Iran’s
Election: Stepping Stone to Over-Throw
Ardeshir Ommani, June 22, 2009
According to an article printed in the April
30th issue of “Iran”, a Tehran
Persian daily forty-two days before the
actual Iranian presidential election, the
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a
speech to a large gathering of Iranian
nurses, teachers and workers of the country
warned about the smear campaign waged
against the election. He said that “there
are some unfair individuals among us…who are
eager to be at the center of peoples’
attention, but ungratefully go against the
nation, and by echoing the lies of our foe,
they cast doubts on the soundness and
legitimacy of the system of our elections.”
The warnings of Iran’s Supreme leader showed
that the plans of the current social crisis,
executed now by Mir Hossein Mousavi and
other players such as U.S.-inspired
loosely-knit networks of “Iran experts” in
lock-step with the lieutenants of U.S. and
British corporate media, and battalions of
foot soldiers - monarchists, Mojahedin-Khalq
terrorists and disenchanted pro-western
Iranians - were conceived long before the
recent presidential election. The election
of June 12, 2009 provided these
well-financed and well-equipped strata with
unprecedented opportunities to carry out the
first stages of their “velvet revolution”.
The crisis has de-stabilized the Islamic
Republic of Iran by splitting the nation
along class lines – the pro-Western
landlord, capitalist and well-to-do middle
classes on one hand and pro-Ahmadinejad
poorer city dwellers, the working class at
the lower economic end and a vast class of
small farmers. A great number of supporters
of defeated candidate Hossein Mousavi live
predominately in the luxury houses (called
villas) and apartments in northern Tehran,
expensive high rises in Shiraz and Esfahan.
A two-bedroom living space in Northern
Tehran costs over $450,000, much higher than
properties in the New York metropolitan area
in the U.S.
Western Connection
The U.S. Congress, the European Parliament
and corporate media of the countries across
the Atlantic Ocean have magnified the voices
of the key opposition figures, giving all
sorts of backings and encouragement to
remain on the street, violate the laws,
challenge the security forces, burn and
destroy public and private properties and
ultimately undermine the power of the
state. On Wednesday, June 17, Mohsen
Makhmalbaaf, the spokesman of Mr. Mousavi
overseas, was given carte-blanche access to
the Tribune of the European Parliament to
spread lies and half-truths, claiming fraud
by the Interior Ministry in the Iranian
election. It should come as no surprise
these same representatives who have
demonized Iran’s president and been the
backer of the U.S. false accusations about
Iran’s nuclear energy program gave a
standing ovation to this faker. Moreover,
Makhmallbaaf does not hide his close
connections with the Monarchists (past Shah
supporters), and followers of Reza Pahlavi,
the son of the Shah who was overthrown by
the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The person closer to Mousavi, his wife Zahra
Rahnavard, has had several opportunities to
use BBC’s television and radio facilities to
cry on the shoulders of her husband’s
British backers. In the last week, the
major U.S.-U.K. mass media, including CNN,
NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington
Post, Financial Times and Guardian and many
radio broadcasts out of California that were
funded during the Bush regime by the
neo-con/Zionist organizations to saturate
the Iranian elite with pro-capitalist
propaganda could not be more delighted in
their daily staple of demonizing Iran’s
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and picture
Iran on the verge of another revolution that
could send the country along with its human
and natural resources – oil, gas, uranium,
cooper, silver, chromium, iron ore, lead,
manganese, zinc and sulfur - back into the
arms of the American empire. This is
wishful thinking on their parts.
James Petras, puts
the subject of interference clearly when he
writes in this article: Iranian
Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax,
which appeared in
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22868.htm
Almost the entire spectrum of Western
opinion makers, including all the major
electronic and print media, the major
liberal, radical, libertarian and
conservative web-sites, echoed the
opposition’s claim of rampant election
fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian
conservatives and Trotskyites joined the
Zionists in hailing the opposition
protestors as the advance guard of a
democratic revolution
Organization of Iranian Elections
Let’s go back to examine the charges leveled
by Hossein Mousavi against Iran’s Interior
Ministry with regard to the presidential
election results. In order to do so we need
to demonstrate the structural framework
within which the Iranian elections takes
place. The framework consists of three
independent groups: the first group assigned
from the Interior Ministry manages the
practical aspects of the election, including
preparing the ballots, ballot boxes and
providing information as to their
whereabouts (voting stations). The second
body of managers consists of the 12 members
of the Guardian Council whose responsibility
is to assure the soundness and fairness of
the election, so that no manipulation or
irregularities would take place. The
Council also manages the announcement of the
outcome of the votes. The third body is
composed of observers made up of staff
members from all the parties and individual
candidates who watch to detect any mistakes
or acts of manipulations. The groups have
separate tasks, but work together to have a
successful and fair election. In the
process of gathering, recording, counting
and reporting the votes if any violations
occur, the observers have the responsibility
of writing up the incident and gathering
signatures of witnesses. This documentation
is necessary for investigation and future
correction if irregularities are found.
Let us for a moment assume that certain
irregularities, violations of election law
and manipulation, such as shortage of
ballots, and denying some Mousavi observers
access to the polling places had taken
place, which led Mousavi to protest that
there was wide-spread fraud in the
election. The first question is why Mr.
Mousavi, instead of calling demonstrations
of his supporters “crying foul” for three
consecutive days, did not present the
Guardian Council with the violation reports
and testimonies? In place of doing so as
required by the well-known election
procedures, he wrote a letter to the
Association of Combatant Clerics
(Jamaat-e-Ruhuniyat) Mobarez (Olama) in the
City of Qom, complaining about the work of
the Interior Ministry and even the Guardian
Council and charging them with partiality.
On the fourth day when he decided to present
the Guardian Council with his letter of
complaint, he still did not substantiate his
charges.
Charges of “Wide-Spread Corruption”
Mousavi’s letter of complaint consists of
seven paragraphs with seven claims:
1)
the opening paragraph, which
should have dealt with his essential claim
of “wide-spread electoral fraud”, discusses
the irrelevant issue of Ahmadinejad’s verbal
attacks during their campaign debates
against Haashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the
Assembly of Experts and Nategh Noori, a
member of the Expediency Council, a group
whose function consists of breaking
stalemates between the Majlis (Parliament)
and the Guardian Council. What relations
are there between the charge of election
fraud and the content of the first paragraph
remains to be explained.
2)
In the second paragraph,
like the first, Mousavi complained that
during the campaign debates Ahmadinejad
questioned the authority of Ayatollah
Khomeini and also harmed Iran’s national
security by alleging that the Islamic
Republic in the 1980’s had the policy of
cutting off youth’s hair and tearing the
necktie of those who dared to wear them.
Once again, all these have nothing to do
with election fraud.
3)
The third paragraph, while
complaining about the non-cooperative work
method of not only the interior ministry,
but also the office of the governors, he
claims in some instances accreditation cards
necessary to certify their observers at the
polling places were not issued. But again,
the rational way of going about resolving
the issue would have been to attach
witness-signed descriptions of the alleged
violations to the letter handed to the
Guardian Council.
4)
In the fourth paragraph
Mousavi states that the collection and
counting of the entry votes was supposed to
be done by hand and hence using computers to
report the final results would be considered
a violation. Perhaps Mousavi’s campaign
directors were expecting to deliver the
results using horses or carriages.
5)
In the fifth paragraph
Mousavi’s complaint is about shortages of
ballot papers in some stations. He may not
know that in the U.S., the most
technologically developed country, there
have been instances that the whole computer
system has gone down for hours, until they
are further repaired or substituted.
6)
The claim in paragraph six
is too general to be considered a
description of a concrete violation.
7)
In the seventh and last
paragraph, his complaint is that during the
electoral campaign Ahmadinejad had been
given more time by the state television and
radio stations. He further stated that
Ahmadinejad in his pre-election campaign
used the government facilities, such as cars
and planes, to pay visits to cities and
towns around the country. Perhaps he
doesn’t know that the incumbent presidents
and congressmen and women use the means of
transportation made available to them while
in office. Therefore, the use of such means
by an incumbent president is not a violation
and after all these issues raised in the
letter doesn’t prove “wide-spread fraud” in
the election.
Privatization of National Assets
The bitter truth is that the major cause of
the differences among the upper echelon of
Iran’s political leadership goes much beyond
the dichotomies concerning the election
results. One of the most crucial issues
discussed much before and during the
election campaign has been the problems with
the economy of Iran and its critical
components, such as high rates of
unemployment and inflation, low levels of
labor productivity, and handling the
monetary and fiscal policies.
But among all these vital parts,
privatization of the state’s industrial,
financial, mining and infra-structural
assets attract the most attention of the
domestic and foreign owners of capital –
this is the focal point where the political
agents of social forces fight to the death.
Privatization of the state assets is the
greatest motive force for capturing the
state power for use as a tool to shape
Iran’s wealth distribution and concentration
of capital in the hands of a few for decades
to come.
While the working class, small shop keepers
and family farmers are mainly concerned with
the hazards and pain of unemployment, high
prices of necessities of life such as food,
shelter, means of transportation, health
care services and educational expenses, the
big landlords, owners of private banks,
insurance companies and shareholders in the
stock markets are busy purchasing the
state-owned factories, railways and bank
assets at fire-sale prices, an arrangement
which had methodically been the fast track
of becoming wealthy over-night at the
expense of the entire nation.
While Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan college
students aspire to gain employment
opportunities, cultural and social freedoms,
the big capitalist class is networking the
strategy of how to use the vigor and vital
energy of the intellectuals, artists,
university professors, along with the entire
middle class to capture the state power, not
for its own sake, but as a bridge to the
national wealth, whose thousands of
factories are awaiting to be auctioned soon
after the election. Mir Hossein Mousavi
cannot wait to be in charge of giving these
establishments away to the rich Iranians.
Therefore, while the upper middle and
educated class dreams of widening its social
space, the moneyed class is busy dreaming
about the easy access to the wealth of the
nation that it took the state a century or
more to accumulate.
The experience of Russians after the
collapse of the Soviet Socialist state and
the immediate rise of a class of oligarchy
that attained the status of billionaires is
still fresh in our minds, the charges and
counter-charges between the reformists,
which in fact is a misnomer, and the
Ahmadinejad administration has been centered
around the depth and breadth, but more so,
on the pace and the kind of economic sectors
which would be up for grabs on the auction
block. This current election and the
ensuing upheaval is in essence more about
who - the capitalist class or the workers -
will get the lion’s share of the people’s
assets.
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Ardeshir Ommani is
an Iranian-born writer and an activist in
the U.S. anti-war and anti-imperialist
struggle for over 40 years. During the past
seven years, he has participated in the U.S.
peace movement, working to promote dialogue
and peace among nations and to prevent a
U.S.-spurred war on Iran. He holds two
Masters Degrees: one in Political Economy
and another in Mathematics Education.
Co-founder of the
American
Iranian Friendship Committee, (AIFC),
he writes articles of analysis on Iran -U.S.
relations, the U.S. economy and has
translated articles and books from English
into Farsi, the Persian language. After
many years of absence, he has been traveling
back to Iran and is witnessing first-hand
the myriad of changes in all spheres of life
inside his homeland. Please visit AIFC’s
website to learn more about Iran and Global
issues at
www.iranaifc.com .
The author may be
contacted at:
ardeshiromm@optonline.net
