Raging Revolution: Iran Recount Offer Fails To Achieve Jack-Shit

Jun 16, 2009 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

Notice how the State-controlled New York Times, in an attempt to buttress Obama’s support of the tyrannical Ahmadinejad Regime, tries to downplay the opposition.

Related: Fears Of Revolution Force Iranian Government To Offer Limited Recount

New York Times:

Recount Offer Fails to Quell Political Tumult in Iran

TEHRAN — Thousands of both pro- and anti-government demonstrators began massing in the streets here on Tuesday, increasing tensions a day after clashes left at least seven people dead during the largest antigovernment demonstration since the Iranian revolution.

Speaking at Monday’s huge rally, Mr. Moussavi said he had written to the Guardian Council to complain about the election but had little hope of action from the panel because many of its members had supported Mr. Ahmadinejad ahead of the election.

“I believe annulling the election results would be the least harmful measure,” he said. “Otherwise people will no longer have confidence in the system and the government,” he said.

The nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had called for the vote to be examined on Monday in a turnabout from the government’s earlier position that the vote had been free and fair. The Guardian Council, in its ruling on Tuesday, said the law prevented it from voiding the last vote and holding a new one.

“Based on the law, the demand of those candidates for the cancellation of the vote, this cannot be considered,” the spokesman, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the Guardian Council, told state television, Reuters reported.

Mr. Ahmadinejad flew to Yekaterinburg, Russia, for a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an international organization whose members are China, Russia, and four other central Asian nations. At the gathering, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not mention the Iranian election, but gave a speech in which he referred to regional problems, describing Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine as occupied and unstable.

He added: “The current political and economic order is approaching the end of its mastery of the world. It is absolutely clear that the epoch of empire has come to an end.”

Mr. Medvedev did not offer any public comments on the Iranian election. He later met on the sidelines of the conference with Mr. Ahmadinejad, Kremlin officials said.

In contrast with doubts expressed in many west European capitals over the validity of the Iranian ballot, a deputy foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Ryabkov, told reporters that Russia had warm relations with Iran.

“Elections in Iran are an internal affair of the Iranian people, but we welcome the newly elected president of that state,” Mr. Ryabkov said.

On Monday, hundreds of thousands of people from across Iranian society poured into the streets to protest what they charge were fraudulent results in last week’s vote. The protests initially were believed to have been largely peaceful and only one death was reported.

But violence erupted after dark when protesters surrounded and attempted to set fire to the headquarters of the Basij volunteer militia, which is associated with the Revolutionary Guards, according to news agency reports.

State radio said seven people died in that incident, which it described as an “unauthorized gathering” that took place when protesters tried to attack “a military location,” the A.P. said.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, was compelled to respond to the popular and sustained defiance and called Monday for a formal review of the results, the first hint that the government might fear it could not control the crowds. But Mr. Ahmadinejad’s decision to leave the country as head of state threatened to inflame voters. Mr. Ahmadinejad had already incensed protesters when he compared them to angry soccer fans whose team had lost and called them “dust.”

One demonstrator fired off a Twitter message, one of thousands of brief electronic dispatches that kept the outside world up-to-the-minute on the protests, proclaiming: “Ahmadinejad called us dust, we showed him a sandstorm.”

The silent march through central Tehran on Monday represented an extraordinary show of defiance from a broad cross section of society and some protesters began to sense that the leadership’s firm backing of Mr. Ahmadinejad had wavered.

In his first public comment on the situation in Iran, President Obama said he was deeply troubled by postelection violence and called on Iranian leaders to respect free speech and the democratic process. He told reporters he would continue pursuing a direct dialogue with Tehran, but he urged that any Iranian investigation of election irregularities be conducted without bloodshed.

The protests showed how the government’s assertion that Mr. Ahmadinejad won re-election by a margin of almost two to one had further cleaved Iranian society into rival camps.

On one side are the most powerful arms of the Islamic system of government: Ayatollah Khamenei; the military; the paramilitary; and the Guardian Council. On the other is a diverse coalition that has grown emboldened by the day, with some clerics joining two former presidents and Mr. Moussavi, the former prime minister and main opposition candidate, who addressed the crowd from the roof of a car near Freedom Square in downtown Tehran.

Earlier Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei stepped in to try to calm a growing backlash, forcing him into a public role he generally seeks to avoid as the country’s top religious authority. Under Iran’s dual system of government, with civil and religious institutions, the supreme leader can usually operate in the shadows, while elected officials serve as the public face of Iranian governance and policy.

He called for the Guardian Council to conduct an inquiry into the opposition’s claims that the election was rigged and then had that announcement repeated every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day. It was a rare reversal.