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Why Ahmadinejad Could Still Lose
SIPA / AP Photo
While incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares victory, runner-up candidate says it's fraud. Iranian university student Telmah Parsa on the divergent groups—Iran’s young hipsters versus their deeply religious parents—that may have swayed presidential election, and why the country’s semi-democratic process is still much richer than the Middle East’s other faux elections.
Plus, read more insight on Iran's election from other Daily Beast writers.
“I’ve never voted. Heck, the election page in my ID paper is still blank,” observed my friend Cyrus last week in the cafeteria. “But this time it’s different. I do not want that dickhead to be our president again.”
When I’m talking to Cyrus, it’s hard not to get distracted by his Playboy necklace. The white bunny has gotten him into trouble several times with the police, but he keeps it prominently displayed nonetheless. The necklace clearly marks Cyrus as one of Iran’s young hipsters, part of an under-30 generation that comprises nearly three-quarters of the population.
“Why not Ahmadinejad?” I ask.
“Because he’s one crazy son of a bitch,” Cyrus says.
The really agonizing choice before young Iranians is not selecting a presidential candidate. Rather, it’s determining how much to be invested in this faux election.
Cyrus rarely talks about anything but girls, so it was surprising to hear him sound off so passionately about politics, in his own colorful way. He’s going to the polls on Friday to prevent the recurrence of what he calls a “four-year-long nightmare.” He doesn’t care who wins the race, as long as the new president is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Politically conservative and devoutly religious, my parents are the antithesis to Cyrus in every way. Their main source of information is state-run TV, whose head is directly chosen by the supreme leader every five years. Not surprisingly, my parents have a great respect for Ayatollah Khamenei.
“I’ll vote for whomever the supreme leader approves,” my mother recently declared during dinner. She meant of course Ahmadinejad, whom few doubt is Khamenei’s favorite son. A campaign ad for Ahmadinejad even features a direct quote from the supreme leader: “With Ahmadinejad the revolution returned to its original track.”
As for my father, well, he has no interest in reform. During the 1999 student uprising, when masses of young people mobilized on university campuses to protest repression, my father knew whom to blame for the unrest.
While the TV showed the supreme leader declare, in a shaking voice, that he would pardon those students lighting his picture on fire (prompting sobs from the mosque’s audience), my father telephoned the office of then President Khatami to deliver an angry message: “God damn you reformers for bringing this on us. God damn you!”
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Wow! Great Article! I hope Ahmadinejad goes down, the world would be a safer place without him on the international stage.
He wasn't on the "international stage." He has/had no foreign policy role in Iran or the world.
But by being the face of Iran, by making incendiary comments that go against the actual will and belief of his people he has mischaracterized Iran to the world.
In doing so he elevates tensions and destabilizes the region. He's the Iranian Bush, though Musavi is hardly an Obama it's certainly time for a change. Even if Ahmadinejad wins or the election is overthrown, the Iranian people have still made a stand to the rest of the world. They've still come out and said "this man is not a representative of what we believe".
Hopefully the West will listen and take heart that the very idea of war with Iran is absurd and will simply poison another generation with anti-Americanism.
I hope this is the beginning of real change in Iran. I'd love to see their current leader hit the road.
We are finally getting our money's worth from the CIA. It's backing the students and government opponents using the same bag of financial and special favor tricks which defeated the communists at the polls in postwar Western Europe.
"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives
on. Ideas have endurance without death."
- John F. Kennedy
Thank you.
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