If the liberal media are to be trusted, it looks like Iran could be on the verge of ditching a corrupt leader bent on decimating his country in favor of one perhaps less inclined to do that.
Anyone got any idea who/what his challenger is though? He hasn’t officially played the game in 20 years. Is he the sort that would continue to kowtow to the Ayatollah or might he begin to separate mosque & state? He sounds to me like an academic who has little time for right wing BS. Maybe he’ll go bowling with the Obama-lama.
I’ll move this to Great Debates in the hope of getting some more responses.
The leader of Iran is the Ayatollah, along with his council lead Iran. The president has a role to play, but I think it’s more administrative. In the case of Ahmadinejad this also included a lot of running his mouth.
If you don’t kowtow to the Ayatollah, you don’t get to run in the election. We hear a lot about various Iranian politicians being reformers and others being hardliners, but I don’t think anybody’s pushing for the kind of secular government you see in the West.
True, but a secular Iran wouldn’t be Iran and I don’t know that I’d really want to see one. Takes all kinds to make a world and all that. But I think even a piously devout Iran can interact with the rest of the world if it’s international face isn’t continuously vomiting hateful bile.
I don’t expect to see a secular Iran any time soon, but I’d be happy to see one that loses some of the extremist qualities the current government has.
Early reports indicate that turnout is huge and the economy is the big issue, both of which are probably very bad news for Ahmadinejad since he’s faced criticism for doing a bad job with the economy.
Yes, those in the know have been saying that a large turnout favors Mousavi. He sounds good to me; he’s been saying that Ahmadinejad’s policy of supporting extremists, Holocaust denial, etc., is stupid and serves only to isolate Iran rather than serving Iran’s interests. However, even if he wins, he will be severely limited in what he can do–everybody was all excited when Khatami was elected, but he was basically hamstrung by the Guardian Council. For example:
I, personally, would love to see a secular Iran. It would be like having another Turkey in the Middle East. But as long as the Ayatollah and the Guardian Council are the ones actually holding the reins, it’s not going to happen, no matter who wins the presidency.
Folks, let’s remember there are about a zillion Ayatollahs running around, as well as two dozen or so Grand Ayatollahs. Ayatollah is a religious ranking, not a governmental one. Khamenei’s official government title as per the Iranian constitution is actually Rahbar - just plain “Leader.” More usually rendered as the Boris and Natashaesque “Supreme Leader.”
Yeah, don’t think that Iran is going to become more secular really, but it might become more moderate a la Khatami. It’s interesting, I think that when the US has a more liberal less belligerent leader Iran follows suit. We had Khatami under Clinton and bulldog Ahmedinejad during Bush, could it change so that a more moderate one to match Obama comes into play?
Moussavi is declaring victory over there, but I don’t know when the results will be final or even how reliable the counting is. If he gets 50+% of the vote, he wins; if he only gets a plurality there will be a runoff between him and the next-highest finisher, presumably Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad is a raving nut job and his economic policies have been entirely ineffective in Iran, but I don’t know where the “corrupt” charge comes from. He’s not been nabbed with his hand in the public till. He has not hesitated to accuse others of that, however.
Mousavi was fairly vague in his campaign. I think he positioned himself as Not-Ahamdinejad and figured the public’s hatred of the president would sweep him into office. The country is still under the thumb of Khamenei no matter who wins the election today. The best we can hope is that Mousvai turns out to be a kind of Gorbachev who brings down the system from the inside by giving the people an inch who then take a mile. This is maybe not the most likely outcome, but it can’t be discounted.
My fingers are crossed for Mousavi. I think the Obama administration would feel less pressure not to engage Iran directly under a new and ostensibly reform-minded President, regardless of where the power actually lies.
The flip side of that is that when Ahmadinejad was elected, the Guardian Council was able to stop him from doing whatever harebrained extremist crap he wanted to do. So I’m not sure it’s entirely a bad thing. Some rural areas of Iran seem to be a breeding ground for deeply scary extremists.
I don’t think the Ayatollahs in Iran are as batshit as we like to think of them. They seem to sincerely want what’s best for their country, and they believe that Islam is the path to that. When Bush was threatening their borders from both sides after they’d offered aid to us, well they needed a bulldog, and Ahmadinejad filled that role nicely.
The Ayatollahs are not a monolithic block. At least one of them is under house arrest in Iran right now. They want what’s best for Iran, but they don’t agree on what that is. Besides, you can want what’s best for your country and still be awful. I’m sure Hitler wanted what was best for Germany.
Both sides are claiming victory right now. Ahmedinejad’s only hope to win this thing seems to have been to hope turnout in the urban centers was low . By all accounts those areas produced a huge turnout. If Ahmedinejad steals this election there will be trouble in Iran’s cities.
Reports are that with 70-some% of the vote counted, Ahmadinejad has 65% of the vote. That’s a bit of a surprise, and I would expect the reaction within Iran to be interesting.
Maybe they’re due for another revolution. It’s been 30 years, and if the election gives the impression of being stolen . . . I said interesting, didn’t I?
In fairness, I must say, that (given the fact the the religious authorities approve the candidates) vote counting in Iran has seemed to be honest since the Khomeini revolution.
The only ones who are impressed with this charade are the gullible western journalists who believe that they’re witnessing an authentic democratic election.
You’re surrounded by it. It’s the same media that informs and misinforms your idiot President and his idiot advisers, judging by this piece of nonsense uttered by Obama: VOANEWS.COM.