Is the election in Iran just an excuse?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Sully compares Ahmadinejad to Karl Rove.  He's wrong.  Rove was much smarter and in the end Rove didn't look all the smart.  When you fix an election or conduct a covert coup you have to at least make it look somewhat plausible.  Ahmadinejad, unlike Rove, may not get away with it.  I think Al Giordano gets it right when he says the election fraud is just an excuse to protest the regime. 

The yearnings by those in the streets of Iran today precede and supercede the concerns about yesterday's election results. They are seizing the moment of the election, but this is not really about the election. This is about a much deeper and wider discontent with the theocratic-political system they have lived under for 30 years. The timing of the protests has as much to do with the world's eyes being on Iran at this moment and the quorum of international media reporters that are inside Iran as part of that watch. (It's an advantage that the 1989 protesters at Beijing's Tienanmen Square did not have when their demonstration was cut short by a massacre.) The cost for the Iranian state of resorting to excess violence and brutality to shut down this revolt would, as a result, be much higher to its own goals at home and abroad, than it was for the Chinese regime twenty years ago. In that, the protesters have the system over a barrel.

Evidence and accusations of electoral fraud, no doubt, ought to be part of the mix here, strategically and tactically, but if it becomes the outcome determinative question then all will likely be lost: the State has the tools it needs to make the waters so muddy as to seem inconclusive. Media and bloggers alike should take care not to reduce the unfolding story to a matter of bean counting and numerology, and should, instead, focus on the larger truths and principles that fuel the protests.

The emphasis and attention should be properly put upon the repressive steps being taken by the Iranian state in the present, especially those it has already taken against free speech and communication (cutting off telephone and cell signals, filtering inconvenient Internet sites like YouTube, and the reported house arrest of opposition leaders, a claim which I tend to believe simply because we have not heard from any of them in recent hours.)

In other words, this is a State - and an election - that was and is illegitimate whether or not electoral fraud can be proved in yesterday's vote counting. And the actions it has already taken drive that point home, minute by minute, hour after hour.

An anonymous writer confirms this at Salon: 

It is, however, a mistake to think that any restoration of the election results will occur. The battle is elsewhere now and while the obvious theft of the election has enraged and disappointed millions, the action now is to demonstrate that folks aren't just going to take it. This was clearly a bad strategy on the part of the leadership as they could have easily given another 10 to 20 years of energy to the system by sacrificing the current president. Legitimacy, much debated by social scientists, actually turns out to matter. It's not just force that rules, though that appears to be the case right now in Iran. Short-term calculations (get rid of the old generation of leadership for a new breed of revolutionary) will prove to be disastrous. Nine-year old sons accompanied their fathers to vote, standing in line for hours. That disappointment will not be easily remedied -- it will never be healed.

It is a remarkable turn of events. But one thing is for certain, the many millions who showed up to vote, a great many for the first time ever, were not fooled. Their vote counted because it made the situation black and white. If they had not voted, then Dr. A would have won anyways. Now they know.

The 22 of Khordad, June 12, will be an important date in Iran, particularly because, as I've noted, this vote wasn't just college students causing a ruckus. Grandmothers, fathers, daughters, and moms all showed up to stand for hours on end. They will not be just passive observers of what the "kids" are doing.

And even some of the clerics are involved.

"The Association of Combatant Clerics, which consists of moderate and leftist clerics and includes such important figures as former president Mohammad Khatami, Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoiniha, and Grand Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili, issued a strongly-worded statement, calling the results of the election invalid.

"Grand Ayatollah Saafi Golpaygaani, an important cleric with a large number of followers, warned about the election results and the importance that elections in Iran retain their integrity.

"Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei, a progressive cleric and a confidante of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, has declared that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not the legitimate president and cooperation with him, as well as working for him, are haraam (against Islam and a great sin). He has also declared that any changes in the votes by unlawful means are also haraam. Several credible reports indicate that he has traveled to Tehran in order to participate in nationwide protests scheduled for Monday (June 18). It is said that he has planned a sit-in in some public place, in order to further protest election fraud. His website has been blocked.

"Credible reports also indicate that security forces have surrounded the offices and homes of several other important ayatollahs who are believed to want to protest election fraud. Their websites cannot be accessed, and all communications with them have been cut off." 

No, Ahmadinejad is no Karl Rove.  Rove was able to hang on for almost six years.  I doubt that Ahmadinejad will hang on that long.

So what should the US do?  Nothing at this point.  Any support for the protesters runs the risk of making them appear to be "tools" of America and the west and the west is not much more popular the the Iranian regime.