The authorities were faced with a credible challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had the potential to challenge the existing power structure on certain key issues. He ran a surprisingly effective campaign, and his “green wave” began to be seen as more than a wave. In fact, many began calling it a Green Revolution. For a regime that has been terrified about the possibility of a “velvet revolution,” this may have been too much.
On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.
* Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
* Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
* The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
* National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
* The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
* But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
* Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
* The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
* Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
* Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.
All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.
I'll go into detail a bit later as to why I don't necessarily believe that this was "well-orchestrated." Perhaps "well-coordinated" is a better term; events certainly did seem to come down quickly, indicating that the entirety of the Iranian power structure was behind it, but I think there is a glaring fact which makes this whole process seem last-minute, namely its blatancy.
But, regardless of that small point of contention, Sick's post is terrific and I will come back to it later.
I'd like to take the bulk of this to examine how we in the U.S. have reacted to this whole mess. Essentially, there has been a misconception about the extent to which the U.S. and Obama (in particular) have affected the Iranian election. Sure, those in power in Iran have U.S. policy at the forefront of their agenda but there has been a perplexing sentiment expressed by conservatives that the election appearing to have been "stolen" is somehow a direct result of Obama's policies.
Drawing a causal link between Obama and the Iranian election is not tenable at all. Frank Gaffney and Richard Perle both disagree and state that it was Obama's "weakness" that caused the mullahs in Iran to act. Their line of reasoning is that Ahmadinejad, Khameni and gang are all a bunch of "thugs" who saw in Obama's "apologizing" for Bush-era policy towards the Muslim world direct confirmation that America would never truly threaten the regime and therefore they could do whatever they wanted in order to hold onto power. They point to Obama's recent speech in Cairo and his remarks last week on the Iranian election: that there was a "robust" debate taking place, that the opposition was not being outright repressed and that this progress indicated that the election of an Iranian government who would be more amenable to Washington's point of view seemed plausible and possible. Those like Perle and Gaffney, however, believe that dealing with Iran diplomatically enables and emboldens them to act in a repressive fashion - that Obama's change in tone from the Bush years was a green light for the hardliners to stage a coup and silence the opposition without fear of U.S. reprisal.
This is a typical, Americocentric and counterproductive response which is easily disproved by the fact that the Iranians successfully defied the much more hawkish Bush administration for close to seven years. One can confidently state that had Obama not tempered his language towards the Arab-Muslim world in general and Iran in particular, there would likely have been no change in Iranian "boldness" - as nebulously defined as that concept even is - and the election in Iran still would have been suspicious, with Ahmadinejad still winning. It's likely that conservatives would have then, of course, castigated Obama for not immediately calling down American might, for waffling and bowing down to the Iranians by not acting manly enough or whatever.
It's a dumb, dumb, dumb, line of reasoning that goes nowhere and one that has never been definitively proven correct.
But let's assume it's correct anyway. Let's say that, yes, Obama had the rhetorical power to influence and frighten the Iranian hardliners. His speech in Cairo was on June 4th; the Iranian election was held on June 12th. That's an entire week in which those in power in Iran had to plan their victory. That is plenty of time to realize that ceding Mousavi's victory in his home province and some of the urban centers would still allow the hardliners to boost up Ahmadinejad numbers in rural areas which were much more sympathetic to him. Take a look at this article by Foreign Policy's Karim Sadjadpour. It's a crystallization of how we in the West were thinking about this election: that it was going to be close, that the potential for illegitimacy was going to come in a lengthy Florida2000-style legal battle and not blatant electoral fraud.
The true potential for the hardliners to pull a fast one on Washington, effectively detoothing any criticism and thus giving Iran a political edge, would have been to steal the election in such a way that the rest of the world could conceivably be persuaded that it was legitimate. They could have feasibly done this with a week's time to prepare. The idea that Iran's rulers jumped into conspiratorial action the minute they realized Obama was toning down the harsh language does not hold because the fraud is so blatant.
It is much more likely to believe someone like Juan Cole, who convincingly argues that the hardliners were not driven to commit fraud until initial responses from the polls indicated that Mousavi really did have a good chance at winning. On his blog Cole recreates the "crime scene" of the Iranian election. His most convincing points for electoral fraud are: Mousavi is an Azeri, from the East Azerbaijani Province, the capital of which is Tabriz. Pre-election polling gave Mousavi a rather comfortable edge in urban centers and coupled with the fact that this was his home turf (and, as Cole points out, Azeris have a tendency to vote disproportionately for Azeri candidates) we should have seen Mousavi pull off a relatively easy victory in the city of Tabriz. However, that wasn't the case. Ahmadinejad won it with 57% of the vote. Ahmadinejad also won Tehran by well over 50%. This, too, necessitates a closer look at what happened - which, naturally, the Iranian government is unwilling to do since Khameni waived off the usual three day waiting period and officially declared Ahmadinejad the winner after only a day. This rush to declare victory is not only evidence that there was fraud, but that the fraud was done out of a sense of immediate necessity, not planning. The corollary goal of electoral fraud, remember, is to convince the opposition and the foreigners that everything was OK. There's no better way to silence opposition than the appearance of legitimacy.
And in Cole's article for Salon he explicitly describes what happened as a "last minute and clumsy fraud."
That should put an end to the notion that the Obama administration was somehow responsible for this. It is much more likely that the hardliners expected Ahmadinejad to retain enough of the vote in urban areas that, even if he lost, he could still pick up enough ground in the rural provinces to ensure - an albeit potentially slim - margin of victory. In hindsight, it's pretty clear this was a dangerous gamble on the hardliners' part. As soon as it became clear they lost, they were spurred into action. It had nothing to do with anything Obama did or did not say.
Let's go back to Gary Sick's post now. Is he right to term what happened in Iran, the mullahs and clerical authority maintaining presidential power through Ahmadinejad's re-election, a coup? Certainly, he is not entirely correct in suggesting that this was "intended" to take its opponents by surprise. Rather, I think that Mousavi's initial results surprised them so much that they were spurred into action.
He makes three very good points:
1. The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power.
2. The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.
3. With regard to the United States and the West, nothing would prevent them in principle from dealing with an illegitimate authoritarian government. We do it every day, and have done so for years (the Soviet Union comes to mind). But this election is an extraordinary gift to those who have been most skeptical about President Obama’s plan to conduct negotiations with Iran. Former Bush official Elliott Abrams was quick off the mark, commenting that it is “likely that the engagement strategy has been dealt a very heavy blow.” Two senior Israeli officials quickly urged the world not to engage in negotiations with Iran. Neoconservatives who had already expressed their support for an Ahmadinejad victory now have every reason to be satisfied. Opposition forces, previously on the defensive, now have a perfect opportunity to mount a political attack that will make it even more difficult for President Obama to proceed with his plan.
"The willingness of the regime to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud" also represents their inability to effectively silence the opposition's claims of fraud after the fact. Points 1 and 2 concisely express why I believe that this election is indicative of a "last minute" power grab. These kinds of reactionary political actions, done from an intent to maintain the political status quo, never work as they are intended and have immediate negative consequences for the regime with regards to the appearance of their power. Really successful coup attempts must carry with them an air of legitimacy. The riots in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran prove this. The hardliners in Iran wanted this to play out in the manner of a "velvet revolution" only the result would have been opposite those revolutions in Eastern Europe: those in power would remain in power while effectively disempowering the opposition.
That the Iranian government apparently threw all considerations of legitimacy out the window indicates how much of a threat the opposition represented to them. When power is threatened, the primary response is to maintain power at all costs - one couldn't care less about the appearance of dialogue or typically "free" political processes. As Sick points out the regime may very well have alienated an entire generation of "future Iranian leaders" by holding on to power in this fashion, if that is indeed what they have done. It certainly appears unlikely that Ahmadinejad really did win this election legitimately.
In light of this, one can possibly look at what happened in Iran on Friday as a temporary victory for the hardliners, but it's a victory that comes at a potentially devastating long term cost. These types of power grabs are unsustainable. Khameni and the clerics may very well have seriously undermined the future of the Islamic revolution in Iran by keeping Ahmadinejad in power.
Update: Knowing what is going on at the highest levels of your own country's government is often a difficult thing to do. Knowing what is going on at the highest levels of foreign governments is at times almost impossible. Mideast Analysis gives three potential scenarios for what happened. The first is that Ahmadinejad victory was the result of massive electoral fraud. The third is that he really did win, citing a Guardian article which does convincingly take apart some of the standard Western assumptions regarding this election.
But the second scenario is intriguing, giving this a Pynchonesque air of political paranoia:
Scenario Two: There has been a coup. Ahmadinejad and the security services have taken over. The Supreme Leader has been preserved as a figurehead, but the structures of clerical rule have effectively been gutted and are being replaced by a National Security State. Reports that facebook, twitter, text messaging and foreign TV broadcasts have been blocked, that foreign journalists are being expelled and that large concrete roadblocks (the kind that require a crane to move) have appeared in front of the Interior Ministry all feed a sense that what we are now seeing was pre-planned. Underlying this is the theory that Ahmedinejad and the people around him represent a new generation of Iranian leadership. He and his colleagues were young revolutionaries in 1979. Now in their 50s they have built careers inside the Revolutionary Guard and the other security services. They may be committed to the Islamic Republic as a concept, but they are not part of its clerical aristocracy and are now moving to push the clerics into an essentially ceremonial role. This theory in particular seems to be gaining credibility rapidly among professional Iran-watchers outside of the country.
While I admit to not even being close to an expert on Iran, I am fairly confident in assuming that this type of scenario is incredibly rare. In any event, things could come to light which prove or disprove it, but it is a fascinating thing to consider.
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