Millions of Iranians erupt into riot- UPDATE: Its spreading

This is an interesting note following Obama's speech in Cairo. Just a quick summary of the recent events, Obama has tried to re-establish relationships with Muslims and is trying to bring peace and cooperation between the Muslim world and the West. A daunting task for sure, but it is somewhat feasible. Most Muslim citizens are sick of being associated with terrorists and simply want to enjoy better economic prosperity. Problem is, their religious and political leaders are mostly against the U.S.

But that's okay, many of those countries are democracies, so they can elect leaders that represent their ideals, leaders that are more friendly towards the US and Europe... right? Well, apparently not. I don't know how many of you are following this but Iran just had their presidential elections, the big competition was between the current extremist president (who states he wants Israel wiped off the map, US is the devil, death to Christians, etc) and his rival, a much more moderate, more pro-Western leader. State TV polls for the past few weeks showed the two leaders neck and neck in the race (and this was state sponsored polls so they probably showed the current president with better numbers then they really were). Elections just happened and not only did the pro-Western guy lose, he lost by about 70% -> 30%. A landslide, and most Iranians say they can think of anyone who actually voted for that other guy. I mean, this would be the equivalent of, in the United States, McCain not only winning the presidency but getting 300 electoral votes and winning California and New York by a 2/3 majority. It's just stupidly obvious foul play was involved.

Well, needless to say people got pretty pissed. If you thought people didn't riot anymore, here are some unfiltered video feed from what was going on in the capital.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b36_1244900547 (i cant imagine being on that street trying to get to work or whatever)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8098896.stm (first 20 seconds are slow, it picks up)

Thats a lot of pissed off people. I have a friend living in that city right now and I have been unable to contact him since these things started, I'm assuming he's a little pre-occupied by the 3 million rioters in the street. This whole event is interesting though, its a stretch but you could say that these people are essentially rioting in favor of the United States and Europe. They wanted their country to be less radical and more acceptable (by Western terms) and they were denied that right. :|

Violent riots aren't exactly something that makes me happy, but in a way its a good sign that this is happening right now. It will be interesting to see this unfold.

wow, just wow.

lets just see if obama intervenes :/

Ha ha, got this off of Fark.com someone there analyzed the numbers a bit. The Iranian agency in charge of the votes began releasing the results "as they were counted". You know, so after 10% of the votes were counted they put out the numbers, then after 30%, etc... Tell me if this looks odd to you:

How convenient, Ahmadinejad (the incumbent), was winning by the exact same percentage the entire time. Thats some fine realistic and honest vote counting there =D> ... #-o

Thanks for sharing this. This is really intersting.

I really don't know what to make of it.

Judging by the wiki page, there's a fair bit of variability between these opinion polls - certainly nothing I could draw a firm conclusion about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_pr ... nion_polls

Could it just be sour grapes from Mousavi supporters?

I say these riots are good, I don't want to be pro-western but I think that this attitude that Mousavi's reporters are taking to the elections shows that his flawed regime is coming to an end.

This is very interesting. Seems in the area there may be some fresh, pro-west ideas and leaders emerging. Take, for example, the recent elections in Lebanon where the radical group Hezbollah was defeated. It is going to be something to keep your eye on for the future.

I really don't want to comment on it because I haven't really been following all that well and my sources are primarily blogs and social news sites. :|

Mousavi (opposition) lost in his home town, and according to an Iranian's comment, "[that] is like Obama losing in a city where 80%+ are black and 99% are democrats. It's not strange, it's impossible."

But here's a yahoo link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090614/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_iran

This is very very interesting. I don't like riots, but this one has the my full support. This is first hand evidence to all who think Muslims are terrorist harboring and bomb creating lunatics that they're not, they just want to freedom to choose their leaders and live a country like a Western country, not a country ruled by a military type leader. What's even more interesting is, the vast majority of the rioters looked <30, meaning radicalism in the younger generations seems to be dying out.

All though I do hate the "America....world police!!" type thing, I would actually like America or some countries to try and intervene. Iran is definitely a worrying prospect if the current leader does get re-elected, due to recent ICBM testings and an advancing Nuclear program. It wouldn't be incredibly difficult to intervene, place sanctions on them till a external party such as the UN is allowed count the votes, then again they're probably going to be biased against the current leader.

I thought Ahmadinejad would be able to win (fairly) because of his support among the poor and in the rural areas but it looks like they were scared of going to a run off between him and Mousavi (which would have happened if he got less the 50% but more than any other individual candidate). I still think the the former President Khatami should have ran insteead of Mousavi just because he seems to be more charismatic. I say that because I was reading that during Mousavi's time as Prime Minister he had a lot of disputes with Khamenei (the current supreme leader) which is probably the reason that the election was rigged.

I can't see the rioting lasting too long, I don't think Mousavi's supporters will have the stomach for a sustained fight. There are rumours that Mousavi might try to call for a general strike which would make things interesting but I don't see it happening either. It is interesting to see people question the regime in a real way for the first time though. The press would love to be reporting on a second Iranian Revolution but I don't think they're going to get it.

Iran's Presidential Election, a photo essay from The Big Picture.

I don't know enough about this to really judge what is going on. I would have rather have Mousavi as Iran's President than Ahmadinejad though.

How near-sighted are these corrupt politicians?! Couldn't they foresee some kind of trouble with these unrealistic results?

They should have made it 51%-49%.

How near-sighted are these corrupt politicians?! Couldn't they foresee some kind of trouble with these unrealistic results?

 

They should have made it 51%-49%.

Maybe not so near-sighted. While there is currently a lot of anger, I believe, and others have made the point as well, that the rioters don't have the stomach yet for prolonged strike. They can riot for a few days but I doubt it will have much affect.

This is one riot to follow and will become interesting as hours go by. I hope this riots succeeds in it's purpose of getting some form of change, as the other one I sort of recently supported (Venuzeula/Hugo Chaves) failed.

Does anyone know what the Supreme Leader of Iran is doing? Or what the opposition believe of the rioting?

I love that they want Peace and Freedom, hope they get it.

I can't spell either candidates name properly so i will use A and M instead of embarising myself.

The problem is, A has support of the supreme commander, who is actually much more powerful than the President, I'd compare him to the pope or a queen in terms of amount of say, doesen't do the whole political stuff, but has a ruling power, which is bad for M. Although, a few other powerful people i 'think' are in support of M, such as the military commander.

What people don't see, is that Iran has a very revolutionary, nationalistic youth, alot of the Iranian youth go abroad for eduction, which gives them the sight to decide in a different way to most Iranians.

And also, don't think A is a hard line conservative muslim candidate, and M is liberal, they are both very conservative, and its been said Iran will more than likely cary on its Nuclear ambitions etc with whoever takes charge, it's just that A is a bit too hard line in these modern times.

I don't think the riots will last long, let alone bring about any change in power. There's always difficulties with democracy when a dictator is in power, because suddenly they can corrupt it from the top-down. I seriously don't trust this guy, I've seen a large portion of his 'victory' speech, and he sounds dangerous. Keep at one eye on Iran, and the other on N. Korea over the next 5 years.

People are surprised by this? Everybody already knew that the elections were just for show. Saddam did it too. The ballots weren't secret ,so people would either vote for him or fear getting taken away in the middle of the night. How do you think these nut-jobs stay in power in "republics" run by cruel, hated dictators?

And also, don't think A is a hard line conservative muslim candidate, and M is liberal, they are both very conservative, and its been said Iran will more than likely cary on its Nuclear ambitions etc with whoever takes charge, it's just that A is a bit too hard line in these modern times.

I rather have an Iranian leader who is pro-western with nuclear ambitions (if it's the same "electricity generation" idea), than one who hates the United States and looks like he's unstable.

People are surprised by this? Everybody already knew that the elections were just for show. Saddam did it too. The ballots weren't secret ,so people would either vote for him or fear getting taken away in the middle of the night. How do you think these nut-jobs stay in power in "republics" run by cruel, hated dictators?

Actually Iran has had numerous fair elections since the Revolution in 1979. The elected Presidents may not have full power because of the overseeing role of the Supreme Leader Khemenei (and Khomieni before him) and the role Guardian Council in their process. Due to this they don't really need to rig elections (normally). If this election was rigged (which we can presume it was) it wasn't rigged by Ahmadinejad, it was rigged for Ahmadinejad by people acting on Khamenei's behalf.

I rather have an Iranian leader who is pro-western with nuclear ambitions (if it's the same "electricity generation" idea), than one who hates the United States and looks like he's unstable.

I wouldn't excactly say he (Mousavi) was pro-western, he still wants to maintain the Islamic Republic system, he just doesn't want to antagonise the West because he thinks it reduce the sanctions that are on Iran. I'd say he was moderate but only compared to Ahmadinejad.

I was surprised no one made a thread about this until now. I've been following this election very closely for a few months, and this is the one thing I was worried about.

For one, it only gives Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes more power by allowing him to back up his narrative that Muslims are evil people who essentially should be killed. Well, he doesn't go that far publicly, but put it this way: he wants Muslims who work for the US government to have special "followers" who watch everything they do, and everywhere they go. Now he can say, "See? None of them have a true democracy; they're just animals bent on killing Americans." It won't gain too much support, but it could catch on.

For two, people are going to blame this on Obama's outreach, saying any future outreaches are "pointless;" some may even BLAME the results on the outreach. For example, take Mitt Romney this morning:

"[T]he comments by the president last week that there was a robust debate going on in Iran was obviously entirely wrong-headed. What has occurred is that the election is a fraud, the results are inaccurate, and you're seeing a brutal repression of the people as they protest.

 

 

 

"The president ought to come out and state exactly those words, indicate that this has been a terribly managed decision by the autocratic regime in Iran.

 

 

 

"It's very clear that the president's policies of going around the world and apologizing for America aren't working.... [J]ust sweet talk and criticizing America is not going to enhance freedom in the world."

I mean, get real, Mitt.

For three, it makes talking with Iran, and Obama's task, substantially more difficult. Now he's got to talk with some hardliner instead of a "reformer" (Mousavi is only "moderate" compared with Ahmadinejad), and now getting Israel to be rational and reasonable is harder. With Mousavi, of course the decisions about Iran's nuclear program wouldn't be any different as the Ayatollahs make the decisions--nor should they be, as they have the right to nuclear power--but you'd have someone who wasn't calling for Israel to be blown off the planet, you'd have someone more willing to engage the West even if for only PR, and you'd have someone who might engage the two leading faces of Iran into something more moderate; such as talking about the nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad has said is a done and closed deal. A holocaust denier as head of state only gives Israel's ridiculous talking points merit...sadly, as Iran would never launch a full out war on Israel.

It's just a bad situation in general. However, some people here are saying it might boil over. Meh, it might, but I think it will definitely be more substantial than just a few days of protest and that's it. What we're seeing here is a country with 60% of youths who will not forget what happened to their country, when for the first time in history an American president publicly announced while in office of the US's involvement with the 1953 coup--on an international stage for the matter.

What I'm seeing is much more than just a protest of an election. This is a protest on their Parliament and how their politics operate completely. It was a fuse, and the leaders of Iran thought their people would just roll over. I don't think we'll see another Revolution, but the government will never be treated the same, and things were never this chaotic SINCE the 1979 overthrow.

It will be interesting, and horrifying, to watch.

No news if this protester is dead or not yet. He was a university student at Isfahan Technical University.

They are yelling "Death To The Dictator!" They are also chanting "I will fight, I will fight, I will take back my vote!"

http://twitter.com/change_for_iran

Protesters.

If this election was rigged (which we can presume it was)...

Do you believe it was?

All I'm reading at the moment is some funny business with shutting down facebook/texting services. It's a far cry from flat out election rigging, though. From what I could tell based on the election polls, there was little to indicate that the result seen was surprising. I also get the impression that the polls are mostly unreliable in the first place, so I don't see any evidence at this stage that the elections were rigged.

If this election was rigged (which we can presume it was)...

 

 

 

Do you believe it was?

 

 

 

All I'm reading at the moment is some funny business with shutting down facebook/texting services. It's a far cry from flat out election rigging, though. From what I could tell based on the election polls, there was little to indicate that the result seen was surprising. I also get the impression that the polls are mostly unreliable in the first place, so I don't see any evidence at this stage that the elections were rigged.

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/stealin ... ction.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/n ... ction.html

The hard-line right had around 20% support in 2001...according to the result, they've become 63% in 2009. I mean, really? It's obvious it was rigged, and there's evidence of rigging in 2005 as well.

If this election was rigged (which we can presume it was)...

 

 

 

Do you believe it was?

 

 

 

All I'm reading at the moment is some funny business with shutting down facebook/texting services. It's a far cry from flat out election rigging, though. From what I could tell based on the election polls, there was little to indicate that the result seen was surprising. I also get the impression that the polls are mostly unreliable in the first place, so I don't see any evidence at this stage that the elections were rigged.

There were a lot of anomalies which individually would be odd but nothing major but together make things seem crooked. For one there was widespread intimidation of Mousavi and his supporters in the run up to election, the blocking off of foreign media sources such as the BBC before the results were counted, the fact that Ahmedinejad got such a big majority and the fact that Khamenei confirmed the victory almost immediately despite the fact that Iranian law states he has to give a number of days before confirming the result ( edit - I checked it is 3 not 10 as I originally thought). Plus Mousavi "lost" in his heartland and the majority that Ahmedinejad got would mean that previously liberal voters have suddenly gotten very hardline.

Edit - I think in a fair election, Ahmadinejad could have won but I think it would be in a tightly contented run off.

Protests I can stand behind, riots where there is just wanton destruction of private property (generally cars on the street) I don't approve. Those videos seem to indicate that they are protesting right, which is good. Generally I am against clashes with the police also, but in the case of an actual revolution it might be necessary.