(Updated) Iran Vote: Fraud or Journos' Wishful Thinking?

Update: Stephen Zunes says the election was indeed stolen. He makes some important points, so give it a read.

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Most of what I'm reading on the Iranian elections today is so thoroughly filtered through a Western prism that it offers little in the way of context to help understand Iran's domestic political culture. 

News reports acknowledge that the economy and charges of corruption were crucially important issues, but only as an afterthought -- in the final graphs. References to Israel, relations with the U.S. and comparisons between Mousavi and Obama's calls for "change" are front and center.

I don't want to add to the cacophony of ill-informed analysis. But I'm skeptical -- pending more evidence -- of claims that the election was rigged. I agree with Abbas Barzegar, reporting from Tehran:

Of course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmadinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day's events.

Mousavi obviously represents the hopes and aspirations of millions of Iranians, and there are numerous reports of riots and police crack-downs. But conflicting claims of victory are not uncommon in elections (although typically when the results are tighter than this 63-34 outcome). Yet, the media seem quite eager to push the Mousavi camp's claims of massive fraud.

I think, in large part, that's due to the fact that the results were so far from reporters' expectations -- it was supposed to be tight, and turned out to be a blow-out. But why did they think it would be such a close result in the first place (Iranian polling is notoriously unreliable)?

I was watching Christiane Amanpour on CNN, and she said something to the effect that all of "the anecdotal evidence" gathered by journalists reporting from Tehran -- a cosmopolitan and therefore unrepresentative  sample of the larger electorate -- indicated that Mousavi had very wide support, much higher than he might have.

Barzegar adds to this point:

Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.

Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran...

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