“They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.”

TO BE NOTED: From the NY Times:

"Reverberations as Door Slams on Hope of Change

Amir Hesami/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran flashed victory signs on Saturday in Qum, south of Tehran

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Iranian Protesters Fill Streets After Election Result

Memo From Tehran

Reverberations as Door Slams on Hope of Change

By BILL KELLER

TEHRAN — It is impossible to know for sure how much the ostensible re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the preference of an essentially conservative Iranian public and how much, as opposition voters passionately believe, it is the imposed verdict of a fundamentally authoritarian regime.

But for those who dreamed of a gentler Iran, Saturday was a day of smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy centers of Western capitals.

Iranians who hoped for a bit more freedom, a better managed economy and a less reviled image in the world wavered between protest and despair on Saturday.

On the streets around Fatemi Square, near the headquarters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, riot police officers dressed in RoboCop gear roared down the sidewalks on motorcycles to disperse and intimidate the clots of pedestrians who had gathered to share rumors and dismay.

“Another four years of dictatorship,” a voter muttered. “This is a coup d’état,” several others agreed. Some women wept openly. Some talked of “mutiny.” Others were more cynical.

“It was just a movie,” said Hussein Gharibi, a 54-year-old juice vendor, scoffing at those who had gotten their hopes up. “They were all just players in a movie.”

Far off, President Obama and other Western leaders who had seen a better relationship with Iran as potentially helpful in resolving the problems of Afghanistan, Iraq and nuclear proliferation faced the prospect of doing business with a man who, in addition to being a Holocaust-denying hard-liner, now stands suspected in a sham election.

There were some important constituencies that took satisfaction from the outcome.

Domestically, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to the fears of the more pious and poor who had found change unsettling. This included those alarmed by the days of political street carnival preceding the election and those (not just men) put off by Mr. Moussavi’s attention to the traditional, second-class role of women in this paternalistic quasi-theocracy.

They were joined by the civil servants, police officers and pensioners who all enjoyed the incumbent’s oil-financed generosity to his base, by those who relished his name-naming attack on corruption and by those who took pride in his defiance of the West.

Outside Iran, the result was comforting to hawks in Israel and some Western capitals who had feared that a more congenial Iranian president would cause the world to let down its guard against a country galloping toward nuclear weapons capability. (Mr. Moussavi, while promising a more conciliatory foreign policy, did not disavow the country’s nuclear-processing project, which Iran insists is for civilian ends alone.)

“In fact, Moussavi will be more difficult to deal with, because he will be nicer,” one skeptical Western diplomat said on the eve of the vote.

Among downcast Iranian journalists and academics, the chatter focused on why the interlocking leadership of clerics, military officers and politicians, without whose acquiescence little of importance happens, decided to stick with Mr. Ahmadinejad. Did they panic at the unexpected passion for change that arose in the closing weeks of the Moussavi campaign? Did Mr. Moussavi go too far in his promises of women’s rights, civil freedom and a more conciliatory approach to the West? Or was the surge an illusion after all, the product of wishful thinking?

The optimists in Iran and abroad have to ask themselves whether the joyful ruckus that filled the streets represented a new popular force or just an opportunity to let off steam. While Iran is not quite the closed society many imagine — it is a nation of text messagers and Facebook users, with access to Persian-language BBC broadcasts and other independent voices — it is still a controlled society.

On the street, the speculation focused more on how the election was manipulated, as many voters insisted it must have been for Mr. Ahmadinejad to score such a preposterous margin of victory.

One version (from somebody’s brother who supposedly knew someone inside) had it that vote counters simply were ordered to doctor the numbers: “Make that 1,000 for Ahmadinejad a 3,000.”

Others pointed out that the ballots seemed designed to lead opposition voters astray. Voters were obliged to choose a candidate and fill in a code. Though Mr. Moussavi was candidate No. 4, the code No. 44 signified Mr. Ahmadinejad.

One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks, purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members from around the country.

“They didn’t rig the vote,” claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. “They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.”

The government on Saturday insisted that the election was aboveboard and made it ominously clear that it would have little patience with anyone who questioned the purity of Iranian democracy.

It was far from clear what recourse the opposition had left.

Mr. Moussavi, who disappeared amid rumors that he was under house arrest or worse, sent word that there would be no turning back, but he did not say how he or his followers should challenge the outcome.

The text messaging that is the nervous system of the opposition was shut down, along with universities, Web sites and newspapers the government regarded as hostile. Mr. Moussavi was not allowed a platform on Saturday and barely managed to get out a communiqué calling the election “a magic show.”

Although there were bursts of defiance that were forcibly subdued, there was also a palpable fear; on Saturday, unlike on Friday, few opposition voters would let their names be used.

“By the evening, people will pour into the streets,” predicted one young woman, from inside the hood of her black chador. “But Ahmadinejad will become president by force.”

"I think it's a neck-and-neck race (between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi)," said one Tehran analyst who asked not to be named.

TO BE NOTED: From Reuters:

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Countdown to Iran vote
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Reformists hope Iran vote will unseat Ahmadinejad

Thu Jun 11, 2009 4:32pm EDT

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's presidential candidates ended a hard-fought and bitter campaign on Thursday, the eve of an election which reformists hope will prevent hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning a second term.

The campaign has seen unprecedented political mudslinging and large rallies in Tehran by supporters of moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi, who a senior Revolutionary Guard officer accused of attempting a "velvet revolution."

Friday's highly charged election could set the tone for Iran's relations with the West, concerned over its nuclear ambitions, and analysts say a victory for Mousavi could increase the prospect for Western investment in the Islamic Republic.

But for Iranians it is a chance to judge Ahmadinejad's economic record and his austere Islamist social agenda.

"I think it's a neck-and-neck race (between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi)," said one Tehran analyst who asked not to be named. "It's difficult to think either of the two candidates will get above 50 percent tomorrow."

If none of the four candidates wins an outright majority on Friday the two leading candidates will go into a June 19 run-off, which the analyst said Mousavi had a good chance of winning.

But others predict a victory for the incumbent, based on his popularity among the rural poor. "Ahmadinejad has a lot of support throughout the country," said Hamid Najafi, editor-in-chief of the conservative Kayhan International.

Mousavi supporters, wearing his bright green campaign colors, have poured onto the capital's streets for festive, nightly rallies unseen since the election 12 years ago of reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami.

Ahmadinejad supporters have held huge demonstrations of their own, expressing support for a leader who has handed petrodollars to the poor and defied Western pressure to suspend Iran's nuclear program.

The vibrant and largely good-natured rallies have contrasted with bitter political exchanges.

Ahmadinejad's opponents accused him of lying about Iran's economy, hit by rising prices and unemployment, while Ahmadinejad has enraged the powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- a Mousavi supporter -- by accusing him of corruption.

Rafsanjani wrote a public letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging him to rein in Ahmadinejad, and met Khamenei on Tuesday to express fears the election will be rigged, a leading moderate politician told Reuters.

"Rafsanjani urged the leader to use his authority to make sure the election was a clean and healthy one," he said.

STREET DANCING

Mousavi, 67, an architect who has been out of the political spotlight for two decades, is backed by reformists and conservatives disenchanted with Ahmadinejad.

His outspoken wife has broken with convention to campaign openly and vocally alongside her husband, helping draw support from women and Iranians too young to remember his premiership in the early years of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

His campaign has released a surge of youthful energy in Tehran. On Wednesday night women daringly threw off their headscarves, obligatory in Islamic Iran, and danced openly with men in the street -- in a direct challenge to 30 years of strict clerical rule.

But analysts say a Mousavi victory would be unlikely to trigger seismic change in a country where major policy issues are decided by the supreme leader, Khamenei.

Mousavi advocates detente with the West, a policy which could offer hope for progress in relations with the new U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, who has offered to engage with Iran if Tehran "unclenches its fist."

Mousavi rejects western demands that Iran halt uranium enrichment but says the dispute should be resolved through talks with the West, which fears Iran's nuclear work could be used to make bombs. Iran, the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter, says its nuclear program is peaceful.

The United Nations has imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to stop enriching uranium, including freezing assets of Iranian companies accused of involvement in the nuclear program.

"A Mousavi victory would likely... lead some investors to begin exploring the Iranian market as a possible medium-term option," said Cliff Kupchan of Eurasia risk consultancy.

(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Diana Abdallah)"

But the president’s rally was overmatched in turn by a larger, simultaneous demonstration by Mr. Moussavi’s followers

TO BE NOTED: From the NY Times:

Enlarge This Image

Ben Curtis/Associated Press

Supporters displayed posters of reformist candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi in downtown Tehran on Monday.

"Huge Campaign Rallies Snarl Tehran

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN — A pair of sprawling demonstrations here brought the capital of Iran virtually to a standstill on Monday, with followers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main electoral challenger struggling to demonstrate their street following ahead of presidential elections on Friday.

The demonstrations were the largest gatherings here in more than a decade, veteran political observers said.

Iranian elections always bring a loosening of the rules on public speech and behavior, but many say this year’s election is different, in part because of the social crackdown of the past four years under Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“What’s happening now is more than what should happen before an election,” said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a political commentator and former director of several reformist newspapers. “This is an expression of protest and dissatisfaction by people. They are venting their frustration and feeling very powerful.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s campaign organized a huge rally in a prayer hall in central Tehran on Monday afternoon, where tens of thousands of chanting supporters gathered apparently in an effort to match the raucous outdoor rallies that are being held nightly by followers of Mir Hussein Moussavi, his leading challenger for the presidency.

But the president’s rally was overmatched in turn by a larger, simultaneous demonstration by Mr. Moussavi’s followers, who formed a human sea of people that blocked traffic for miles along one of Tehran’s main boulevards.

The rallies underscored the unusual passions being aroused by the campaign, in which the leading candidates have exchanged accusations that are extraordinarily fierce for Iranian politics. There have been scattered street clashes in recent days, but the police have generally not intervened, in part — analysts say — because they do not want to unleash protests by the unruly and mostly young crowds.

The rallies appear to have surprised and unsettled the authorities, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message broadcast on state television, warned against any further escalation.

“I don’t want to comment about people coming onto the streets, but they should not turn into confrontation or clashes between supporters of the candidates,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

Monday’s rally by Mr. Moussavi’s supporters was motivated partly by anger at Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose campaign rescheduled its own rally in a way that displaced an event by Mr. Moussavi. He had planned to give a speech in the same prayer hall where Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared Monday. Instead, Mr. Moussavi’s followers gathered in a long chain running from the south of the capital to the north, most of them wearing sashes of green, his campaign’s signature color.

The campaign has included fierce spoken exchanges among the candidates, especially during the presidential debates of the past week, in which Mr. Ahmadinejad has accused leading figures of the 1979 revolution of corruption.

On Monday, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-time president and one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s chief targets, defended himself for the first time.

“Unfortunately, the course of the election has become tainted with all sorts of lies and slanderous statements,” Mr. Rafsanjani said.

Although the harsh criticisms have shocked many Iranians, they seem to have played well with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s followers, who view them as a natural part of his populist campaign against the rich and the corrupt.

As it happened, the crowds at Mr. Ahmadinejad’s rally were so thick that he was not able to get through to the podium in time to speak, and many of his supporters left early. At the same time, not far away, thousands of Mr. Moussavi’s supporters crowded the streets, creating traffic jams so heavy that the blocked roads were full of people walking home through the stopped cars.

For weeks, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s opponents have been saying they are concerned that the government will rig the vote in his favor. On Monday, a group of Interior Ministry employees released a letter saying a senior cleric close to Mr. Ahmadinejad had authorized fixing the vote in his favor, several reformist Web sites reported."