Eyes on the Iranian Election
About the Iranian elections:
The supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem to be coming out in equal force to match the protests of the Mir-Hossein Mousavi supporters. To me, even if the election was a fraud and the outcome was more like Ahmadinejad 50.5% vs. Mousavi 49.5%, that’s still millions of people who supported Ahmadinejad. While Mousavi sounds like the better candidate to me, and Ayatollah Montazeri sounds better still as a Supreme Leader than Ali Khamenei, ignoring the strong support behind Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would be no more democratic than a corrupt election.
It sounds to me like the changes in Iran will have to be piecemeal – a re-education of the people to understand what is wrong with the Islamic Republic as it is, so that eventually someone like A-Jad would not even be a contender.
At the same time I realize that maybe the results could’ve been inverted, with Mousavi the overwhelming winner, but…who really knows? While I’d like to say I support the “Iranian people”, I don’t think they all feel one way, and I don’t know how they feel in any case.
Just because the dissenters are the ones twittering and blogging doesn’t mean that they represent the majority. The older and/or less technologically savvy – which could include the poor who simply do not have access to the internet – may not support Mousavi. They may not support Ahmadinejad, either.
To be clear, although I have defended him in other posts, because I think that he is misrepresented in Western media, I do not support him in any capacity as a politician, and I am as wary of him and his government as I am of my own. I think politicians as a species are a corrupt sort, and therefore I do not trust them.
I am also skeptical of pro-Western sentiments coming out of Iran, not because I support the anti-Western conservatives and extremists, but because I am wary of propaganda, and wary of any attempt to exploit the wishes of the Iranian people to bolster Western interests.
In summary, my stance is going to remain neutral. It is not for anyone in the West to say what the Iranian people want, since we just plain do not know. President Obama, I think, has taken precisely the right stand in the matter. For now, we wait. And watch.
I think the whole idea that dissent in Iran has lasted as long as it has, despite the results, is a testament that change may be on the way in Iran. A-Jad may pull off the decisive win after all, maybe not, but the fact that such a large number were for the opponent and that the country may be pushing for reform makes Obamas actions all the better here: let the Irans sort out their own election.