[Peace-discuss] Fraudulent votes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The US media ('left' & 'right', as we laughably say) tonight concentrate on 
demonstrations in Iran, about a possibly fraudulent vote, and ignore the 
fraudulent vote in US House of Representatives -- fraudulent, because the 
electorate installed this Congress (and this President) to end the war.  And 
they're doing just the opposite.  In the US, policy is insulated from politics. 
   Elsewhere -- perhaps even in Iran -- politics have some effect. "No one knows 
what is to happen, and who can tell anyone what the future holds?  The toil of 
fools wears them out, for they do not even know the way to town.  Alas for you, 
O land, when your king is a servant, and your princes feast in the morning!" 
(Ecclesiastes 10:14b-16).  --CGE]


	Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It.
	By FLYNT LEVERETT AND HILLARY MANN LEVERETT
	June 16, 2009 "Politico"

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of 
the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s 
election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final 
count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali 
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results 
is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful 
thinking.

Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic 
Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive elections at 
the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. Manipulation has always been 
there, as it is in many other countries.

But upsets occur — as, most notably, with Mohammed Khatami’s surprise victory in 
the 1997 presidential election. Moreover, “blowouts” also occur — as in 
Khatami’s reelection in 2001, Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 2005 and, we would 
argue, this year.

Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mir 
Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More important, they 
were oblivious — as in 2005 — to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist 
politician and campaigner. American “Iran experts” missed how Ahmadinejad was 
perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with 
his three opponents — especially his debate with Mousavi.

Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated 
privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, 
the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad’s provocatively impressive performance 
and Mousavi’s desultory one had boosted the incumbent’s standing. Ahmadinejad’s 
charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani’s sons — widely perceived in 
Iranian society as corrupt figures — seemed to play well with voters.

Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s criticism that Mousavi’s reformist supporters, 
including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment program 
and had won nothing from the West for doing so tapped into popular support for 
the program — and had the added advantage of being true.

More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated 
Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most 
polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of 
questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s election by a 
Western organization that was transparent about its methodology — a telephone 
poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 
— found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted 
before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived 
to have done well while Mousavi did poorly.

American “Iran experts” assumed that “disastrous” economic conditions in Iran 
would undermine Ahmadinejad’s reelection prospects. But the International 
Monetary Fund projects that Iran’s economy will actually grow modestly this year 
(when the economies of most Gulf Arab states are in recession). A significant 
number of Iranians — including the religiously pious, lower-income groups, civil 
servants and pensioners — appear to believe that Ahmadinejad’s policies have 
benefited them.

And, while many Iranians complain about inflation, the TFT poll found that most 
Iranian voters do not hold Ahmadinejad responsible. The “Iran experts” further 
argue that the high turnout on June 12 — 82 percent of the electorate — had to 
favor Mousavi. But this line of analysis reflects nothing more than assumptions.

Some “Iran experts” argue that Mousavi’s Azeri background and “Azeri accent” 
mean that he was guaranteed to win Iran’s Azeri-majority provinces; since 
Ahmadinejad did better than Mousavi in these areas, fraud is the only possible 
explanation.

But Ahmadinejad himself speaks Azeri quite fluently as a consequence of his 
eight years serving as a popular and successful official in two Azeri-majority 
provinces; during the campaign, he artfully quoted Azeri and Turkish poetry — in 
the original — in messages designed to appeal to Iran’s Azeri community. (And we 
should not forget that the supreme leader is Azeri.) The notion that Mousavi was 
somehow assured of victory in Azeri-majority provinces is simply not grounded in 
reality.

With regard to electoral irregularities, the specific criticisms made by Mousavi 
— such as running out of ballot paper in some precincts and not keeping polls 
open long enough (even though polls stayed open for at least three hours after 
the announced closing time) — could not, in themselves, have tipped the outcome 
so clearly in Ahmadinejad’s favor.

Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral fraud 
even by American legal standards. And, compared with the U.S. presidential 
election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran’s electoral process seem less 
significant.

In the wake of Friday’s election, some “Iran experts” — perhaps feeling burned 
by their misreading of contemporary political dynamics in the Islamic Republic — 
argue that we are witnessing a “conservative coup d’état,” aimed at a complete 
takeover of the Iranian state.

But one could more plausibly suggest that if a “coup” is being attempted, it has 
been mounted by the losers in Friday’s election. It was Mousavi, after all, who 
declared victory on Friday even before Iran’s polls closed. And three days 
before the election, Mousavi supporter Rafsanjani published a letter criticizing 
the leader’s failure to rein in Ahmadinejad’s resort to “such ugly and 
sin-infected phenomena as insults, lies and false allegations.” Many Iranians 
took this letter as an indication that the Mousavi camp was concerned their 
candidate had fallen behind in the campaign’s closing days.

In light of these developments, many politicians and “Iran experts” argue that 
the Obama administration cannot now engage the “illegitimate” Ahmadinejad 
regime. Certainly, the administration should not appear to be trying to “play” 
in the current controversy in Iran about the election. In this regard, President 
Barack Obama’s comments on Friday, a few hours before the polls closed in Iran, 
that “just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that 
you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities” was extremely maladroit.

 From Tehran’s perspective, this observation undercut the credibility of Obama’s 
acknowledgement, in his Cairo speech earlier this month, of U.S. complicity in 
overthrowing a democratically elected Iranian government and restoring the shah 
in 1953.

The Obama administration should vigorously rebut any argument against engaging 
Tehran following Friday’s vote. More broadly, Ahmadinejad’s victory may force 
Obama and his senior advisers to come to terms with the deficiencies and 
internal contradictions in their approach to Iran. Before the Iranian election, 
the Obama administration had fallen for the same illusion as many of its 
predecessors — the illusion that Iranian politics is primarily about 
personalities and finding the right personality to deal with. That is not how 
Iranian politics works.

The Islamic Republic is a system with multiple power centers; within that 
system, there is a strong and enduring consensus about core issues of national 
security and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program and relations with 
the United States. Any of the four candidates in Friday’s election would have 
continued the nuclear program as Iran’s president; none would agree to its 
suspension.

Any of the four candidates would be interested in a diplomatic opening with the 
United States, but that opening would need to be comprehensive, respectful of 
Iran’s legitimate national security interests and regional importance, accepting 
of Iran’s right to develop and benefit from the full range of civil nuclear 
technology — including pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle — and aimed at genuine 
rapprochement.

Such an approach would also, in our judgment, be manifestly in the interests of 
the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East. It is time for the 
Obama administration to get serious about pursuing this approach — with an 
Iranian administration headed by the reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Flynt Leverett directs The New America Foundation’s Iran Project and teaches 
international affairs at Pennsylvania State university. Hillary Mann Leverett is 
CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. Both worked for many years on 
Middle East issues for the U.S. government, including as members of the National 
Security Council staff.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22846.htm