The whole mess in Tehran is a nightmarish clusterfuck, and I shudder to think what would be happening now if Bush were still in office today.

I just don’t know the right answer.  I don’t think you give Ahmawhackjob any sort of congratulations or recognition that his “election” was in any way, shape or form legitimate.

But at the same time, the opportunists on the other side also scare me.

My hope is for a massive coup by the Iranian people.  While it hard to imagine such an event occurring without a fair amount of bloodshed - including likely Mahmoud himself - I think that is the best thing that could happen over there.  Their government is a total sham, and the only way the Iranian people will ever have real representation is if they rise up against the state and take it.

They need to overthrow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - by any means necessary.  But it has to be done by them.

No, they need to overthrow the Ayatollah.  Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Iran is a nominally constitutional theocracy (with the nominally constitutional now thrown right out the window).

Well crap, man - if they go reforming themselves, we won’t be able to kill them!
Kinda takes the whole fun out of it.

No, they need to overthrow the Ayatollah.  Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Iran is a nominally constitutional theocracy (with the nominally constitutional now thrown right out the window).

True, anything that doesn’t involve the removal of Khamenei will have little effect, so really the whole damn thing needs to come down.

As was pointed out above, it is absolutely critical that America and Israel stand down and let this happen without our direct intervention.  I think Obama will play this cool, as he did in his Cairo speech, where he both sends subtle messages of approval for the rising up of the people, but at the same time makes it clear that it is up to the Iranian people, not the United States military, to establish a true representative government in their country.

I think the internets could be fatal to the mullahs in all of this.  While the totalitarians keep trying to block the people from communicating with the outside world, we’re going to see more and more leaked videos of the unrest sneaking onto YouTube…

“I think the internets could be fatal to the mullahs in all of this.  While the totalitarians keep trying to block the people from communicating with the outside world, we’re going to see more and more leaked videos of the unrest sneaking onto YouTube…”

The Chinese could probably give them some good tips on how to keep the boot of The Government firmly planted on the Internet to (at least largely) control whatever threatens them…

Of course, anything Iran does just gives the Israelis an excuse to bomb the hell out of them.  But I’m sure nothing bad could come from something like that.  After all, we’ve proven in Iraq and Afghanistan that bombing is a great way to deal with political and cultural conflicts…in the same way that a baseball bat is a great tool for removing hornet’s nests…

You think they they could have faked this election well enough to at least give Mousavi 45% of the vote.

As others have pointed out it’s really Khameni, the council, and the courts that rule Iran. Mousavi promised to use the office of the president to change this. He had the support of of educated young people, the wealthy, and women of all classes. He was an effective leader in wartime 20 years ago. There is fighting in the streets. Mousavi helped Iran survive against an Iraq backed by the US, USSR, and France as Iran’s wartime minister. Holmes knows how to fight.

Off to see if Gary Brecher has some informative input about this issue.

Of course, anything Iran does just gives the Israelis an excuse to bomb the hell out of them.  But I’m sure nothing bad could come from something like that.  After all, we’ve proven in Iraq and Afghanistan that bombing is a great way to deal with political and cultural conflicts…in the same way that a baseball bat is a great tool for removing hornet’s nests…

The saddest thing is that if what Israel really wants is a less threatening Iran that isn’t run by a nutjob, the best thing they can do right now is to STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THIS.

It’s getting pretty ugly over there, but the unrest is palpable.  Students are being beaten, fires are breaking out, protestors are being shot, the local news media isn’t being allowed to report on any of the rioting, and supposedly Khamenei’s own daughter has been arrested - the youth of Iran seems like they are just about ready to take up arms against their own government.

And while violence is never a good thing, I fully support the Iranian youth doing WHATEVER THEY DEEM NECESSARY to get a government that truly represents thm, even if it ends up with Khamenei and Ahmadinejad being killed in the process.

This is a critical juncture in Iran.  We may be witnessing a second Iranian Revolution, only this time it will be the former revolutionaries getting thrown out of power.

But it MUST come from within the streets of Iran.  Any direct intervention from the West will only undermine the efforts of the Green Revolutionaries.

Iran has long been able to claim to some sort of democracy up until now, because they have always at least attempted to give their elections the appearance of legitimacy.  Not this time.  There isn’t anyone on the planet right now who believes that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still the democratically elected leader of Iran today.  I think Khamenei realized that the Iranian youth were growing tired of being ruled by a mentally unstable theocratic whackjob, and the outcome of this election was preordained a long time ago.  I doubt a single vote had been counted when Ahmadinejad was declared the victor.

However, in a way, should the Iranian youth really be prepared to take up arms and overthrow Ahmawhackjob and the Ayatollah, this could work out even better than had they allowed Mousavi to claim victory in the first place.  Had they not rigged the outcome, Mousavi would have won, but he still would have been forced to subjugate himself to the real head honcho, Mr. Supreme Leader.

Now it is possible that we may see a theocracy-free Iranian state arise out of this whole mess.  Because the kids don’t seem to want any part of what their elders have clung to for so long.

The USA, Israel, and the west as a whole needs to stay the fuck out. The Iranian Opposition can do without that kind of “support”. Hillary Clinton made a great statement a few hours ago—she basically refused to comment. Smart.

Just like it was good for George H.W. Bush not to run over to Berlin and dance on the ruins of the Wall, it is good for the current administration to stay the fuck out and let events run their course.

this is great because max boot admits we need enemies to function as boogeymen so that max boot gets to point at them and be allowed to do dumb shit

DTG in STL  on  06/14  at  10:11 PM:
They need to overthrow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - by any means necessary.  But it has to be done by them.

Are you fucking serious?

A) The president of Iran is irrelevant. You may as well argue that, given our stolen elections, Americans should overthrow the Secretary of Agriculture. There isn’t a single thing Ahmadinejad can do tha the Ayatollah cannot nullify.

B) The first and foremost enemy of any country in the Middle East is the U.S. government—Israel is merely a semi-independent proxy. Do recall who overthrew the Iranian government the last time it happened. That being the case, a popular uprising against the Ayatollah would have to be matched with the political and military savvy to keep the U.S. and Israel—and the former is a bigger threat than the latter—from picking the country apart during and after the revolution. This would, imo, take more skill than it would to overthrow the corrupt regime in the United States. (At least the Canadians and Mexicans wouldn’t rip us to shreds if we purged our government of its filth.) Do you really expect Iranians in an out-and-out theocracy to be more politically astute and pratically skilled than U.S. citizens.

DTG in STL  on  06/14  at  11:06 PM
I think the internets could be fatal to the mullahs in all of this.

MikeEss  on  06/14  at  11:18 PM
The Chinese could probably give them some good tips on how to keep the boot of The Government firmly planted on the Internet to (at least largely) control whatever threatens them…

Uhm, well, in that case, the Chinese government and the Iranian government may well be on the same page as the U.S. government when it comes to the Internet.

DTG in STL  on  06/14  at  11:52 PM
The saddest thing is that if what Israel really wants is a less threatening Iran that isn’t run by a nutjob, the best thing they can do right now is to STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THIS.

Ah, well, here we have a problem with nomenclature, one we can illustrate as follows:

The U.S. citizenry wants peace in Iraq.
The U.S. government loves a destabilized Iraq.

That in mind, we can correct the above quote:

The saddest thing is that if what the <u>government of Israel</u> really wants is a less threatening Iran that isn’t run by a nutjob. . .

I admit that I’m kind of nitpicking here, but it’s important to recognize the staggeringly vast conflict of interests going on here. We’re talking rabbits-and-wolves, crocodiles-and-antelope. The Iranian youth is basically utterly clusterfucked here precisely because it cannot rely on sanity, reason, or even the barest, starkly practical realpolitik to keep half the world’s arsenal from bearing down on them even if they manage to get rid of their theocracy. Empires do not respond well to reason, or to their own people.

Alright, so if I were to say something actually positive here, it would be that the Iranian people have a chance at overthrowing their oppressors as soon as we’ve overthrown ours. And not a second before.

Assuming, of course, that the U.S. doesn’t simply collapse, which might give them a shot as well. . . which has downsides since the U.S. is where I keep my stuff.

I just wish the UN would take a parental stance toward Israel, as in “we brought you into this world and we can sure as hell take you out of it!”.  Definitely a frankenstein’s monster of a country.

Does anyone have any proof that Ahmadinejad stole the election? (Or proof that Bush stole 2004, for that matter?)

As shitty as the Iranian election looks from our vantage point, we might want to do like Hillary Clinton and wait for more evidence.

One thing’s for sure, though. Ahmadinejad just made himself way less popular with the youngsters in his nation. His legacy is poisoned.

Does anyone have any proof that Ahmadinejad stole the election?

I was thinking the same thing: how much of this talk of rigging is wishful thinking, on the part of both the reformists in Iran and the media in the West? (Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the reformists win, and all being well I think in time they will, given that Iran’s electorate is increasingly skewed towards the youth; but…)

Until now I’d heard largely positive things about the conduct of polling stations in Iran. That said, apparently you don’t get pre-printed voting forms: voters have to write in the name of their preferred candidate. So there is conceivably an avenue via rejecting misspelled names (although it’s much easier to misspell/‘misspell’ Ahmedinejad than Mousavi, in Farsi - several more letters that can be changed by adding or ‘not seeing’ a dot…), and manipulating the illiterate - mostly older and rural - who have to get officials to write their vote in for them (although again, everything I’ve heard is that said officials have had a scrupulously-clean reputation, at least until now).

85% is a massive turnout. A big proportion of that has to be the rural vote, which Ahmedinejad has been courting with rousing speeches about Iran’s need to protect itself against “enemies”. It looks to me not unlike the 2004 US elections: if a large enough chunk of the population can be convinced that their safety is dependent upon the current leader and his wacky foreign policy (and nuclear programme), it’s his election to lose.

Still, with an 85% turnout, even if you got a big majority that’s still a very substantial number of people who actively voted against you, and are likely to be pissed off. Hence, I guess, rioting.

atheist, Ahmadinejad was announced to have carried opposition stronghold localities by large margins, including Moussavi’s hometown. These announcements were made immediately after the polls closed. Ahmadinejad’s overall margin of victory does not square with the popularity of opposition to the hardliners before the election.

At what point does the burden to prove the election was unfair shift, to become a burden to prove it was fair? Only when there is a smoking gun that the election was rigged?

I just wish the UN would take a parental stance toward Israel, as in “we brought you into this world and we can sure as hell take you out of it!”.  Definitely a frankenstein’s monster of a country.

I’m sorry, so Iran just had an allegedly fixed election and that somehow means Israel should be eradicated? Really?

Although it would be stupid for the US to intervene, even verbally, in any case, the past 8 years have made us so much more radioactive (ahem) in Tehran than we were before. About the only useful thing we could do would be a few well-placed leaks about having offered advice to Ahmadinejad…

Does anyone have any proof that Ahmadinejad stole the election? (Or proof that Bush stole 2004, for that matter?)

We don’t know for certain.  That said, I would say the case for a stolen election in Iran right now is even stronger than the case for a stolen election in the US in 2004 (but not 2000).

Fivethirtyeight.com has a decent analysis of why the stolen election presumption is on fairly safe ground.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/iran-does-have-some-fishy-numbers.html

All I know from what I’ve read so far is that virtually no one in the world believes that Ahmadinejad was legitimately re-elected, that the inconsistencies in the results make no sense.  Also, according to the state version of events, Ahmadinejad didn’t just barely win a squeaker - they are claiming he beat his opponent in a total landslide by a 2-1 margin.  The comparison to 2004 in the U.S. isn’t really apt, insofar as NOBODY would have believed Bush had won a Reagan-sized landslide if that had been the official result here in November 2004.  I think that he has just lost significant standing in the world as a leader because of this.

OMFG..I was flying from NY to VA yesterday & caught that joke of a Press Conference where the re-elected President was lying his ass off.

By the way (and this is unrelated to my comment above) the term Supreme Leader scares me shitless.

I thought that the entire point of our involvement in the Middle East to make steps towards functioning democracies, not destabilizing the hell out of Mideastistan in order to further raise Israel’s position as the preeminent country that bombs the places we want to bomb anyway.

Nothing new—from a certain brand of PNACer neoCon (like Pod, like Ledeen), the response to this sort of repugnant authoritarianism in the Middle East (Israel excluded) is “More, please!” Unlike the sincere “spreading-democracy” PNACers, these short-sighted idiots love destabilisation and chaos.

You think they they could have faked this election well enough to at least give Mousavi 45% of the vote.

From what I’ve read, the Supreme Leader, his fellow priests and their laity thugs at the Guard and Interior Ministry were caught off-guard by the results. Working under duress leads to this sort of clumsy and obvious rigging—it would be laughable if it wasn’t resulting in arrests, beatings, and more oppression.

The good news, such as it is, is that it’s obvious that younger Iranians are getting fed up with religious fantasists calling the shots and making their country a laughingstock; that and that they have the tools to do something about it.

DTG: Thanks for the link (can’t believe I didn’t think to look at fivethirtyeight.com); until now all I’d seen in most reports was that there are “allegations”, but nothing concrete as to what is actually being alleged, never mind any numbers. Karroubi’s results do look distinctly odd!

The comparison to 2004 in the U.S. isn’t really apt,

Sorry, wasn’t clear: obviously Ahmedinejad’s margin here is suspiciously enormous. My intention was simply to note the parallel in coverage, and to wonder how much that is shaping the narrative of election-rigging: it’s been reminding me strongly of 2004, in that the media over here (UK) were almost universally convinced that 2004 was a foregone conclusion (and mostly spoke to people who confirmed this impression); they were therefore rather blindsided by a result that was in retrospect logical, if not inevitable, if you took domestic issues (and non-coastal populations) into account. I wonder to what extent something similar is distorting the picture here, too, especially the obvious bias towards reporting from urban areas. I mean, all the Iranians I know are pro-reform, but they’re likely to be… that’s part of the reason why they aren’t in Iran!

Either way, we can only hope that this will be resolved with as much justice and as little bloodshed as possible.

I just wish the UN would take a parental stance toward Israel, as in “we brought you into this world and we can sure as hell take you out of it!”.  Definitely a frankenstein’s monster of a country.”

Jesus, what do you want, a 2nd Holocaust? Haven’t the Jews suffered enough? Is it asking too much they have a country about the size of Rhode Island where they can actually live in peace?

PS Sorry if that sounds inflammatory, but why in G-d’s name so many people hate a tiny country like Israel will forever remain a mystery to me. The Arabs have several million square miles to call their own. Can’t they just let Israel have a couple thousand? It’s not like they’re sitting on vast reserves of oil or anything.

EricJG—people don’t hate Israel, they strongly disagree with many of its policies.  As do many Israelis, who regularly elect opposition politicians and hold demonstrations.

It’s a consistent conservatroll meme to conflate disagreement with policies with disagreement with existence.  By that logic, the husband who wishes his wife would lose 10 pounds wants her to die.

(The problem with that analogy is, of course, that so many conservatives really do, isn’t it?)

With all paper ballots in a huge country the result is announced two hours after the polls close?

Yeah, right.

It will be interesting to see if, when the actual numbers are published, they show statistical signs of tampering.  People are already at work on this, according to Nate Silver, though there is some difficulty because Iran blacked out the web page with the incremental results for several hours on the evening of the election.

Is it asking too much they have a country about the size of Rhode Island where they can actually live in peace?

Is it asking too much that a libertarian would oppose a state who bulldozes people’s houses and looks the other way while squatters build settlements on other people’s land?

No kidding! I wonder this sort of thing all the time.  Either they feel the need to appear legitimate, in which case they should put their ample resources into making a convincing fake; or they feel no need for accountability, in which case they should just declare themselves leaders for life.

Cris,

Maybe their desire to appear legitimate isn’t really that strong? Or they’re just not as slick as they think they are? Or the Iranians who run the government are of different minds about this issue and the conflict makes them stumble?

It’s a consistent conservatroll meme to conflate disagreement with policies with disagreement with existence.

Not to mention it’s also a consistent conservatroll meme to conflate all “Arabs”.  Not to mention, what does it matter if “The Arabs” have X amount of territory in a macro/regional sense, when specific Israeli policies are oppressive towards actual real life Palestinians?

It’s a consistent conservatroll meme to conflate disagreement with policies with disagreement with existence.

While I see your point, in general, the comment Eric was replying to was:

I just wish the UN would take a parental stance toward Israel, as in “we brought you into this world and we can sure as hell take you out of it!” Definitely a frankenstein’s monster of a country.

Which sure looked like disagreement with existence to me.

The English major in me really wants to deconstruct the Israel as Frankenstein’s monster, but that would be getting really OT.

atheist  on  06/15  at  08:20 AM
Does anyone have any proof that Ahmadinejad stole the election? (Or proof that Bush stole 2004, for that matter?)

You can start with Palast’s stuff in Armed Madhouse—Native Americans, especially in New Mexico, were victims of massive amounts of voterigging. IIRC, some areas of NM had more votes for Bush than actual persons that lived in those areas.

I have nothing for Iran. (That being said, what posters here have claimed makes a strong claim that Ahmedinejad cheated.) Frankly, I don’t care. Regardless of whether or not the election was stolen there’s no evidence that the government is anything close to an accurate representation of the peoples’ will—much like things are in the U.S., or in the U.K. The more significant issue is that Iran is threatened by the U.S. more than by its mullahs, a terrifying little fact that makes its lack of democracy a bit of a secondary issue.

Punditus Maximus  on  06/15  at  02:16 PM
EricJG—people don’t hate Israel, they strongly disagree with many of its policies. 

Actually, some people hate Israel due to their policies of having killed their parents and stolen their houses. Some people hate the U.S. for the same reason. And the U.K. And—you get the idea. It’s legitimate to hate a sovereign government, even if you don’t hate the people it governs. (I don’t hate Israel, btw, though I despise it and pretty much all faux-Democracies on Earth, as any zealous democrat (note the small-d) should. If it killed my parents I would hate it, though, even if I didn’t like my parents. It’s the principle of the thing.)

EricJG  on  06/15  at  02:03 PM
Can’t they just let Israel have a couple thousand? It’s not like they’re sitting on vast reserves of oil or anything.

No, they’re sitting on land they stole from other people, some of whom they are murdering right now, and sitting on massive sources ofwater that they also stole from the same people, a resource that is in many ways more valuable than oil in that region. But hey, don’t forget to grab a copy of our home game on your way out and thanks for playing!

No One of Consequence:

Stole?  Seriously?

There was a partion in 1948.  The Arabs decided to settle things by war instead of diplomacy.  They got their asses handed to them.  The Israelis are sitting on land they won by war, wars in which they were hideously outnumbered.  They moved their own people out of Gaza at gunpoint.  Land for peach, doacha know.  What they got was rockets instead of peace.

From what I hear, people in Iran could care less about Israel or the U.S. They’re worried about their economy, like everyone else in the world. They have horrendous inflation and unemployment. You’re not going to care what the Israel PM does when you can’t fucking eat in your own country.

I’m sick to death of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It isn’t the only sectarian conflict in the world, or even the most brutal or deadly. If our gods came from Tibet we wouldn’t give a shit about them at all.

The elites of the Iranian government use Palestine as a distraction and political football.

“Hey, you might be unemployed, but look over there! Israelis!”

They don’t care about the Palestinians, anymore than Bush cared about the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein.

“The Arabs” didn’t decide to do anything—various Arab governments, themselves postcolonial structures, governing peoples who had been run by colonial powers for decades, made various odd foreign policy decisions.

Surely a conservative living in Obama’s America, with Obama being a secret Muslim born in Indonesia and all, can grasp the distinction.

Standard stupidity regarding Gaza ignored.

Magis  on  06/15  at  03:46 PM
The Arabs decided to settle things by war instead of diplomacy.

Way to rewrite history. Israel is an occupying force, just as the U.S. is occupying Iraq. And, yeah, rocket attacks from a couple of rebels on their native soil is really the same thing as using armored divisions and airstrikes to murder thousands. Seriously, if you’re going to back that occupation, you may as well back the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and go for the asshole trifecta.

Pretending, for a second, that the western powers had the right to carve up the Middle East in the first place (ROFL) you’d still come away with evidence of a brutal occupation and invasion:

In a 1997 New York Times interview, Moshe Dayan, defense minister during the 1967 war, explained that Israeli settlers’ “greed for the land” led them to provoke the Syrian army to shoot at them, opening the way for the Israeli invasion and seizure of the Golan Heights.

Magis  on  06/15  at  03:46 PM:
The Israelis are sitting on land they won by war, wars in which they were hideously outnumbered.

Complete bullshit. Mere numbers don’t matter: military strength and tactics matter. You may as well say the Aztecs and Carribeans deserved what the Spanish did to them. Are you an apologist for the treatment of African slaves as well? There’s another population that generally found itself on the losing side of a war. You can even see this pre-gunpowder. The Mongols were outnumbered in nearly every battle they ever fought but had superior tactics to that of their enemies. And, oh, they were ruthless assholes who couldn’t care less about people who weren’t like themselves as well as the aforementioned. Perhaps you’d have liked them.

The Israeli government—against the wishes of a good chunk of the Israeli people—spoils for war and balks peace nearly whenever it gets a chance. It does so as a favored client of the U.S. which works egregiously hard to ensure that neither fair play nor peaceful outcomes are a part of the “negotiations” concerning Israel and Palestine. But, seriously, you’re not reading anything here that you couldn’t find on any progressive blog or website. Why you’d run that line here is beyond me. But hey, take comfort that your viewpoint is in complete agreement with that of the far right in the U.S.

OK, just so that we’re clear about the parameters of discussion here.

This blogpost arose from the fact that a coutnry, name beginning with an I, seems to have suffered a systemic failure of electoral politics, possibly due to fraud on a massive scale.

Below is a comment of one of the readers, in it’s entirety (note no mention of Iran, elections or rigging):

I just wish the UN would take a parental stance toward Israel, as in “we brought you into this world and we can sure as hell take you out of it!”.  Definitely a frankenstein’s monster of a country.

Ms Kate on 06/15 at 07:40 AM

Delenda est Carthago much, Ms Cato the Elder?

Cause, you know, upholding a consistent decades-long policy of not bombing Iran because they’re not that fucking stupid is really, like monstrous of Israel. Quick! Pearl clutch!

Is it really a surprise that so many Israelis don’t give international public opinion even a passing hearing, when Iran’s president rigging an election is enough for a so-called “progressive” to pop out and say that everything would be so much better if only the UN threatened Israel with annihilation?

Cause, you know, nobody’s ever done that before. Might just work.

Way to go on the peaceful diplomacy there. Thank god the Bush era is over, eh?

This blogpost arose from the fact that a coutnry, name beginning with an I, seems to have suffered a systemic failure of electoral politics, possibly due to fraud on a massive scale.

Actually, this blogpost, if you read it, seems to have arisen from the fact that certain conservatives are rejoicing in said country’s electoral fuckup because it means, among other things, that Israel might bomb said country.

Actually, this blogpost, if you read it, seems to have arisen from the fact that certain conservatives are rejoicing in said country’s electoral fuckup because it means, among other things, that Israel might bomb said country.

 
Actually, if “certain conservatives” rejoicing over the electoral fuckup in Iran means that some country should be annihilated, it would have been more logical for “Ms. Kate” to call upon the UN to annihillate the United States.  Since, you know, those “certain conservatives” are American.  (How well would that go over, I wonder?)

the US government gave them hell for decades for being “premature anti-communists.”

Actually, that should be “premature anti-fascists”. I don’t think the US government would ever think such a thing as premature anti-communists could exist.