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Iran's Military Coup
The Iranian election was bald-faced election fraud, writes The Daily Beast’s Reza Aslan, perpetrated by a powerful intelligence unit known as the Pasdaran.
Plus, read more insight on Iran's election from other Daily Beast writers.
So let’s get this straight. We are supposed to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected in Iran’s presidential election last week by a 2 to 1 margin against his reformist rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. That this deeply unpopular president, whose gross mismanagement of the state budget is widely blamed for Iran’s economy hovering on the edge of total collapse, received approximately the same percentage of votes as Mohammad Khatami, by far Iran’s most popular past president, received in both 1997 and 2001? That Mousavi, whom all independent polls predicted would at the very least take Ahmadinejad into a runoff election, lost not only his main base of support, Tehran, but also his own hometown of Khameneh in East Azerbaijan (which, as any Azeri will tell you, never votes for anyone but its own native sons)…and by a landslide. That we should all take the word of the Interior Ministry, led by a man put in his position by Ahmadinejad himself, a man who called the election for the incumbent before the polls were even officially closed, that the election was a fair representation of the will of the Iranian people.
Bullshit.
Such bald-faced election fraud is a totally new phenomenon in Iran, which takes its election process very seriously. This is, after all, the only expression of popular sovereignty that Iranians enjoy. Over and over again, the electorate has defied the will of the clerical regime when it comes to choosing the country’s president: in 1997 and 2001, when 70% of the population rejected the establishment candidate, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, in favor of a completely unknown cleric, Khatami, whose greatest political contribution was as head of Iran’s National Library; and again in 2005 when Iranians rejected Hashemi Rafsanjani—the billionaire former president and the quintessential establishment candidate—to vote instead for a little-known mayor of Tehran named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who until that time had never run for any political office (Ahmadinejad was appointed mayor of Tehran after his predecessor was charged with corruption).
There is a genuine fear among these groups that Iran is beginning to resemble Egypt or Pakistan, countries in which the military controls the apparatus of government.
Indeed, despite what most Americans think, Iran boasts among of the freest and fairest presidential elections in the whole of the Middle East (a pathetic statement, but nevertheless true). Have there been examples of corruption and graft in previous elections? Yes, but not any more so than, say, in American elections. Are Iran’s presidential candidates vetted by an unelected Council of Guardians that filters out anyone it deems “unqualified” for the office? Yes, but this has partly to do with Iran’s strange elections laws, which allow practically anyone with a pulse to run for the office of president. This year, nearly 500 people ran for the post, some of them homeless, a few of them living in insane asylums. (It should be noted that a great many of these 500 candidates were women. The constitution of Iran uses a gender-neutral term to describe those who can run for the office of president, though in a blatantly unconstitutional act, the Council of Guardians, made up exclusively of men, automatically disqualifies all women from the post.) And while the Council’s decisions are obviously politically motivated, the truth is that the four candidates who qualified to run for president this year offered Iranian voters a greater diversity of political views than one sees in most American presidential elections.
Yet the brazenness with which this presidential election was stolen by Ahmadinejad’s supporters has caught everyone in Iran, even the clerical establishment, by surprise. Indeed, I am convinced that what we are witnessing in Iran is nothing less than a slow moving military coup against the clerical regime itself, led by Iran’s dreaded Revolutionary Guard, or Pasdaran, as the organization is called in Iran. The Pasdaran is a military-intelligence unit that acts independently from the official armed forces. Originally created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to be the supreme leader’s personal militia, the Pasdaran has been increasingly acting like an independent agent over the last decade, one that appears to no longer answer to the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In 2005, the Pasdaran threw its support behind Ahmadinejad, a former member of the organization, and Ahmadinejad returned the favor by placing high-ranking Pasdaran members in important ministerial and ambassadorial posts in his administration. This was a complete departure from previous presidents—both conservatives and reformists—who went out of their way to keep the military out of the political realm. Today more than one-third of Iran’s parliament, or Majlis, are Pasdaran members, while the organization itself is thought to control nearly 30% of Iran’s economy through its oil, gas, real estate, and construction subsidiaries (the Pasdaran’s net worth is estimated to be between $12 billion and $15 billion).
It is the Pasdaran that controls Ahmadinejad, not the mullahs. Indeed, it was precisely fear of the Pasdaran’s rising political and economic influence that led to the “anybody but Ahmadinejad” coalition we saw in this election, wherein young, leftist students and popular reformists like Mohammad Khatami joined together with conservative mullahs and "centrists" like Rafsanjani to push back against what they consider to be the rampant militarization of Iranian politics. There is a genuine fear among these groups that Iran is beginning to resemble Egypt or Pakistan, countries in which the military controls the apparatus of government.
It is difficult to know how this coalition will react to Ahmadinejad’s “victory.” Thus far, their appeals to Ayatollah Khamenei to treat this stolen election as “an act of treason against the state,” which is how both Mousavi and Rafsanjani have described it, have fallen on deaf ears. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the days in which power in Iran rested in the hands of a single individual (the supreme leader) or a single group (the mullahs) are over. For better or worse, the new power base in Iran is the Pasdaran.
Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.
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Reza Aslan is author of the international bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized World). Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Josh-Narins
I can't know if this was election fraud, and surely that would be a shame. I'm certainly not hoping it was, but, like I said, I couldn't know.
I could certainly see why the Pasdaran would prefer Ahmadinejad to Mousavi.
But I'm confused why the author talks about Iran's economy being on the verge of collapse. I've easy access to lots of economic data, and I don't see any public measure by which anyone could say Iran's economy isn't doing well. Feel free to correct me by telling me what measure you are using to come to your conclusion about the economic situation.
HuskyNan
I'm not qualified to speak intelligently on the state of Iran's economics but articles over the last few months have indicated that the economy is in trouble. Here are a couple links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7907326.stm
Josh-Narins
Husky, first, thank you so much for providing these links.
However, based on the economic data I have reviewed, the NY Times (a perennially Iran hating media source) has no idea what it is talking about. It highlights the inflation and unemployment rates, but I've looked at those rates, and there is no story. They are not as good as they are in America, even today, but the unemployment rate is actually better than it was a couple years ago (according to the most recent statistic) and the inflation rate is well within historic norms.
The second article talks about oil prices, which have rebounded significantly since that article was published in February.
The first article also talks about how the oil money is spent. This is exactly what Ahmadinejad won the first time. He says the old guard spends it to make themselves rich, and there are no shortage of "reformers" who have gotten rich the same way. Ahmadinejad, though, is a modest guy without his own palace or fleet of rolls royces. That's why Iranians like him.
EVIDENCE COUNTDOWN... it has now been 8 hours since I've been asking ANYONE, ANYWHERE to provide ANY EVIDENCE that Mousavi was supposed to win.
delahar
I think Josh-Narins is right about the evidence: there isn't any suggesting that Mousavi should have won. I also think he's wrong about Iran's economy: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF24Ak03.html . Spengler, at Asia Times, has been very illuminating in keeping readers up-to-date on the state of affairs leading to Iran's financial and demographic collapse. I think if Israel or the US interfere now, there will be tremendous backlash in the Muslim world.
For the record, do you fools think that anyone in the US State Department really expected Mousavi to win? These people are realists with interest in Iran and its election outcome. They knew how it would turn out before people went to the polls, just like we knew how Obama-McCain would turn out before November 4: polling, sampling, confidence intervals, repeated measures. The rejection of hard data is something characteristic of zealots and uneducated individuals.
ElLamer
LOL no one has the guts to answer the smart guys comment *grinn* I shyed away from it at first too. As far as I can see they have an inflation problem and an unemployment problem.
You have got to respect the protesters! I wish we would have stood up to bush in 2000 the same way!
Josh-Narins
What evidence do you have that the unemployment situation has deteriorated while Ahmadinejad has been President?
What evidence do you have that the inflation problem has deteriorated since President Ahmadinejad took office?
None, so be quiet.
ElLamer
Now thats a nasty tone....
how about this: http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/de/Laenderinformationen/Iran/Wirtschaf t.html (translate it with google if you don't read German)
It states that the real inflation rate is currently around 30% (much higher than when Ahmadinejad took office) and the real unemployment rate is roughly 20 %.
Now produce your data so I can have a look
smartycookie16
"Iran's economy is marked by an inefficient state sector, reliance on the oil sector, and statist policies that create major distortions throughout. Most economic activity is controlled by the state. Private sector activity is typically small-scale workshops, farming, and services. President Mahmud AHMADI-NEJAD has continued to follow the market reform plans of former President RAFSANJANI, with limited progress. High oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass nearly $65 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but have not eased economic hardships such as high unemployment and inflation."-2008 CIA world facts
Sounds pretty bad to me. I also heard that Ahmadinejad and his goons are cracking down on social rights especially for women. Hopefully this"youth uprising" will be a revolution and serious reforms will take place.
WorkerBee
Iran is a piece of crap. It always has been and probably forever will be. We should take comfort that our countries are much more civilized. Let Iran deal with Iran...unless we want to go take their nuclear program from them. But their doesn't seem to be much money it in. So we should steer clear of another money pit in a sand dune.
Even Iran's oil is crappy. Only a handful of refineries can even process it into something useful. Just another reason to stay out of the region.
All this really does is allow Obama to back out of his, "lets talk with our enemies (Iran)" pre-election stance. Now he can easily back off from having to talk with these sadistic nutjobs.
babakpakbaz
I spend amonth in iran for a vacation. I visited 7 cities. except in northern Tehran, there was no sign of protest to Ahmadi Nejad government. remember that it was Khatami government that gave us 57% inflation.
this goverment is spending money and effort in small town and cities whee the mejority of iranian poeple lives. Norhtern Tehran population only consists of .7% of iran population.
overall. i still do not understand what would Mir hossian would have done ith his goverment?
we saw what happend to Khatami.
I think the US- Isreali were betting to change this for thier own interest which did not happend
Josh-Narins
Oh, and by the way, it is only natural that the military would come increasingly to the fore as more and more loose talk about wars and attacks against Iran are bandied about by the western and Israeli media.
Any other behavior wouldn't seem natural.
ElLamer
good point.
this is truly an error of (among others) American foreign policy!
Drider
Of course we can completely rule out Ahmadinejad's following through on his destroying Israel?
If what the Author says is true and I do trust his knowledge in Iran's culture much more than my observations, but if the Iranian military "does" control Ahmadinejad then we may want to take him at his/their consistent words in destroying another country.
balanga
NO!...Lets get this straight. Nobody stole this election the whole thing is a farce in the first place...Whom are these Iranians electing. Only those approved by the Ayatollahs are allowed to run in the first place...this is the equivalent of of an apartheid era South African election where only whites were allowed to vote, well in Iran only those deemed loyal to the Islamic Republic are allowed to stand for election. The fact that all these puerile pundits and the worlds media are all upset that Moussavi had it stolen from him is a farce...Electoral Freedom/Democracy was stolen from the Iranian people thirty yrs ago.!!
ElLamer
did they have it then ? *grinn*
balanga
Correction, they have Never had democracy, like the entire Arab League, one despotic regime after another, year in and year out...The new western 'hero' Mousavvi is a joke, a few shades more moderate the Ahmedinijad does not make him a democrat, far from it!...read his bio.
ElLamer
@balanga
a few shades better is still better ;)
Narpak
"Correction, they have Never had democracy, like the entire Arab League, one despotic regime after another"
Well they did have a democracy up until Mohammed Mosaddeq was deposed. He tried to Nationalise the countries oil resources, since the majority of the profit from the oil went to the British, and was deposed by a coup (Operation Ajax; backed by CIA and MI6) in 1953.
Oh and Iran isn't a member of the Arab League.
Hawnzz
Iran is Persian. Arabs and Persians have historically hated one another.
Josh-Narins
balanga thinks that with a hereditary Monarch, put in place with the help of foreigners, Iran had electoral freedom?
How did they elect their Shah, balanga?
balanga obviously didn't read the article, where someone who sounds like he knows a lot about Iran says Iranian people had a wider diversity of choices than Americans get.
balanga
'Someone who sounds like he knows a lot about Iran says Iranians had a wider diversity of choices then Americans get'...Are you mad or just dumb assed stupid, the Islamic Republic has diversity in its electoral choices.?..the Iranian people have about as many choices as one gets in Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, or North Korea!
Josh-Narins
You should try reading the article you are commenting on. That's what Reza Aslan is saying. Since he knows more about Iran than either of us, and he also sounds particularly reasonable, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt.
You, however, always sound really dumb.
WorkerBee
Time to call a troll a troll.
Josh-narins = a Troll.
Austinite
Perhaps you're not familiar with the American two party system. You cant even run in the democratic/republican primaries unless their respective Election Commissions allow it. And if you're not at the very least a multi-millionaire, forget about it.... Course you could run as an independent.. but across all elections, even extremely wealthy/well known independents win what... 1% of the time?
Dont fool yourself, Electoral Freedom/Democracy is a myth...
trinitykitten
Actually, anyone can run for political office in the United States. Being rich just helps in terms of fund-raising. But if a candidate elects to use their own money, they cannot receive help via any state or federal elections fund--which is, as you can probably guess, taxpayer funded.
One needs to find a base of supporters, which includes a team of organizers / canvassers, which participate in phone banking; door-knocking and signature gathering.
The petition (for the signatures) is the most important aspect of being put on the ballot for the general election, which is the election that narrows down the candidates for the primary election. Having the support of coalitions (Eg. League of Women Voters; Environment America) or even party leadership is obviously a huge plus, too.
I actually worked for my Congressman during the Fall and went to one of his debates, which was sponsored by the League of Women Voters. There was a Green party candidate (whom I ended up voting for) that was running, but the LWV decided that he didn't have enough support... even though in order for a candidate to be placed on the ballot, a petition must be submitted to the Secretary of State's Office; town hall for State elections. Anyway, the actual reasoning behind leaving the Green party candidate is because he was actually popular and they supported my Congressman, who was the Democratic incumbent in his district (and still is). I turned down an internship with the LWV because of that. =)
As for Iran... the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) of the Islamic Republic of Iran (an Islamic Theocracy, NOT a democracy) is the most powerful political officen. He assigns the leadership positions, or his 'cabinet'.
The President, which is the most powerful AFTER the Supreme Leader, is elected by universal suffrage according to their Constitution (1979; amended 1989). Its Legislature is unicameral and its candidates for office are overseen and approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council is compromised of six clerics chosen by the Supreme Leader and six Jurists, chosen by the Majlis.
Tarafarzaneh
I agree.
jalili5
For somebody I respect so much to write this nonsense without having any substantive proof is rather embarrassing. Various outlets were screaming bloody murder and that the Pasdaran had killed x people as soon as the protests had begun. Where are those pictures?
We have seen way too many accusations in this affair, and not enough proof.
13M votes is a good showing, but it is not the whole country. We've seen it in the US elections, one candidate fails to visit a certain area, and another does repeatedly, and the one who repeatedly visits wins.
This is what happened. Moussavi failed to exercise good judgement, and also assumed we wouldn't have 85% of the country turn out.
Watch the debates again. Ahmadinejad clearly one those debates in the eyes of most of Iran. Most of Iran likes seeing a pious leader rather than somebody who has essentially been out of the loop for twenty years, and is of the "cloth" if you will.
Listen, I'm no Ahmadinejad supporter, but stop the noise. Produce some facts.
Martyz42
The bottom line here is simple... Regardless of who won the election the "PEOPLE" in Iran want to be part of the whole world order.... The religious zealots in charge of Iran will after this election begin to soften their hard line towards not only the US but also of Israel, they have no choice but to do that in order to stay in control....
The zealots remember very well that they came to power because the people at the time did in fact back them.... "NOW" the people are going the other way & if they continue this course the zealots might just become the next "X" Iranian government & they know it.....
Between Lebanon & Iran's elections team Obama has already begun to reshape the mood of the middle East..... When the Bush crime family was in charge, Hamas won elections & Hamas gained strength, now within just months the whole mood of the middle East & even the world has shifted, something the Confederate republican party will not admit....
Hawnzz
Pretty much..
Josh-Narins
Oh, and one more regrettable reality.
Even if Iran somehow ends up with a President Mousavi, many of the same Americans who are demanding his victory now will still decry Iran as an Evil Empire.
Mousavi won't likely stop Iran's nuclear power program, nor is he likely to significantly reduce his government's influence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
drmarkklein
The current regime's days are numbered. No way it can survive losing the support of the business elites, the educated young, the intellectuals, and the moderate clergy.
tombstoneblues
I'm not so sure if the "zealots" will soften any of their policies. They believe that what they are doing is the will of their god, which seems to be a higher priority than maintaining popular support. As we've seen from other religious fanatics, it wouldn't be unusual for this government to self-destruct rather than change its ways.
blinky
Great piece Reza!!
TheHerald
I agree blinky! This article is extremely well written by someone who obviously knows what he is talking about and is extremely well educated. Many who have posted might go through and read his bio more thoroughly and read the article to answer some of the questions put forth.
This is the most informative article I've read yet on Iranian's internal politics.
DreddBlog
I agree with Mr. Aslan on this. It does not pass the smell test.
Why do Iranian progressives not buy this election but US election integrity movement progressives do?
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/06/neocons-of-iran.html
Josh-Narins
Please link to one poll that shows Mousavi was really ahead. Comments by Mousavi supporters, or western journalists, do not count.
I'm talking about actual polls.
Thanks in advance.
It surely looks like the Western Press is trying to start a revolution in Iran, to overthrow the results of the election that Western leaders don't like. May everyone who approved of this plan be jailed.
DreddBlog
I disagree with your premise that nothing counts except what agrees with your opinion.
Change that position and we can have discourse.
DreddBlog
Earlier reply disintegrated on re-entry I suppose.
Your assertion that Mousavi supporters or western journalists do not count is invalid unless you can show that all such Mousavi supporters and western journalists cannot be trusted in these premises.
That is dismissive and dogmatic and I reject it and therefore would not respond to it.
Josh-Narins
I asked for any evidence whatsoever. A Mousavi supporter saying he thinks, in advance of the election, that Mousavi is going to win (or else there was fraud) does not count as evidence.
I'm still waiting for any evidence at all. This isn't the only place I've asked.
So far, nothing, nada, zilch, zero.
WorkerBee
If the Western Press can start a revolution in Iran with some spin on reporting, then we are more powerful than I've ever given us credit for. Of course this also makes Iranians incredibly weak and gullible.
This isn't the case Josh...Not sure what world you're living in, but its far away from the truth.
balanga
Narpak...'like the Arab League', never said they were part of the Arab League..Yes Mossadeq was deposed by the CIA, the British And Islamic clerics,his election was by no means democratic!
larry278
There is an interesting side to this matter. There is a large jurisdictional disput among America's agency's: The Diplomats- State & the intelligence community-CIA, et al don't know what happened in Iran's election, who did what & who, if anyone, is in charge in Iran.
All we are learning in the USA is a feed of agency copy. Some foreign media will need to tell us what happened in Iran's election; who did what to who or for them & who is in charge in Iran.
Anything reported in US based media is suspect & tainted by State or the intelligence community's spin.
We now have a bureaucratic snafu that has gone far beyond fubar.
Perhaps Pres Obama will release a pack of Rahm-like ass kickers to discipline the ass kissers of State & the intelligence community by kicking out teeth, breaking jaws, ribs, limbs & skulls to break up the cat fights among the bureaucrats. Find out what happened in Iran. Find out if anybody really know what's happening in Iran. Send the feuding bureaucrats to neutral corners & make sure that all of them keep quiet. If possibe-find out what is happening in Iran.
These petty temper tantrums & jurisdictional disputes are counter productive. All of this nonsense must cease at once.
US media must stop being played by the petty, incompetent spin meisters & refuse to act as a house organ for any agency. American media is acting as the organ at the terminal end of the alemantary canal, a spincter or fleshy valve.
Obama's junk yard dogs may need to cut a stoma in the alemantary canal, use a colostomy set up to prevent intelligence going to the teminal end of the digestive tract. The former set up is dysfunctional, useless & worthless.
larry278
Typo: spincter should be spelled sphincter.
Doggertzz
wow...Aslan is fired up about this. Always great insight, one of the few people along with Fareed Zakaria to give me reliable information on foreign affairs.
Meghanisgreat
All propaganda aside, it is very clear that the true Iranian people want to topple the regime in its entirety. Make no mistake about it. Will they succeed ? If history can prove anything, although it is going to be a difficult road, yes, they can, and yes, they will !
Thank you.
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