Leading Iranian Clerics Call for New Election
It had been looking to me like the Iranian opposition was running out of steam, but this seems to give some new life to their movement:
The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.
It seems difficult to maintain legitimacy while denying the will of the people in the name of theocracy when leading religious authorities are coming out against you. Not that pure logic is enough to defeat a dictatorship, but legitimacy does matter.
32 Responses to “Leading Iranian Clerics Call for New Election”
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July 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Qom is the Supreme Court.
If the reformers get a 5 to 4 majority in Qom, then the only way the current leadership stays in power is to stage an out and out military coup.
If the reformers win, it’ll be because Rafsanjani does a creditable imitation of James Baker.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Actually, the vote declaring Gore’s tactics as illegitimate came in at 7-2.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Re: If the reformers win, it’ll be because Rafsanjani does a creditable imitation of James Baker.
The reformers ‘winning’ doesn’t mean that they actually will get into power. All it means is they will repeat the election. It’s far from clear that Ahmadinejad lost the last time around, and unclear that he will lose if they re-run the election.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Shooter, lying doesn’t serve any purpose. The vote to overturn the will of the people was 5-4. That two of the four also thought that recounting the whole state (an option not allowed by state law) would be better doesn’t change the fact that five thugs stole the election.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias It seems difficult to maintain legitimacy while denying the will of the people in the name of theocracy when leading religious authorities are coming out against you. Not that pure logic is enough to defeat a dictatorship, but legitimacy does matter. [...]
July 5th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Shooter, lying doesn’t serve any purpose.
On the contrary, I would say that lying has served an important purpose: to destroy the credibility of the Republican party and reduce said party to a small (and shrinking) minority in the US Congress.
If conservatives feel that the lying and “truthiness” of the 2000-2006 time period still serve them well, then by all means let them keep it up.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
If conservatives feel that the lying and “truthiness” of the 2000-2006 time period still serve them well, then by all means let them keep it up.
Seconded. The shorthand version of history is that they destroyed the fucking country. Fair or unfair, they will be spinning their wheels and trying this sort of inane handwaving for decades. It’s fun watching them try and bullshit their way out of it.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Sorry folks, but the vote was 7-2 that the recounts violated Equal Protection. Flaunting your ignorances and calling me a liar doesn’t change the facts.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I am very skeptical of the western reporting on Iran. There seems to be the same pro zionist/MIC slant given to reporting from Georgia, Columbia or Venezuela.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Ron,
Don’t let those so-called Zionists who mistake the agenda of the military-industrial complex for Zionism make you think differently of Zionism as an ideology. For some reason the MIC has been able to dupe Zionists (who tend to think of themselves as very clever — whenever one thinks of onesself as all too clever, that’s when it’s easy for you to get duped) into thinking the MIC agenda is the Zionist one, but a quick perusal of real Zionist thinking (which was socialist and lefty in its day) will demonstrate that authentic Zionism, whatever you feel about it, is not an MIC or colonialist plot as some on the left would like to believe. That some Zionists make this mistake doesn’t mean we should make it too.
Also, just because the media is wankerific doesn’t mean they are always wrong. Indeed, sometimes, in my more paranoid moments, I think the media is so wankerific on purpose at some level — just to make it so we won’t believe them when they do report, e.g., on GOP scandals.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
“Sorry folks, but the vote was 7-2 that the recounts violated Equal Protection. Flaunting your ignorances and calling me a liar doesn’t change the facts.”
If you know that much of the history, you also must be well aware that there were only 5 votes to actually steal the election for Bush the Younger.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
And if you know the history, I’m sure you heard about the whole state recount by a newspaper consortium, where Bush still won. It’s past time to get over it.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
It may protect Moussavi; it is brave and bold; many of these people are reliant on state funding.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Actually, shooter@12, that’s not quite accurate, if I recall. Gore only asked for a few counties to be recounted, and under that recount Gore would have indeed lost.
Had the whole state been recounted, Gore would have won by the newspapers’ lights. The unfortunate fact is, like polls, democratic elections have a certain margin of error. No one can ever really say to a certainty who “won” an election as close as Gore v. Bush 2000 or Coleman v. Franken 2008. The side that loses will always feel as though the election was stolen or rigged. I’m not saying this by way of defending the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore, but I do think it’s worth noting that braying about elections that close is most often so much hot air.
As to the point of the original post; a recount (or simply a count) is precisely what’s needed, since there is strong evidence there was never truly a “count” in the first place. It is, as Hector noted, entirely possible that Ahmadinejad would have won a fair and free election. But unless Rafsanjani can outmaneuver the Supreme Leader, we’ll never know.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
“And if you know the history, I’m sure you heard about the whole state recount by a newspaper consortium, where Bush still won.”
As I’m sure you are well aware, the newspaper consortium recount, using the perfectly reasonable (and kosher by Equal Protection standards) counting rule that Judge Terry Lewis had actually ordered used, would have produced a definitive Gore victory.
In short, it seems beyond question that had the Supreme Court not stepped in to shut down due process by a 5 to 4 vote, the Florida courts would have ordered Gore certified the winner.
“It’s past time to get over it.”
Dude, you’re the one who brought the 7-2 canard into the discussion in the first place…
July 5th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Ah, more myth. Sorry people, 7-2 remains the number that stopped the recount. Don’t like it? Too bad. See the cite above.
And here is the recount story. Bush won anyway you want to cut it. Get over it.
July 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“Sorry people, 7-2 remains the number that stopped the recount.”
This is correct. However, 5-4 is the number that stopped the recount from re-starting.
And by the counting standard that it would have been conducted under after re-starting, Gore definitely would have won.
“Don’t like it? Too bad.”
Somehow, I’m beginning to to think you’re not revisiting the history of the ‘00 election in an intellectually honest manner…
July 5th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Silly Americans. Everything always has to be about you.
July 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
“Here lies shooter242: he trolled websites and died friendless. Get over it.”
July 5th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
not a word about this on aljazeera website. is this a clue to anything? if commenter #9 has a real point wouldn’t aljz have an article about zionist propaganda? or if the story is correct, maybe they fear for their lives if they were to publish an article about the clerics. it’s like the cold war spy novels again.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Shooter 242, bungling history:
From Shooter’s link:
As people who are neither dishonest nor ignorant recall quite clearly, Gore didn’t ask for a statewide recount.
History FAIL.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Ah, irony.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Oh my goodness, I got the reason the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to declare manually counting votes un-constitutional, wrong? Darn. My most humble apologies to those whose delicate sensibilities I have crassly offended.
Heh.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Nope, you’re still confused. The Supreme Court didn’t vote 7-2 to declare manual vote counting unconstitutional. They voted 5-4 to declare this particular proposal for a manual recount (remember, that insisted that their decision not be read as precedent) unconstitutional.
They voted 7-2 to declare that the Florida Supreme Court’s decision for a statewide manual recount was unconstitutional.
I know this stuff is complicated. That’s why you shouldn’t be an arrogant asshole when you “correct” other people about it, unless you actually know what you’re talking about.
July 5th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
No Shooter, you stupid and dishonest bit of offal, there is quite simply no scenario where Bush won using Florida state law as of November 2000. Why? Because the standard was “intent of the voter,” which clearly gives a vote for Bush and a write-in for Cheney a vote for Bush. Only a fucking moron, or a total hack like Shooter, would argue otherwise. And using that standard the results were quite clear – Bush lost.
Get over it dummy – Bush lost, he started an unprovoked war of aggression, barely managed to hang onto power – in spite of his rigging of the terrorist alerts, in spite of being a “war president” and in spite of the natural advantage of being the incumbent.
And the result is clear for all to see – massive death and destruction on his watch (hey, see the NYC skyline for a demonstration of Bush’s greatness) massive debt, and denial by idiots like Shooter who try to claim Bush actually won something more than the five thugs in black robes in 2000.
July 5th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
It seems that it’s the manual part of the program that they didn’t like according to this summary of the case
Now if that isn’t good enough for you here’s the actual opinion.
Meanwhile, back at the thread I’ll correct whoever needs it. Too many people think there was only one question being decided, and that 5-4 was the only vote. As we’ve established here, that just isn’t true. Get over it.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:11 am
Heh.
And that, my friends, is the reason why any descendent of shoots will have his/her family tree rewritten to pretend that the dumb asshole Bush-licking trollturd was no blood relation, and that the USPS guy was the true forefather.
And they might be right.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Lovely. Another lib reduced to insults and hate speech.
Heh.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:56 am
The record suggested that different standards were applied from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county. Because of those and other procedural difficulties, the court held that no constitutional recount could be fashioned in the time remaining
If this was SCOTUS’ objection to the recount, those who wrote said opinion were a bunch of idiotic assholes … because the original standards for counting ballots varied from county to county.
In much of Northern FL, voting has long used optically read ballots, which you mark with a felt tipped pen that is very good at leaving stray marks (if you aren’t super-duper careful — and if you are rushing to/from work, you probably don’t have time to be). In some counties (Leon), the machines reading the votes were set such that if a stray mark were detected, the machine would spit the ballot back out and you’d try again. In other counties, the machines were not so set — ballots with stray marks would be not counted but gobbled up by the machine with no record that the voter would know his/her vote was not counted. I think this qualifies as different standards for counting votes.
And let us not forget the infamous “butterfly ballot” (which would have confused even healthy, young college professors — and it was introduced, by a Republican partisan claiming to be a Democrat, into places such that a bunch of Jewish alter-cockers ended up voting for an anti-Semite?) or the voter purge in which any voter who happened to share the same race and have a similar name as a felon was told “if you vote, that would be a felony” — people who remember lynchings were told this!
And the FL election to begin with had equal standards, etc.?
So to claim a recount would violate equal protection, etc., when the original election did not is just ridiculous!
July 6th, 2009 at 11:03 am
It had been looking to me like the Iranian opposition was running out of steam,
well anyone would run out of steam after all of the jailings and beating and the whole clampdown.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
This passage has nothing to do with a manual recount. Did you screw up the cut and paste, the way you screwed up your reading of the decision?
Not a single person has claimed that. You know we can scroll up and read the thread, right?
BTW, here’s someone who needs correcting:
The 7-2 portion of the decision has absolutely nothing to do with Gore’s tactics, or with any claim Gore made.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
‘Tis but a scratch.
It’s just a flesh wound.