Iran's Election

[Farang1]

Iran's Revolutionary Guards issue warning to media.

We have a fair and honest election system and if you write anything against that, you'll be arrested.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_ ... n_election

[WBU ALUM]

Interesting event going on over there. I'm curious to see if the US government will make a statement in support of the people or remain silent.

Iranian students say they're doomed if Obama accepts the election

[aznyron]

Obama did show his concern and he is not happy with what hapen we all know the election was a fraud
he tip his hand when he said on TV he was not worried about losing the FIX was in and this is one of my conspiracy theories stop watching FOX news and read the internet you will get up to date info not B/S

[jimboLV]

stop watching FOX news and read the internet you will get up to date info not B/S

Ron I hate to break the news to you but the report mentioned by WBU came from CNN, not FOX News. I also was watching BBC this morning and they pretty much had the same concerns about Obama's lack of action.

[aznyron]

I did not say any thing about action I said he was concerned and unhappy this I got from the internet (yahoo news) what can he do now ? what advice will be given to him ? now we at least know the majority of Fossies are not happy with that scum bag and I do recall the last administration was talking about another war with Iran thank GOD it was only talk

[WBU ALUM]

Obama opts to Twitter.

U.S. Steps Gingerly Into Tumult in Iran

[dbriggins]

And what exactly is Obama supposed to do?

[tigerryan]

I would like to see President Obama fan the flames and say something like " I hope that the Mullahas are ripped from their beds at night by the people that they have so horribly oppressed for far to long". Something like that would make me happy.

[dbriggins]

I would like to see President Obama fan the flames and say something like " I hope that the Mullahas are ripped from their beds at night by the people that they have so horribly oppressed for far to long". Something like that would make me happy.

Can you imagine! That would be priceless! Just once, put aside diplomacy and shoot from the hip...Without the teleprompter.

[aznyron]

I am reading about the protest going on in Iran the scary part is any Government in any country including the USA could rig a election and retain power it is my belief that what happened here in the USA in 2000
but I am not going down memory lane to debate it. President Obama called on the Iranian people to demonstrate peacefully and to continue demonstrating. So he is doing some thing how much good will it do IMO nothing they will kill any one who get in the way. That was a sad day in Iran and around the world

[BobHelm]

It is certainly a strange situation in Iran.
A 'democratic' Muslim state was something really not tried before.
I saw a report (on the Aussie channel) from the Independents correspondent to the country.
He said a number of interesting things.
First that the large majority of educated Iranians (middle class) see President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a joke & an embarrassment as being the leader of their country. Very few of them subscribe to his holocaust theories & all of them want to settle the row with the EU & USA about nuclear weapons so that sanctions can be lifted & they can get on with wealth development.
Mahmoud has invested millions of $ of government money in the villages in Iran to (as seen by the city dwellers) the detriment of the cities. Sound familiar to anywhere else???
If it was a free election I have no idea (but the fact that independent observers were not allowed would always make me suspicious) but the authorities have been taken aback by the support for progress in the country, that is for certain.
The position of 'supreme leader' is also now being highly scrutinised as well - something unthinkable before the election.
Even if these demonstrations do not bring about change then it does not bode well for the 'conservatives' in any future ones - if they are allowed to happen, that is....

[TJ]

Remember Hillary's political ad about the 3 am phone call to the U.S. president. Well. perhaps this is a 3 am political phone call. Could the U.S. use its power and influence to support those Irani elements that would use this event to overthrow the Iranian mullahs and replace theocracy with a democratic representative government?

Let me say that I have disapproved of U.S. government's interference in Iran's internal affairs since the fifties. But today I would suppport effective measures to assist an Iranian movement to remove the mullahs from power.

This event and others highlight that the position of U.S. Secretary of State should be held by a highly qualified and gifted State agent, not a politician seeking publicity.

[BobHelm]

I would think prudence & silence is the correct approach by the USA Administration.
If they support the unrest it sends a very bad signal to the rest of the world. In theory these were democratic elections (& even if there was interference it is unlikely to have been massive enough to actually change the result) & for those who come second to riot because they do not like the result is hardly a democratic thing to do.
All the military power is undoubtedly still with Mahmoud & he has elements within the security services that would have no compunction at killing its own citizens.

[Aardvark]

http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx ... ame=581378 Latest update !

[tigerryan]

Bob we have a different take on this issue. If I were an Iranian and oppressed by these bearded mad men I would hope for some support from the American President. I would hope he would speak with principal and clarity as President Reagan did when he told Gorbi to "Tear down this wall". The outcome of any election is not a requirement to surrender your liberty to hell with the vote count. I want the Mulahs to fall even if they did win the election, dont you?

[cookie]

And what exactly is Obama supposed to do?

he should of course do what the Western World has been doing in the past.
learn nothing from the mistakes made in the past and continue to interfere with local politics and SPREAD DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Irani ... 7%C3%A9tat

"When Iranians think about the United States, the first images that come to their mind are from 1953, when the CIA collaborating with the British intelligence overthrew Iran's first democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. His sin, nationalizing the oil industry! He argued that Iran should benefit from its oil industry rather than the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later became British Petroleum. In his stead, they placed the Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Iranians recall how this U.S. backed dictator oppressed them for 25 years, until in a popular rebellion inspired by a confluence of factors, including religious fervor, the people overthrew the Shah and instituted the world's first Islamic Republic."

The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup, an idea originally rebuffed by President Truman. But when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, cold war ideologues - determined to prevent the possibility of a Soviet takeover - ordered the CIA to embark on its first covert operation against a foreign government." [5]

The coup was organized by the United States' CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6, two spy agencies that aided royalists and mutinous Iranian army officers.[6]

CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. carried out the operation planned by CIA agent Donald Wilber.[7] One version of the CIA history, written by Wilber, referred to the operation as TPAJAX.[8][9]

During the coup, Roosevelt and Wilber bribed Iranian government officials, reporters, and businessmen.[10] The deposed Iranian leader, Mossadegh, was taken to jail and Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi named himself prime minister in the new, pro-western government. The British and American spy agencies returned the monarchy to Iran by installing the pro-western Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the throne where his brutal rule lasted 26 years. The story is detailed in Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Pahlevi was overthrown in 1979.[11]

The overthrow of Iran's elected government in 1953 ensured Western control of Iran's petroleum resources and prevented the Soviet Union from competing for Iranian oil.[12][13][14][15] Some Iranian clerics cooperated with the western spy agencies because they were dissatisfied with Mossadegh's secular government.[10]

But of course, This is only history, without any importance, and no lessons should be learned.....

[BobHelm]

I want the Mulahs to fall even if they did win the election, dont you?

Hard question for me to answer Ryan....
I believe that people deserve the Government they get (I am still trying to work out where us Brits went wrong & believe it is probably some sort of retribution for the Empire ).
I believe in democracy (even when I don't especially care for the result) as I cannot see a better system, for all its' flaws.
I do believe that suppression of citizens by its' Government works all too well in far to many countries of the world but am ever optimistic that people eventually realise that and overthrow them, by peaceful means.
Revolution rarely results in a fair and more democratic form of Government - dictatorship is a far more likely outcome, by some great 'protector of the people' who always is waiting in the wings.
So, yes, I think the world would be a slightly safer place if religious extremism was replaced by a more moderate views - moderation, from my point of view, rarely includes rioting & setting fire to public property.

[tigerryan]

The difficulty with a "democracy" in Iran it is without the benefits of a respected constitution you simply have a mob of 51% taking the rights and property of the other 49%. What makes this really interesting to me is that we no longer have the luxury to set back and pontificate. Iran now has a nuke. Where in the hell are the European Gov"s this nuke is in there backyard. I just don't think this is going to turn out real well.

[BobHelm]

The constitution in Iran is quite a complex & well thought out process Ryan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iran
It has a few checks & balances in place to try & ensure that the wishes of the people are, in general, carried out. It is democracy for Islam & so should (I believe) be encouraged as most Arab Islamic countries have not exactly grasped the democratic concept. However by democratic standards it is very much in its infancy & so should be given time to develop.
I think that the best that can actually come out of this is for the President to realise that some of the things is he doing are not seen as beneficial to the country by an ever growing number of its inhabitants. Hopefully he will modify some of his more outlandish ideas and behaviours and attempt to live in harmony with his neighbours.
I was quite surprised to see the "pro Government" protesters carrying anti British & BBC signs - I would have thought after 40 odd years they would have realised that any faults in their own country had more to do with leadership mis-management rather than outside Imperial interference - still Mugabe has been doing that for 50 years so I guess I should not be surprised...

[WBU ALUM]

Friday, June 19, 2009
Hope and Change - But Not for Iran
by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamanei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 -- the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt -- was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this "vigorous debate" (press secretary Robert Gibbs' disgraceful euphemism) over election "irregularities" not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

I can't argue with one word of Charles' comments. The new administration is right about one thing: the world is watching.

Hope and Change - But Not for Iran