So, what percentage of the vote did Ahmedinejad pick up in the 2005 run-off against Rafsanjani?

[JackRiddler]

Do you know off the top of your head?

[JackRiddler]

1. "Ahmedinejad won," says New America Foundation's Larry Everett...

I present this as an argument against the rush to judgement, not a definitive statement on whether it's the Mousavi campaign (in its election night announcement) or the Ahmedinejad government (a few hours later) who lied about the election results.

http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2009/ahmadinejad_won_get_over_it_14722

Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It
By Flynt Leverett, New America Foundation
with Hillary Mann Leverett

Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More importantly, they were oblivious – as in 2005 – to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner.

Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More importantly, they were oblivious – as in 2005 – to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud. They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The “Iran experts’” shock at Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.

Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive elections at the presidential, parliamentary, and local levels. Manipulation has always been there, as it is in many other countries. But upsets occur – as, most notably, with Mohammed Khatami’s surprise victory in the 1997 presidential election. Moreover, “blowouts” also occur – as in Khatami’s re-election in 2001, Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 2005, and, we would argue, this year.

Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More importantly, they were oblivious – as in 2005 – to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American “Iran experts” missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents – especially his debate with Mousavi.

SNIP

Everett goes on to argue for the evidence that it's Mousavi's side engaging in a coup.

This has nothing to do with whether the protesters are the good guys by the way. I think they are.

The question however is whether their side had the majority in the election, whether the results were fraudulent.

[napi21]

2. I saw the #'s last night, and he did get a majority, but that's irrelivant this time.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to physically count millions of paper ballots in 2 hours! I think that admin could have even pulled off the scam had they waiated the traditional 3 days and then announced that AHmadinejad had won by something fairly close like 54%-46%. They were too eager to get this over wsith and screwed it up by pretending to do the impossible.

[JackRiddler]

4. However, it is also impossible for Mousavi's side to have known they'd won even sooner.

Mousavi's claim of victory and a two-thirds landslide in his favor PRECEDED the government's unusually premature announcement.

Don't you find anything suspicious in that?

It's just as plausible that the election was faked by the government as it is that the perception of fraud is being engineered by Mousavi and the Twitter Brigades.

While it's true that Mousavi inspired the reformers to take up his side, that doesn't make him a good guy.

As prime minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989, he was one of the leading members of a regime that at that time committed incomparably greater atrocities and crimes against humanity than anything the Ahmedinejad government was ever accused of.

There were successive waves of executions of opposition activists, with tens of thousands rounded up and killed in 1981 and again in 1988.

For four years, Iran refused overtures to end the bloody war (that Iraq had begun in 1981), resulting in hundreds of thousands of further casualties.

Mousavi was not the most powerful man in the Iranian state at the time: but he held the office of prime minister throughout!

Mousavi's government dealt with the worst of the Reagan White House, CIA and Mossad operators involved in the Iran-Contra.

So the pro-Mousavi movement can have the backing of all the most noble and progressive elements of Iranian society, and yet Mousavi and his crew (notably Rafsanjani) can still be corrupt, manipulative players who will also lie and cheat in the struggle for power among the Iranian elites.

If you don't put election fraud past Ahmedinejad's crew, then obviously you can't put it past the Rafsanjani-Mousavi crew, either.

[napi21]

6. Of course they can and probably are all corrupt to some degree.

Who's worse? Who knows. The problem I have with Ahmadinejad is his desire to incite world wide riots any chance he gets. He may not be any worse than the rest of them, but he enjoys using threatening language and watching all the different reactions.

[JackRiddler]

7. I understand your problem with Ahmedinejad.

Nevertheless, the focus on Iran at the moment is due to accusations of election fraud, the large protests in favor of Ahmedinejad and Mousavi, and the associated violence.

It's not about who's worse. First of all, there's no doubt that based on actual career record in atrocity, Mousavi is worse. Secondly, there's little doubt that based on what would be best for the Iranian people today, I'm sure you and I would agree that Mousavi is better because he presents the opening for reform.

Nevertheless, that's not what this is about.

It's about who won.

Peoples have in the past voted for candidates that were probably not pursuing their best interests. The United States did that a whole bunch of times with Reagan, Bush and Bush. Iranians have the same precious right.

So the only question is, are the results genuine? Who is lying about the election, Mousavi or the government?

Americans and Westerners are being railroaded into a narrative that may be a lie, without possibly being in a position to know.

On this site, you've got people promoting web-based electronic attacks on Iranian Internet sites! It's even called "electronic war," so I didn't describe it that way. So people here are being recruited as the Internet brigade in a foreign civil conflict, and most of them couldn't have told you who Mousavi or even Rafsanjani was prior to last week, or told you what the election results were in 2005.

[RedCloud]

3. I say he got at least 150% of the total vote.

Just saying. I hope.

[JackRiddler]

5. Did you take note of the 2005 election fraud?

Because if you didn't, you'd be among the 100 percent who did NOT claim that the Ahmedinejad victory over Rafsanfani was fraudulent. (Of course, it was held under the fixed Iranian system, in which clerics control ballot access.)

[JackRiddler]

8. bump

[mmonk]

9. Interesting and thanks.

And no, not off the top of my head.:)