Hints Of Why Moussavi May Have Won

The Iranian authorities allowed open elections. They must be willing to do anything to verify that the rightful victor is sworn in as President. Might we be witnessing the beginning of the end for Ahmedinajad? For Khamenei as well? Or will the Supreme leader ditch the president? The days ahead will provide answers.

Why Moussavi Seems To Have Won

[Black Star News Editorial]

The challenger, Mir Hossein Moussavi may have won the Iranian Presidential election.

The defiance on the streets suggests a certainty that many Iranians won’t accept the outcome in favor of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

But what’s more revealing is Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s decision to renege on the promise to review alleged election irregularities. This is a promise he made just a few days ago.

During his remarks Friday, in which he now incredibly claimed the re-election of Ahmedinejad was “historic” and the victory “certain.” Khamenei also mocked any possible theft of the outcome.

Maybe 100,000 votes could have been tampered with, maybe 500,000 votes; but no one could “tamper” with 11 million votes, Khamenei claimed. First of all, Khamenei, in a round about way now seems to concede that there possibly was rigging.

He’s just insisting that the rigging could not have been massive and widespread enough to change the outcome of the ultimate result. Yet how did Khamenei come with the 100,000 and 500,000 figures?

Might they have come from the precincts where a review might have already started? If that’s the case, why halt the review of the alleged irregularities? The fact that even a partial review is now dismissed by Khamenei indicates that some partial review may have suggested bad news for the officially declared winner–incumbent Ahmedinejad.

Yet, Moussavi’s possible victory is not certain either; Ahmedinejad is very popular in the countryside and he may have built enough numbers there to win. Only an open review can resolve the matter.

The Supreme Ayatollah also is wavering, with word that there may be a recount of 10% of the vote.

Yet the defiance of Iranians is what’s speaking most loudly right now. The defiance suggests that many Iranians are so convinced that the election outcome was stolen that they are ready to defy Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei’s explicit orders against protests.

The Supreme Ayatollah has lost his mystical glow. He issued blood orders and yet people showed up to protest. Khamenei is not that supreme anymore.

Reportedly anywhere from 15 to 150 people may have been killed since opposition to the election outcome started. If Iranian security forces continue to spill the blood of Iranians in view of the entire world, it’s likely that Khamenei way also be digging his own grave.

The Obama Administration favors caution so as not to be accused of encouraging a coup and tarnish Moussavi.

Some in Congress who are denouncing President Obama’s approach have a short memory. In the past, U.S. intrigue, including the ouster of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in the 1950s and the decades of support of the Shah, gave the clerics the ammunition to rally nationalist wrath against the U.S.

Obama does not want to fall into that trap. Already the regime’s die hard supporters are yelling—“Death to America.”

Yet if bloody suppression continues, President Obama will have to unequivocally denounce the suppression. Otherwise top Democratic leaders will openly break with him.

Therein lays the power of democracy. People fear nothing when they feel that their vote has been stolen.

The Iranian authorities allowed open elections. They must be willing to do anything to verify that the rightful victor is sworn in as President. In the meantime, security agencies should defy orders to violently suppress just protests.

Might we be witnessing the beginning of the end for Ahmedinajad? For Khamenei as well? Or will the Supreme leader ditch the president?

The days ahead will provide answers.

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