She was in tears like many women on the streets of Iran’s battered capital. “Throw away your pen and paper and come to our aid,” she said, pointing to my notebook. “There is no freedom here.” [...] Majir Mirpour grabbed me. A purple bruise disfigured his arm. He raised his shirt to show a red wound across his back. “They beat me like a pig,” he said, breathless. “They beat me as I tried to help a woman in tears. I don’t care about the physical pain. It’s the pain in my heart that hurts.” He looked at me and the rage in his eyes made me want to toss away my notebook. – Roger Cohen
It may not be a win today, but the seeds of a new Iranian revolution have been sewn. How long it will take to make what Iran clearly wants to manifest is the unknown.
Germany’s Foreign Minister stated that the Iranian ambassador has been summoned over the election results.
Germany views events in Iran following its presidential election with great concern and has summoned the Iranian ambassador to explain, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Sunday. He also condemned what he called “brutal actions” against demonstrators in Tehran which he said were unacceptable.
Amidst it all, Vice President Joe Biden gave the Administration’s bottom line. When David Gregory stated that Ahmadinejad said the election was “free and fair,” Biden simply responded: Well, you know, I, I have doubts, but I–we’re going to withhold comment until we have a, you know, a thorough review of the whole process and how they react in the aftermath.
The story is the Iranians fighting for freedom and their lives, not whatever Pres. Obama might say that would insert the U.S. in this historic drama we are watching play out. Engagement will remain the rule.
The EU president’s statement nodded towards “notices” Ahmadinejad being “re-elected for the second term,” even as they make mention of the obvious:
The Presidency is concerned about alledged (sic) irregularities during the election process and post-electional (sic) violence that broke out immediately after the release of the official election results on 13 June 2009.
It came about through duplicity and cunning, manipulation through planning and power, but Ahmadinejad and his partner, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are now in the throes of wrestling all dissent to the ground and they will not shirk from snuffing it out by whatever means. Know that. They will bring down the wrath of all that’s unholy to stop what has begun. Nothing will keep them from cementing their authority. To do otherwise would cause a cataclysmic event that would change Iran in a way that would leave no place for them.
Nevertheless, it has begun.
Steve Clemons is the first guide:
He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious — Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a “charade.”
But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this “coup by the right wing” has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can’t deal with the current crisis and can’t deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran’s revolutionaries.
My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits — and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.
If the reports coming out of Tehran about an electoral coup are sustained, then Iran has entered an entirely new phase of its post-revolution history. One characteristic that has always distinguished Iran from the crude dictators in much of the rest of the Middle East was its respect for the voice of the people, even when that voice was saying things that much of the leadership did not want to hear.
… However this turns out, it is a historic turning point in the 30-year history of Iran’s Islamic revolution. Iranians have never forgotten the external political intervention that thwarted their democratic aspirations in 1953. How will they remember this day?
Juan Cole makes the point that many don’t understand. It’s not that Mousavi is any flaming moderate, as we would judge it. The issue is first about free and fair elections, which were not allowed to go forward.
[...] It was about culture wars, not class. It is simply not true that the typical Iranian voter votes conservative and religious when he or she gets the chance. In fact, Mousavi is substantially more conservative than the typical winning politician in 2000. Given the enormous turnout of some 80 percent, and given the growth of Iran’s urban sector, the spread of literacy, and the obvious yearning for ways around the puritanism of the hard liners, Mousavi should have won in the ongoing culture war.
And just because Ahmadinejad poses as a champion of the little people does not mean that his policies are actually good for workers or farmers or for working class women (they are not, and many people in that social class know that they are not).
I stand apart from the experts, as my longing to visit Iran (among others) has never manifested. But I’d also point out that Iranians want their country to take its proper place where Persian greatness once held sway. Obama’s presence heightens that hunger. They’re sick of being ostracized, with Ahmadinejad’s buffoonish belligerence being their image in the world. They want to reclaim Iran’s historic greatness. That’s why this moment is different and so dangerous for the Iranians fighting for their freedom. The powers holding the country hostage know this and have no intention of allowing it to happen.
Nicolas Kristoff reminds us all of the stakes far away from our own comfort:
But at the end of the day, as I saw at Tiananmen 20 years ago, when Might and Right do battle, it’s often prudent to bet on Might, at least in the short run. It’s interesting that the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has specifically warned of the risk of a “Tehran Tiananmen.”
I’m not sure what to make of Flyntt Leverett’s assessment in Spiegel, with Ben Smith having the translation: I would have been surprised if he had lost. .. I am a little surprised by the margin, too. There is no doubt in my mind that Ahmadinejad could have won the election, but it is not credible to believe he won it by the margins being claimed. That was the mistake made.
That hardly matters now, as the streets of Tehran run red.
Wear green in solidarity with the Iranians. Hope that the Tehran bureau gets back up.
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