Iran election: The biggest loser is Western media credibility

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/nevil-gibson/iran-election-the-biggest-loser-western-media-credibility
Iran election: The biggest loser is Western media credibility
By nevil-gibson
Created 14/06/2009 - 13:11

So you didn’t expect a landslide win by the West’s leading pariah in the
Iran elections?

So you believed Gwynne Dyer [1] and Robert Fisk [2], who say Iran is a
victim of bad western policies and its nuclear programme is just another
way of holding out the hand of friendship?

Well, those views were widely enough held to have fooled even the Wall
Street Journal, whose post-election writeup [3] included the following:

US officials and those across the Arab world saw [Mir Hossein] Mousavi, a
sober, experienced statesman, as an attractive alternative to the erratic
anti-American firebrand president [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad].

This was followed by the standard fallback when elections go wrong – to
call them a fraud:

Mr Mousavi late Friday alleged massive voter irregularities and claimed
victory himself. That heightened tension and set the stage for a prolonged
political standoff.

The victory also threatened wider, destabilizing protests, a crackdown by
authorities, or both. Mr Mousavi enjoyed a late-campaign surge in public
popularity. Supporters organized demonstrations and rallies in Tehran,
unprecedented in their rowdiness and in their criticism of the current
regime.

The public outpouring of support for Mr Mousavi helped drive optimism in
Arab capitals that change could be afoot.

This prognosis could have been avoided a few weeks ago by reading Maziar
Bahari’s Newsweek article [4] suggesting Mousavi, 68, was a outside
candidate at best. A personal visit early in May from Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, the supreme leader, was mainly to see if Mousavi had lost any of
his Islamic fervour.

He hadn’t and critics pointed out he was far from the being the reformist
the West wanted.

Some historical background is essential. As a zealous revolutionary,
Mousavi became prime minister from in 1981 after several key position
holders, including the president, prime minister and chief justice, were
killed in a terrorist bombing.

Khamenei became president and Mousavi prime minister. The two soon fell
out over economic policy – Mousavi is a hard-line leftist – but the latter
had the support of Ayatollah Khomeini, who played off the leftist faction
against the conservatives.

This, according to Newsweek’s Bahari, often favoured Mousavi and is still
largely the reason Iran remains an economic basketcase:

He kept the economy directly and firmly under almost Soviet-style
government control from the day he took office until the Iran-Iraq War
ended in 1988. Essential goods were rationed, industries were nationalized
and the government put draconian restraints on imports and exports.

Newsweek, in Christopher Dickey’s web reporting of the result [5], again
has it right:

What happened to all those charming, articulate young men and women in
North Tehran, interviewed again and again on Western television? They were
so enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's main opponent, former prime minister
Mir Hossein Mousavi.

They were excited about the prospect of more freedoms. They thought
Ahmadinejad was a failure and an embarrassment, and they really seemed to
like us Americans. Indeed, they seemed almost to be like us Americans.
Didn't they speak for the real Iran?

Actually, no. It appears that the working classes and the rural poor – the
people who do not much look or act or talk like us – voted overwhelmingly
for the scruffy, scrappy president who looks and acts and talks more or
less like them.

As for the implications to the future. Well, nothing appears to have
changed, except for the credibility of those commentators whose main
targets are American, European and, dare I say, Israeli policies that
still identify Iran, like North Korea, as part of an axis of evil.



http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/200961445310869719.html
Reformists held after Iran riots

Reformist leaders who supported defeated Iranian presidential candidate
Mir Hossein Mousavi have been detained following violent protests over the
results of Friday's presidential election.

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran, fighting running
battles with riot police, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative
incumbent, was declared the winner of the polls.

"They were taken from their homes last night," Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a
former vice-president and close associate of Mohammad Khatami, the former
president, said.

Mohammad Reza Khatami, the former president's brother, was among the
members of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, which won more than 100
seats in the 290-member parliament in 2000, who were arrested.

Al Jazeera's Alireza Ronaghi, reporting from Tehran, said that the
official IRNA news agency was reporting that a committee led by two senior
supporters of Mousavi was organising the riots.

"Whether this is really an honest outburst of anger against the outcome of
the election we don't know yet, but what we see is a major crackdown on
reformists and their leaders," he said.

Quiet streets
However, the streets of the capital were quiet on Sunday morning.

"The streets would usually be crowded with people going to work," Ronaghi
said.

"People are scared and some of them have decided that they want to close
up shop for today."

Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Friday's polls by a wide margin,
with figures from the interior ministry showing he had taken 62.63 per
cent of the vote, while Mousavi, his main challenger, garnered only 33.75
per cent.

But Mousavi criticised the vote as "rigged" and urged his followers to
resist a government he said was based on "lies and dictatorship".

Sadegh Zibakalam, head of the Iranian studies department at Tehran
university, told Al Jazeera that the demonstrations were largely
"spontaneous" responses to the election result.

No one is giving them commands, no one is ordering them, no one is leading
them," he said.

"Nevertheless, the government has started a crackdown on the leading
reformist figures ... The government reaction is too harsh, but it is
understandable."

In a televised speech late on Saturday, Ahmadinejad made no mention of the
unrest, but said the election had been "completely free" and the outcome
was "a great victory" for Iran.

"Today, the people of Iran have inspired other nations and disappointed
their ill-wishers," he said late on Saturday.

"This is a great victory at a time when the ... propaganda facilities
outside Iran and sometimes inside Iran were totally mobilised against our
people."

'Unpredictable'
Some analysts questioned the speed of the ballot count and the size of the
victory for Ahmadinejad.

But Mehran Kamrava, director of the centre for international and regional
studies at Georgetown University's campus in Qatar, cautioned that the
displays of support for Mousavi were not necessarily an indication of
fraud.

"The Western media has been talking to people in north Tehran, who tend to
vote overwhelmingly against Ahmadinejad," he told Al Jazeera.

"But let's not forget that many of the urban Iranians have priorities and
proclivities that are not necessarily reflected in other areas of the main
cities, and those people could easily have voted for Ahmadinejad.

"Iranian politics have proved themselves to be notoriously unpredictable
and this could be one of those instances of unpredictability."

Iran does not allow international election monitors.

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