Leauki, I'm sorry I have to disagree with you on this.  Just look at what caused the melt down of the markets in the U.S.  It was greed.  It just might be me because I don't put too much faith or trust in people any more.

Eventually what's going to happen is that they (Mahmoud/Khamanei) will just ride this out until its forgotten.

I've heard from friends that live their that Mousavi might be in either protective custody or in custody.  They also tell me its very hard to tell what's true and what's not true with all that's going on.  Especially considering there is very little reaction from the international community.

Starstriker, I know within the last 2 to 3 years the International Community has stated that: Zimbabwe, Kenya, and a Northern African country (I can't remember which) elections WERE NOT DEMOCRATIC and rigged.

If you think that greed caused the melt down, why do you disagree that some things are more important than money? You see me confused.

All,

The opposition in Iran is openly pro-western. They want western values. They want better relations with the west and especially with the US. The mullahs (technically "the mullah" since it's only one who is really totally opposed to reforms) know this and are already accusing the opposition of being western infiltrators. But that only helps the opposition who want to be seen as pro-western.

Obama himself said that one cannot be silent in the face of what's going on in Iran. And then he remained silent.

What happened in Iran...

Here's what I could figure out so far about the fake election (and there is no doubt that it was fake, not even Germany can count paper votes so quickly):

1. For the past five years Ahmadinejad and Khameini (the "supreme leader") have replaced leading officials with people loyal to Ahmadinejad and Khameini.

2. If Ahmadinejad loses, this would be reversed.

3. This is not secular forces vs religious fundamentalists, it is everybody, secular and religious against ONE mullah and his secular allies around Ahmadinejad. The other mullahs can replace Khameini unless his has the militias and military on his side.

4. This explains why it was decided to commit election fraud despite the dangers it would bring. Ahmadinejad had to remain in power. Otherwise Khameini could not rely on thug support.

5. Since then several people in the regime, including the president of the parliament have spoken up against Ahmadinejad and Khameini.

6. What went wrong is simply that Khameini and Ahmadinejed didn't foresee that Mousavi would openly oppose the regime. And that opened a window for everyone to speak up.

7. Again, Ahmadinejads anti-western and anti-Israel rethoric didn't help him. Iranians do NOT hate the west or even Israel. His hatred for Israel and the west is his own and helps him only in the Arab world but not within Iran. Specifically his anti-western attitude cost him dearly in Iran.

I'm not disagreeing with that somethings are more important than money.  What I was disagreeing is that I feel most people see money as the most important thing and was using the melt down as evidence.

This does reflect on the Iranian situation.  Most Iranians as you pointed out do not want a fight against the West and a fair amount of Iranians do not want to come even close to being a lined with Talbian/Al Qaeda's ant-west attitude and want to distance themselves as far from that attitude.

I guess you can put this in the category of sanctions actually kind of working.

I'm not sure about that.

Iranians already hated Ahmadinejad before the sanctions. Much of what he did to destroy the Iranian economy had nothing to do with the sanctions (which never were very effectiv anyway).

Recall that Ahmadinejad won an election in 2005 when the opposition called for a boycott of the elections. (That's why it was so unbeliavable that he would score an even bigger victory this year when the opposition called for massive participation in the elections.)

Since that time he has wasted Iranian tax payers' money on supporting terrorists in foreign countries, especially on supporting _Arab_  terrorists (and most Iranians don't like Arabs much due to a history of enmity between the two peoples), and he has spent money on a nuclear program while Iran's refinery capacities are still so low that petrol for cars has to be imported. And this has nothing to do with sanctions.

Most Iranians couldn't care less about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but they don't want to pay for it. And it doesn't help that he is giving money to Iran's traditional archenemy since the 7th century.

Read this article on Arab-Iranian relations: http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/articles/pan-arabism/

(Professor Farrokh is now circulating this blog post and my other blog post about Iran on his mailing list!)

Compare this with reports of the Iranian regime using Arab terrorists as backup for their native thugs and you can see some of the seriousness of this situation and why Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitism is now part of his down-fall.

And while the regime and even Ahmadinejad might remain in power when this is over, he has been shown to be the liar we knew he was. And we now know that the "death to the dictator" attitutude is more common among Iranians than the "death to Israel" attitude. And that was something he didn't want us to know for sure.

How to Spot a Rigged Election

http://thefifthcolumn.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-spot-rigged-election.html

@ Leauki:

I don't get my news from BBC or Reuters, it would seem. Looking into my local newspaper, the Edmonton Journal, it's affiliated with Canwest. Dunno if they've got their own biases or not, but there you have it.

I've got to wonder about all the things we're not seeing. There's little support going to the Iranian opposition in public (though the French President just today called the whole thing a fraud... good on 'im) though I can't help but wonder what's going on behind the scenes.

And that last link is... pretty unbelievable. Is that REALLY a simplified version of the voting distribution? I find it hard to believe that a regime intent on legitimizing itself would make such an amatuer blunder, and I also can't help but notice that the other candidates are not listed at all.

If that's for real, though, I can't help but laugh at the Iranian government. Apparently being lying, thuggish asshats wasn't sufficient, they also had to be frigging TERRIBLE at it!

...and yeah, checking the official results shows it to be completely inaccurate. I take it that was meant to be taken as a joke? That's a shame... would've been funnier if it was true!

Good for you!

I do believe that local newspapers are probably much better than the big media companies. For one thing, they are less centralised and there are more of them. They also don't have interests beyond their own locality and little reason to prop up dictators in a part of the world they are not likely to report from anyway.

Yes, it actually is. The official results really did claim that Ahmadinejad won evenly in all regions. And given that he "won" by a larger margin than in 2005, when the opposition boycotted the elections, everybody knew that was something fishy with the "results".

The Iranian regime are not very good at this. You have to remember that they really are backwards. They don't know that most people in the west know enough about maths and statistics to spot these things. They also don't know that everyone in the western world knows about Photoshop. (That is, they do know that, but they don't know what it means.)

A year ago the Iranian government released pictures of missile launch test, photoshopped to show four missiles successfully launched, three of them were identical. Presumably getting two of four missles to launch successfully was the best result they could get and they photoshopped from there.

Similarly the rallies supporting Ahmadinejad have been photoshopped:

http://kheirkhah.ir/?type=dynamic&lang=1&id=683

If we are lucky, the Iranian regime won't understand that we get the news mostly from twitter and blogs. They are currently expelling journalists and shutting down press offices. Seems like they are preparing for a major assault on the protesters that they think nobody will see.

This will get a lot worse.

Actually, it was accurate. I don't know how they have changed the results since then.

Friday evening Ahmadinejads votes were indeed shown to be between 65% and 70% no matter which province they counted. That's what the cartoon refers to.

They even claimed that Ahmadinejad got 70% in the Kurdish areas. They are Sunnis. They have absolutely no reason to vote for a president who doesn't even recognise their religion as Islam.

One source for official "results":

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=r_uwMuClOfVIjaQpj8liIpg

They differ from Friday's.

About the ties between Iran and the Arab world:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/70241

Ahmadinejad anti-Israel rhetoric and his anti-Semitism were meant for external consumption. In Iran he wasn't going to score votes with it. Anti-Semitism only works with losers, but Iranians are not losers.

His anti-western positions are now causing his probable downfall.

http://www.n-tv.de/politik/meldungen/Waechterrat-empfaengt-Opposition-article371140.html (German)

Apparently the "Council of Guardians" will meet with opposition leaders to discuss the situation and what can be done. Note that "Ayatollah" Khameini does not necessarily have the full support of that council, many of whom are unhappy with the situation and Iran's isolation in the world.

In the mean time Mousavi has called on his supporters to continue with peaceful protests until new elections are called.

Protesters in front of the UN building are holding up posters "UN - Where Are You?". They obviously don't know that international support for their cause would make things worse. Luckily President Obama has things under control and is able to withhold such support. I hope he really does know more about the situation in Iran than the people who live there. (George Bush was in a similar situation regarding Lebanon a few years and openly supported the anti-Syrian opposition and it worked out well. He was obviously lucky.)

The pro-regime Bassij militia is calling its volunteers to show up for Friday prayers in mass (and armed).

There are a couple of common misconceptions about Iran which add to the confusion and to why the west doesn't really "get" what happens in Iran.

One is the idea that Iranians are anti-western or anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. They are not. As Michael Totten quotes in the article linked earlier:

Despite the presentation of the Jew by the Khomeinist regime as the ultimate “other” and object of hatred, anti-Semitism has failed to find a wide audience in Iran. Leaving aside what one might call “vulgar anti-Semitism,” there is no evidence that hatred of the Jews has any echoes in contemporary Persian literature or art. Part of this is because the overwhelming majority of Iranian writers, poets, and other “producers of culture” reject Khomeinism as a form of anti-Iranian fascism. The main reason, however, is that the average Iranian, though he may sympathize with the Palestinians, cannot identify with the Arabs, whom he regards as an ancestral foe. The fact that the only major war that Iran has fought in the past three hundred years was started by an Arab nation – Iraq under Saddam Hussein – makes it hard for most Iranians to contemplate an Irano-Arab front against Israel.

...

It is not easy to present Israel as a threat to Iran, let alone a Muslim world of 1.3 billion people. There is no history of enmity between Iranians and Jews. On the contrary, most historical narratives on both sides radiate with genuine warmth and affection. Ancient Persians helped save the Jews from extermination in Babylon. Jews always remained loyal to Iran, fighting and dying for it whenever given an opportunity. Even when Israel was reborn as a state, few Iranian Jews were prepared to choose it over Iran. Iran and Israel do not face any of the problems that set one nation-state against another. There is no border dispute between them. They are not competing over access to rare natural resources or markets. They do not suffer from a collective memory of hatred and war. Any Western visitor to Iran would quickly realize that Iranians do not hate Jews and would not be prepared to sacrifice them for the Arabs. This lack of a popular base for a policy of hatred and war may well prove to be the ultimate check on Ahmadinejad’s messianic illusions.

Quite in contrast to western delusions about Ahmadinejad gaining votes by being anti-Israel, in Iran he is more likely to lose votes for his general anti-western attitude.

The other misconception is about Ahmadinejad being a "man of the people" with lots of support in rural areas. In fact Ahmadinejad's power base was in the cities, exactly where the big demonstrations are happening right now.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/70412

I think it might be a good idea to consider that the 2005 elections were also rigged.

Truly? They changed the official results afterwards because they realized that they looked like total tools? Huh! I take it back, I AM going to laugh at them. Idiots.

Do you have a source for the original results? I haven't been able to find it, they were apparently quite quick to change everything up before anyone looked too closely.

I'll see if I can find it again. That happened in the first few hours of it all.

I just came back from the synagogue and didn't start taking notes until the morning.