It’s becoming increasingly clear that this was a palace coup, a palace coup in the style of Peru’s Fujimori. The Guardian Council has to accept the election results. All eyes are now on Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has apparently just resigned as chairman of the Expediency Council. He was the sole member of the original “yaran” of Khomeini, or Khomeini’s original team, with power and influence. Hossein Mousavi is under house arrest.[…]It is, however, a mistake to think that any restoration of the election results will occur. The battle is elsewhere now and while the obvious theft of the election has enraged and disappointed millions, the action now is to demonstrate that folks aren’t just going to take it. This was clearly a bad strategy on the part of the leadership as they could have easily given another 10 to 20 years of energy to the system by sacrificing the current president. Legitimacy, much debated by social scientists, actually turns out to matter. It’s not just force that rules, though that appears to be the case right now in Iran. Short-term calculations (get rid of the old generation of leadership for a new breed of revolutionary) will prove to be disastrous. Nine-year old sons accompanied their fathers to vote, standing in line for hours. That disappointment will not be easily remedied — it will never be healed.
If they were just going to steal the election, why bother having one at all? Why cause strife when the population realizes that they’ve been denied what they’d been promised? Though, I’m surprised that anyone thought this election would mean anything but more of the same to the Iranian people. No matter who wins the presidency, Iran is still ruled by the Supreme Leader and the the Council of Guardians and no election will ever end their rule. How can Iran ever have elections that result in true democracy when they can never vote out those who hold all the power?Here are some protest videos outside of Sharif University:You can follow the action at Iran09 and allahpundit on Twitter. Evidently, you get much better coverage at Twitter than on CNN. (Maybe they should hire allahpundit)And there’s criticism for Obama’s silence on the election results as well:
Mitt Romney today said that the election in Iran was a “fraud” and called on Barack Obama to denounce the Iranian regime. Joe Lieberman did, too, saying: “I would hope that President Obama and members of both parties in Congress will speak out, loudly and clearly, about what is happening in Iran right now, and unambiguously express their solidarity with the brave Iranians who went to the polls in the hope of change and who are now looking to the outside world for strength and support.”
I thought this was pretty weird:
Ahmadynezad now calls himself “seyed” (bloodline of prophet mohammad) & wearing a green shawl on state TV!
Evidently, green was Mousavi’s campaign color.
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