8 Killed in Tehran Clashes;
Reformists Reject Recount Offer;
Obama Weighs In
President Barack Obama has weighed in on the Iranian presidential campaign, saying that Iranian voters, who were so hopeful should be heard. He also expressed regret about the violence that has broken out between reformists and hard liners. He also underlined that whatever the outcome of the current crisis, his administration will pursue tough, direct talks with Iran.
AP has video:
European nations joined in the protest about the apparently manipulated character of the vote, though putative US allies President Jalal Talabani of Iraq and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan praised the alledged election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Police intervention and clashes with the pro-regime Basij popular militia left 8 protesters dead on Monday amid charges and counter-charges about who started the violence. At night on Monday into Tuesday, gunfire could be heard in three districts of the capital. The Interior Ministry is alleged to have authorized the use of live ammunition against protesters.
Martin Fletcher of the Times of London reports,
' In one incident a witness told The Times how she watched from her car as riot police on six motorbikes opened fire on youths walking under a bridge after the rally. “The riot police started shooting them with big guns,” she said. “It wasn’t like the films where there is just a small hole — the shooting was blowing off hands, limbs. It was terrible, terrible.” '
More rallies are expected Tuesday.
Iran's clerical senate or "Guardian Council" is offering to recount the ballots from Friday's election. The reform faction, however, rejects this offer as inadequate and wants a whole new presidential campaign. The head of the Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati, is a hard line supporter of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The USG Open Source is reporting that Iranian television actually showed the massive demonstrations on Monday in Tehran. The state tv is tightly controlled, so this was either insubordination on the part of the producers or a sign that the elite is annoyed with Ahmadinejad for trying to steal the election.
AP has video on the popular rallies in the Iranian presidential campaign.
AP points to the importance of Twitter to the reformists' getting the word out of what has been happening in Iran. Iran's major social movements have always depended on cutting edge communications because of the size of the country (nearly 4 times the size of France) and the way its population is separated by mountains and deserts. The telegraph was important to the 1890-92 revolt against a tobacco monopoly granted by Nasir al-Din Shah to a British freebooter, which harmed Iranian merchants and farmers. The 1979 revolution was fueled by cassette tapes of the sermons and speeches of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. And now we have twitter.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/16/2009 03:09:00 AM
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6 Comments:
Juan, how to contact you? Guardian tryingto claim that Ahmadinejad real election winner: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/15/iran-election-polling
So the Iranians care about their votes? Like the amerikans "cared" about theirs' in '00,'04,etc... And then there are all those Iranian expats crying fowl? I smell a black op.
The Western media and bloggers seem to think these protesters want an Western-style democracy. The euphoria in the West about these demonstrations is bizarre! It's as if the Berlin Wall came down again! But what do these protesters want? Something tells me they want a better theocratic system, not a Western-friendly government.
I have the impression that Ahmadinejad has the backing of the security and military forces and so has a power base that is somewhat independent of the mullahs. If so, it is likely that the very lopsided vote count reflects the desires of the Iranian military and security forces. I am confused I would like to see the press and even Juan give us more insight into how the Iranian regime actually functions.
There is no relevant parallel between yesterday's telegraph and cassette tapes and today's twitter in terms of what's going on in Iran today.
Most Iranians do not communicate by or even use twitter. So within the country it has little or no relevance.
In fact, even in terms of getting information out of the country, it's not at all clear how credible much of the twittering is and it's uncertain they represent any significant percentage of Musawi supporters within the country.
The real reason twitter seems so important to you and other Western observers is because the medium and the message are both more familiar and accessible--but that doesn't mean it is representative of wide Iranian sentiment.
Interesting points:
From Stratfor, By George Friedman, June 15, 2009
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090615_western_misconceptions_meet_iranian_reality
"Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would probably reach people who had phones and lived in Tehran and other urban areas. Among those, Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite different.
Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this."
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