Give me some real evidence, here

"There can be no question that the June...Iranian presidential election was stolen."

How do we know this? "Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry...have REPORTEDLY issued an open letter saying as much." Don't ask to see the open letter, of course.

Not convinced? How about this:

"Government polls...that were leaked..." (don't ask who leaked them - and don't ask to see the exact numbers) "ALLEGEDLY showed ten- to twenty-point leads for Mousavi a week before the election; earlier polls had them neck and neck, with Mousavi leading by one percent, and Karoubi just behind."

And, of course, then there's history:

"low turnout has ALWAYS favored conservatives in Iranian elections, while high turnout favors reformers."

Lots of speculation, alleged polls, and reported letters here. Not a lot of fact. I'd like to believe Ahmadinejad lost but we still aren't seeing any real facts that prove it.

Iran and the domino effect

It's hard to judge how much more Iran could really affect the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (much would certainly depend on how much damage strikes inflicted) but it would be safe to bet that oil prices would be greatly affected if nothing else. And high energy prices are more likely to hurt us and help our current set of rivals than anything else (both in terms of international standing and economic hardships).

Interesting stuff

Defector spied on Iran for years-News-World-Middle East-TimesOnline

There are quite a few interesting nuggets in this one:

A Revolutionary Guard commander in Lebanon during the training and organization of Hezbollah.

Asgari’s escape has provoked alarm in the Iranian regime. “Asgari is a gold mine for western intelligence,” said an Israeli defence source. “We have been following him for years, especially since the late 1980s when he was commander of the Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon.”

The possibility that he was recruited by Israeli Intelligence but believed he had been recruited by some other Western service.

It is unclear which intelligence organisation he was spying for. “He probably was working for Mossad but believed he was working for a European intelligence agency,” said an Israeli defence source.

The daring escape.

A daring getaway via Damascus was organised by western intelligence agencies after it became clear that his cover was about to be blown. Iran’s notorious secret service, the Vavak, is believed to have suspected that he was a high-level mole.

I guess the more important question will become just how much did he know about Iran's connections to foreign terror cells - and how recent is his information. If he's been operationally marginalized since making the mistake of pointing out corruption within the Rev Guards, his information might not be any more current than what Israel has been tracking already.

For some reason this one feels more unique than the sort of spy vs. spy operations that punctuated the Cold War years. Here we're talking about a deeper cultural/religious divide between entities - or at least most of us imagine that to be so. For an Iranian to defect to the West - outside his region, his religion, and his culture seems very unusual.

Interesting sentiment...

Iranian President to Visit Saudi Arabia - New York Times

“They know that the best thing that can happen to Iran at this stage is for the Americans to attack them.”

This whacky world we live in

So how does one read the presidential election in Iran? Is it a conservative "silent majority" speaking out in favor of religious conservatism? Is it the opposite...a first-time election based more on class issues than religious? The new President-elect is, after all, Iran's first non-clerical winner of the high office. Is it a sign that the election was stolen by conservative forces operating behind the scenes - and perhaps at odds with the Ayatollah and the Guardian Council? Or is it largely an empty issue since power remains in the hands of the Guardian Council and Iran's Supreme Leader? What can I say? I've seen indications of all these possibilities.

I'll tell you the trend I'm starting to see across much of the world being left behind by globalism (Iran included...). It's a return to populist candidates appealing to the masses with a sort of pseudo-socialism wrapped in nationalism. We see it in Central and South America, we see it in the Middle East, and we see it in even in the French electorate's refusal of the EU constitution. An interesting dynamic...one thought to be largely dead after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and the Eastern European Communist regimes.

Where will it lead? How much will it stifle the continued growth of globalization? How much will it, in the end, spark more immigration to higher growth countries even as the populist leaders of countries being abandoned swear they are operating in the best interests of the common man?

Tags:

Iran elections
Populism
Nationalism
Globalization