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Ahmadinejad Wins Landside – Election Contested – Protests Rock Iran
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide election victory despite protests by his main challenger of “blatant violations.”
Ahmadinejad won 62.63 percent of the vote while chief rival Mir Hossein Moussavi received 33.75 percent, the Iranian government said Saturday.
Before the final results were announced Moussavi addressed the people of Iran in a sharply worded letter. “I recommend to the authorities that before it is late to stop this process immediately, and to return to the path of the rule of law and the holding of the public trust through the votes of the people,” he said.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called the voters’ turnout a show of Iran’s “pride” and “honor.”
Sadeq Mahsouli, the country’s interior minister, on Saturday lauded the “unprecedented” turnout. He had said 70 percent of 46 million eligible voters had gone to the polls. Turnout could have been as 80 percent of eligible voters, Iran’s poll chief said.
The Islamic Republic News Agency said Ahmadinejad will address the nation Saturday night.
Analysts had expected Moussavi, widely regarded as a reformist, to do well as his campaign caught fire in recent days, triggering massive street rallies in Tehran.
Voting was supposed to end after 10 hours, but because of the massive turnout, officials initially said polling stations would remain open until everyone in line had a chance to vote. However, Moussavi alleged that doors were being closed with people still waiting outside.
Some private news agencies reported many Iranians were milling about on the streets late into the night. Mehr reported that the chief of police declared public gatherings of candidate supporters illegal.
Earlier in the day, voters crowded the steps of one polling place in Tehran, some waiting more than three hours underneath the hot sun to cast their ballots. Some were lining up even before the polls opened at 8 a.m.
Moussavi was the main challenger among three candidates vying to replace Ahmadinejad. The other candidates were former parliament speaker and reformist Mehdi Karrubi, and Mohsen Rezaie, the former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Ahmadinejad has staunch support in Iran’s rural areas, but has been blamed for much of Iran’s economic turmoil over the last four years.
Fawaz Gerges, an academic and author who studies the region, said Friday’s vote is really “a referendum on Ahmadinejad,” who has been in office since 2005.
“The unemployment rate is 30 percent … the largest in the third world, inflation is [in the] double digits in Iran,” Gerges told CNN’s “American Morning.”
“We focus in the United States a great deal on his inflammatory rhetoric on the Holocaust, on nuclear weapons. We tend to forget that Ahmadinejad has basically done a great deal of damage to the Iranian economy, on social policy.”
While Moussavi’s campaign energized key segments of Iranian voters — particularly women — Gerges noted that “Iranians have surprised us many times.”
Moussavi’s supporters crowded the streets of Tehran this week, wearing the candidate’s trademark color green. His campaign also energized Iran’s youth, many of whom did not take part in the 2005 election. Yasmin, a 21-year-old university student, said she cast her ballot on Friday for Moussavi.
“I’ve never even been interested in the politics of my country until today. It was my first time voting, and I am so excited about it,” she said. “We are all yearning for change, and I believe Moussavi will bring much more freedom to Iran and our lives. That is why I cast my ballot for him. There is so much anticipation in the air.”
Moussavi’s supporters had hoped he would follow in the same footsteps as Mohammed Khatami, a reformist candidate who overwhelmingly won the presidency in 1997, raising hopes that the reformist movement would bring religious and democratic freedoms to the Islamic republic. But the real power in Iran rests in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
By the time Khatami left office in 2005, he was unable to make major changes because of the opposition of hard-line elements in Iran’s clerical establishment.
“The elected president is not the commander in chief, he does not make decisions of war and peace,” Gerges noted. “The major decision maker [in Iran] is the unelected supreme leader, that is Ali Khamenei, along with a National Security Council.”
But Gerges noted that the “the style of the president” and his “posture” have a great deal of influence on Iran’s relations with other countries, particularly the United States.
No matter who won Friday’s vote, analysts said it was unlikely any of the candidates would change Iran’s position on its nuclear program, which the Islamic republic insists is for civilian purposes but the United States and other Western powers believe may be a cover for a weapons program.
Iranian-American analyst and scholar Reza Aslan said that while Moussavi is “a little bit more of a moderate when it comes to the nuclear issue … all four candidates agreement with Iran’s right to develop nuclear.”
Nevertheless, Aslan said that all four candidates also “recognize it’s time to open up to America and to the international community because there’s no other option with regard to the economy.” Report filed by CNN. Click the link below for more news and information. CNN is the leading name in news and information.
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Today is a very sad day for the Iranians here in the U.S. and clearly in Iran! This corrupted government in Iran is beyond disgust. I am born and raised in CA but I love the Iranian people in Iran. Hearing the news this morning brought tears to my eyes for the Iranian people. This fradulent act was suspected by Iranians and sadly enough it surfaced. I think the Iranian people must today take a stand and fight back as they are. This is unacceptable and our great people of Iran are being robbed of their lives, robbed of freedom, robbed of their great potential to society. Our Iranian people are very intellectual people but again the government stands in their way. The Iranian people love the U.S. and would like to start the process of talks and better relations with the U.S. but what is stopping this??? The corrupted government!!!! In the U.S. we had the same feellings and we got our great new President Obama who is on the people’s side. What can we do as powerless Iranian-Americans now? Nothing! I just hope that something happens, we may need a new revolution to change. My eyes are glued to the news to see what is the government’s response to the fraud they have committed (probably nothing).