dagblog - Comments for "Iran: all tree, no forest"

By the way, I really do enjoy

BCA — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:40:57 +0000

In reply to Do you think the U.S. could

By the way, I really do enjoy the blog. I think it covers a good array of topics which makes it interesting.

Do you think the U.S. could

BCA — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:40:03 +0000

Do you think the U.S. could have done more to support the Iranian people after it was widely reported that the election had been rigged?

http://moderatescope.blogspot.com/

Yeah, Khamenei and his clique

acanuck — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:34:38 +0000

In reply to Interesting about the WaPo

Yeah, Khamenei and his clique still call the shots. Mousavi was obviously more receptive to the pent-up demand for political reform, internal liberalization, and international co-operation -- all things the same WaPo poll shows Iranians want. But any changes would have been incremental.

Some voters may have simply written off Mousavi after seeing how the regime stifled the efforts of popular reformist president Khatami. Who knows, maybe Ahmadinejad will surprise us all and use his new mandate to pull his own "Nixon in China." I'm not overly optimstic, though.

Interesting about the WaPo

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:16:00 +0000

In reply to I appreciate your taking the

Interesting about the WaPo poll. I could be wrong for sure. For the record, I wasn't suggesting that all the new voters went to Mousavi, only that it would be very strange if hardly any of them when to Mousavi. There were 10M new voters in 2009, and Rafsanjani had 10M votes in the 2005 first round, but the reformist candidates only received 3M of more votes than they did in 2005.

So in an energized campaign, with Rafsanjani pushing hard for the reformists, they only get 15% of new voters and former Rafsanhani supporters?

If there was fraud, I doubt that any hard evidence will appear. I'm not sure that it matters anyway. Whomever is president, the hardline clerics still control the courts, the cops, and the military.

I appreciate your taking the

acanuck — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:01:50 +0000

In reply to I should add that the second

I appreciate your taking the question seriously, Genghis, and obviously doing your homework. What we in the West conclude about the election isn't going to change anything in Iran, but it will definitely color how we deal with that country's leadership. So it's important to get it right.

This was a particularly polarizing election, drawing in millions who didn't vote in 2005. So there's a problem extrapolating from previous results. It wasn't just Mousavi's supporters who were energized; Ahmadinejad also pulled out all the stops. And pulled the traditional levers of power, especially the state's control over the media and the internet.

A 2-1 victory sounded very improbable to me too. But today's Washington Post says that's exactly what their polling predicted: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html The Post seems very confident of their survey's reliability.

There are a few somewhat hopeful signs: Mousavi did get to hold his big protest rally, and Khamenei's office says it will look into the fraud allegations. Maybe we can avoid another Tiananmen Square, which would just embolden the hardest of hard-liners.

I should add that the second

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:09:39 +0000

In reply to fivethirtyeight.com on fishy

I should add that the second round of 2005 was also suspicious. Ahmadinejad received 5.7M votes in the first round and 17.2M votes in the first round, meaning that he had to have won not only the 5M votes from the other conservative first round candidates but the majority of the 10M votes that went to first round reformist candidates.

Karroubi, the guy whose support went from 17% in '05 to less than 1% in '09, alleged fraud in '05. Here's what happened according to Mr. Wiki:

After the first round of the election, some people, including Mehdi Karroubi, the pragmatic reformist candidate who ranked third in the first round but was the first when partial results were first published, have alleged that a network of mosques, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps military forces, and Basij militia forces have been illegally used to generate and mobilize support for Ahmadinejad. Karroubi has explicitly alleged that Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, was involved. Ayatollah Khamenei then wrote to Karroubi and mentioned that these allegations are below his dignity and will result in a crisis in Iran, which he will not allow. As a reply, Karroubi resigned from all his political posts, including an Advisor to the Supreme Leader and a member of Expediency Discernment Council, on both of which he had been installed by Khamenei. The day after, on June 20, a few reformist morning newspapers, Eghbal, Hayat-e No, Aftab-e Yazd, and Etemaad were stopped from distribution by the general prosecutor of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi, for publishing Karroubi's letter.

fivethirtyeight.com on fishy

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:44:00 +0000

In reply to Iran: all tree, no forest

fivethirtyeight.com on fishy numbers: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/iran-does-have-some-fishy-numbers...

I've been mulling over my response. While I can imagine that Western analysts may have been led by wishful thinking to exaggerate Mousavi's chances, Ahmadinejad's 63% just seems way too high for a first round vote

In the first round of the 2005 election, Ahmadinejad only received 19% of the vote. OK, so he's an incumbent now, and the conservative vote was split in 2005. But if you were to give him all the other conservative votes, he'd still have had only 39%.

Let's look at the opposition. In 2005, Reformists received 36% in the first round of a pessimistic campaign. In 2009, it dropped to 33%, despite a highly energized reformist campaign. The total reformist votes only grew from 10.5M to 13.5M, whereas the conservative votes grew from 11.5M to 25M. (Reformist candidate Karroubi mysteriously dropped from 17% to less than 1%.)

The one block missing from 2009 has been Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative who was not officially affiliated with either side in '05. In the first round of '05, he received 10M votes or 21%. Ahmadinejad might have attained his 63% by snapping up Rafsanjani's 2005 supporters. But Rafsanjani has come out very, very strongly for Mousavi, so it's very difficult to imagine that almost all of his supporters in 2005 would switch to Ahmadinejad in 2009.

So there are three scenarios under which Ahmadinejad could have achieved such massive growth in the support:

1) Almost all of Rafsanjani's previous supporters voted for him (unlikely given Rafsanjani's opposition to Ahmadinejad.)

2) Almost all the new voters in this election voted for Ahmadinejad (unlikely given the enthusiasm of the reformists this year and general principles of probability)

3) Massive changes in allegience from reformists to conservative (also seems unlikely given that Ahmadinejad is not wildly popular)

I've got no evidence to prove fraud, but let's just say that I'm extremely suspicious.

Here's Robert Fisk's take:

acanuck — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:48:48 +0000

In reply to Iran: all tree, no forest

Here's Robert Fisk's take: Ahmadinejad may indeed have won, but he's still a brutal thug in populist clothing:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-iran-erupts-as-voters-back-the-democrator-1704810.html

Yeah, Tehran. Sorry if the

acanuck — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:53:17 +0000

In reply to I interpret the tree to be

Yeah, Tehran. Sorry if the hed was too cryptic.

Middle East expert Flynt Leverett and Newsweek's Christopher Dickey also seem to think Western journalists operating inside the capital-city bubble indulged in wishful thinking about Mousavi's popular appeal. They are far outnumbered by pundits like Juan Cole who are more or less certain the election was stolen. Neither camp has presented incontrovertible evidence, so it's impossible to know. (Though as an ex-journalist, I lean toward the Western media getting it totally wrong.)

On the bright side, Mousavi has now formally appealed the election results to the Council of Guardians, and called on supporters to protest only peacefully and legally. So it doesn't sound like he's under house arrest after all. He's also asked for permission to hold a rally to protest the results; I'd be really astonished if he gets an OK for that.

I interpret the tree to be

elliottness — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:26:29 +0000

In reply to What's the tree and what's

I interpret the tree to be Tehran.