Members of Iran’s electoral commission told Mousavi that they were preparing the country for his victory. That’s how clear the vote count was. People in Ahwaz were saying that Mousavi got almost 70% of the vote there.

The results are simply ridiculous. They are completely unbelievable.

This is a COUP de Corps (How’s my French?). Let’s wish the body well.

If one reads the specifics of the vote results (i.e. Ahmadinejad supposedly won in Tehran and Tabriz), how the count progressed and combine it with what people on the ground are saying, there is no way you would believe that this election was fair and square. There was blatant fraud. They didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were rigging the election. They didn’t even try to make the numbers look believable. — Sarvi

NYT Lede Blog on elelction

Gives credence to Juan Coles analysis.

Vern – the analogy between Putin and Ahmedinejad falls down because A-jad presided over economic decay despite record Oil and Gas prices, whilst Putin at least managed not to not get in the way of the same factors working a pretty strong economic turnaround in Russia.

The Mullahs “clamped down” a long time ago – about 1300 years ago in the case of Iran.

That’s the way I see it.

They are quite prepared to murder, torture, and lie – do whatever is necessary – to cling to power.

Please don’t think otherwise.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3068

What may have happened, it seems, is that the mullahs pushed their luck too far. If they’d contented themselves with a first-round lead for their boy but without an absolute majority, to be followed by a 55%-45% victory in the run-off vote, they might have got away with it without too much fuss. But it looks now as though they cheated too shamelessly and on too large a scale.

Demonstrators gunned down in the streets of Tehran? Has this been confirmed? Violent repression of that kind may herald a much broader crackdown and a return to overtly authoritarian rule, putting an end to any freedoms seen as a potential threat to the ayatollahs’ supremacy.

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies

“Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was reportedly arrested Saturday following the reformist’s defeat at the polls by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, responded to the election with the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade and charged that the result was the work of a dictatorship.

Mousavi’s arrest was reported by an unofficial source, according to whom the presidential hopeful was arrested en route to the home of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei….”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092304.html

Will the Mullahs clamp down or have they lost their nerve? Or is it already too late – is the genie out of the bottle?

“This is a matter for Iran.”

He should have said: “We stand four square with the democrats in Iran and will support them in their struggle to win freedom. They have been cheated out of a genuine election victory. Ahmadinejad now has no legitimacy. “

“Every serious analyst” doesn’t know what would happen in a free and fair election campaign.

http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/13/faulty-election-data/