Has the Election Been Stolen in Iran?

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet. Posted June 13, 2009.

It is certainly not unprecedented for Western observers to miscalculate the outcome of an election in a country where pre-election polls are not as rigorous as Western countries, particularly when there is a clear bias towards a particular candidate.  At the same time, the predictions of knowledgeable Iranian observers from various countries and from across the political spectrum were nearly unanimous in the belief that the leading challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would defeat incumbent president  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decisively in yesterday’s presidential election, certainly in the runoff if not in the first round.  This also appeared to be the assumption among independent observers in Iran itself. 

So overwhelming were the signs of imminent Ahmadinejad defeat and so massive was the margin of his alleged victory, the only reasonable assumption was that there has been fraud on a massive scale.  What polls did exist showed Mousavi leading by a clear majority and Ahmadinejad well under 40%, a margin roughly similar to what most analysts had suggested based on anecdotal evidence.  Instead, the official results show Ahmadinejad winning by an overwhelming 63% of the vote. 

The unmistakable political trend in Iran in the past four years has been toward greater liberalism and moderation, particularly with the addition of millions of new younger voters who are overwhelmingly disenchanted with Ahmadinejad’s ultra-conservative social policies and failed economic policies.  The very idea that he would do substantially better than he did in the election four years ago, therefore, is ludicrous at face value.  Indeed, in municipal and other elections held over the past couple of years, Ahmadinejad’s preferred slates lost heavily to moderate conservatives and reformers. 

Ahmadinejad won a tight presidential race four years ago campaigning as an economic populist, gaining wide support among the poor for his calls for reducing inequality and fighting endemic corruption.  However, his administration has been at least as corrupt as his predecessors, his economic policies have resulted in high inflation and high unemployment, and he has been ruthless in suppressing labor unions, such as the bus drivers strike in Tehran.  As a result, his popularity has plummeted, making the idea of substantially greater popular support today particularly questionable.  

There are also more direct indications of fraud.

In past elections, there have been substantial variations in the vote of various candidates based on ethnicity and geography, but the official results show Ahmadinejad’s vote totals being relatively uniform across the country.  Mousavi, an Azeri from the province of Azerbaijan who has been quite popular there, did poorly, according to official results.  This is particularly striking since even minor candidates from that area had done disproportionately well in previous elections.  Similarly, Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate and an ethnic Lur, supposedly fared poorly in his home province of Luristan.  Nationally, Karoubi went from 17% in the 2005 election to less than 1% this year with no apparent reason for such a precipitous decline.  Meanwhile, the much-despised Mohsen Rezaie, the other hardline candidate, allegedly got twice as many votes. 

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Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

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