’t good enough for you, fine, then I fail your test.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
El Cid,
Precisely. The rights of carpet-making women to health insurance is worth far more than the right of some spoiled college students to watch ‘Baywatch: Hawaii.’
Whatever our political disagreements with Mr. Ahmadinejad, let’s congratulate him on his victory, and tell the malcontent protestors to f*ck off.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
…and they were tyrants whatever the elections results were, because of the nature of the Iranian state…
Nah, it’s not even any more tyrannical than the US. Clerical mafia or corporate mafia – same shit.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
@tomemos – How have I indicated lunacy and how am I motivated by ideological commitments? My entire point is that there’s no clear evidence of fraud. I’m concerned about everyone jumping to conclusions because of the repeated, recent history (which JT’s a lot more bitter about than me) of attempted quasidemocratic coups, and it would be nice if folks would call for an internationally observed do-over election instead of encouraging a rebellion that could end in a massacre. I suppose that might hasten the fall of the Iranian regime, but that’s a terrible human cost to pay and it’s pretty easy to safely encourage these sorts of actions from abroad.
Read Michael Barone on Venezuela in 2004 – http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_040820.htm – how does the evidence today differ significantly from the evidence then? I agree that some of the demographic information put forth by Cole is persuasive if the underlying numbers are right, but some of what he says is in conflict with firsthand reporting in Tehran, and his case is hardly airtight in any case.
I’m not idiotically denying that there are thousands of people marching in opposition in Tehran, but it’s a city the size of New York City; if the margins there were the 80+% you might expect for Moussavi’s initial announcement of 60+% nationwide to hold, and if the population was so convinced of a completely fabricated result, I’d expect bigger protests even given the likely tragic consequences.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
That is an argument but it isn’t necessarily mine. It’s an argument of how that demographic may have viewed the situation, but again, this isn’t about reality neatly fitting into your pre-made boxes, but actually knowing what the hell one is talking about.
That is the beginning of an analysis, not the end-point, and sorting everyone cheaply and instantly into your idealized proletarian / bourgeois hipster distinction is like surgery with boxing gloves — sometimes it works, but it’s awfully messy and dangerous and more likely to lead to problems.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Hector,
Why are you always trying to asterisk out your cursing? If you think explicit cursing reflects badly on you, cheating by using asterisks isn’t really any better.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
What’s that? no trolling for 3 hours? I wonder why.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
“And then this this chart…”
Sign the Editor for Yglesias petition!
June 15th, 2009 at 2:21 am
it’s enlightening that some here cite al-jazeera. They’re probably having a party that ahmadinejad won and would burn the stolen ballots themselves if they could.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
[...] Yglesias here, here and here. Via Matt, Brian Ulrich: A coup that originated with the military rather than the clerical [...]