The Western media continues to deny the truth

about the Iranian presidential election one year on

Reza Esfandiari Yousef Bozorgmehr

esfandiarireza@ymail.com

It is now a year since the 10th presidential election in Iran was held and the
accusations of a fraudulent poll made at the time, along with questions
regarding the legitimacy of the government, simply won’t go away. Despite
the fact that no hard evidence of manipulation has ever emerged or been
identified, and the results of three independent post-election surveys are
strongly congruent with the official figures, a chorus of deniers continues to
insist on a “stolen election”. They maintain that the Iranian government lacks
any right to rule and that the people need to be helped to overthrow it.

From the very outset, the corporate-run western media denounced the result
as a “preposterous sham” and largely disregarded the views of real experts on
Iranian politics, such as the independent-minded Dr Kaveh Afrasiabi, who
advised on caution and a more methodical analysis.

Indeed, the result of the poll would appear to be unique in the history of
elections given that the political pundits have decided to malign and dismiss
the outcome outright, even though there is ample information available that
can verify its authenticity. This is especially so in Iran where 25 nationwide
elections have been held since the 1979 revolution and the outcome of none
of them, as far as the count of the vote is concerned, has ever been seriously
disputed by the competing sides.

Recently, with the arrival of the anniversary of the election and calls for fresh
protests in Iran, the media is back to its policy of regime demonisation and is
unreservedly speaking of the election of yesteryear as a travesty of justice.
Robert Parry, a seasoned author and reporter, remarks that the press in the
United States routinely describes the election as "fraudulent," "rigged" or
"stolen" but with nothing substantive to show in support of this claim. It is even
more absurd given the nature of the victory – a margin of 11 million votes.
This would be on a scale unlike any stolen election such as that of the US
presidential contest of 2000, secured by just a few hundred votes in Florida.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, veteran journalist Roger Cohen

has recalled his time in Iran covering the election, describing it as resembling
a “putsch”[1]. Sir Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Iran and a
fellow of Chatham House (the same organisation which released a

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 “preliminary analysis” attempting to smear the official voting figures), has
referred to the June poll as an “electoral coup” orchestrated by the
Revolutionary Guard and those around Ayatollah Khamenei [2].

The British Establishment press has been even more scathing. Murdoch-
owned The Times of London excoriated the Iranian government in a leading
article, declaring it to be “corrupt, ruthless and illegitimate” and that it had
retained power only due to a “stolen election”[3]. Meanwhile the Daily
Telegraph was even more frank in its assessment, decrying the election result
as a “blatant act of fraud”[4]. The outrage over Iran, but relative silence of the
media over genuine cases of widespread rigging that returned Hamid Karzai
to power in Afghanistan, is especially conspicuous.

Of course, the claims of fraud were first made by the defeated opponents of
President Ahmadinejad within Iran. One of those, Mehdi Karroubi, has again
insisted that the result did not in any way reflect the count of the vote [5] and
were arranged in advance. One then wonders why he participated in the
election if he thought it was going to be rigged so brazenly.

However the western media, together with organisations affiliated to the

opposition “green movement” such as Kelly Niknejad’s “Tehran Bureau”,
continue to reject the verdict and will of the majority of the Iranian people
merely out of deference to their own contempt of President Ahmadinejad.

Academics, journalists and scholars who should know better, have engaged
in what is essentially an hysterical denial of all of the available evidence. The
following is a point-by-point response to all of the spurious and often
contradicting claims made by those who argue that the poll was rigged – a
fuller treatment is given by Eric Brill whose authoritative work is referred to
extensively [6]. This is not going to change any hardened opinions, because it
has come down to a matter of personal conviction over reasoned argument,
but it does expose the inanity of the conspiracy theorists and deniers.

1) The result was announced too quickly for a hand-counted election

Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment was one of the first to make
this claim. Appearing on CNN, he stated that it was impossible for the
preliminary results, numbering 5 million of the 39 million ballots cast, to have
been hand-counted in the space of just 2 hours [7]. It is odd that he should
have thought this considering that the result of the parliamentary election in
Lebanon, which occurred only a few days earlier, had been determined within
hours of the polls closing. Also, the second round of the 2005 presidential
election in Iran was called before midnight, based on the margin of the lead.

Moreover, an analysis of the results of the 45,632 ballot boxes used shows
that some contained as few as 13 votes. How long would it have taken to
count these? Not long. With each polling station independently reporting to

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 the Interior Ministry their results electronically, this is simply not a valid or
logical argument in support of electoral fraud.

It is also interesting that in the Iranian municipal elections of 2006, the results
were delayed due to the sheer number of candidates standing and many in
Iran suspected that the Interior Ministry was spending time massaging the
figures. This turned out not to have been an instance of paranoia. The speed
of results in this election actually serves to negate any possibility of artificial
manipulation at the central level.

2) The results appear to have been made up and predetermined

Following on from the previous claim is that the election results weren’t based
on the tallies of the tens of thousands of individual ballot boxes at all, but were
rather manufactured in advance by the authorities who had anticipated defeat
for Ahmadinejad. However, Mousavi’s camp had initially reacted to the
election result by insisting that the the vote tallies had simply been switched
during the night by the Interior Ministry and that it was in fact Mousavi who
had received over 60% of the vote [8].

When the disaggregated data was announced this claim became untenable
and the notion of complete fabrication was bandied instead. Dr Ali Ansari of St
Andrew’s university, reflecting this, stated that the votes cast hadn’t even
been counted and the figures published amounted to being “magic numbers”
[9] ; likewise, Farideh Farhi of Hawaii University asserted they had been
“pulled out of a hat” [10].

Journalists who were in Iran at the time, like Scott Peterson of the Christian
Science Monitor and Roger Cohen of the New York Times, also gave voice to
this, the latter proclaiming the election to be a “tragic joke”. He wrote this
apparently having talked to an unidentified Ministry of Interior worker, and no
doubt Mousavi supporter, who said that the numbers were being generated
behind closed doors.

This was followed up in a report earlier this year where an Iranian diplomat
assigned to Norway, and who has since defected, remarked that he had been
asked to change the tally of the votes cast by Iranian expatriates which were
overwhelmingly in favour of Mousavi.

All of this is, of course, utter nonsense. Firstly, a cursory look at the data from
all of the European embassies does shows that the relatively few votes cast
by Iranian expatriates were indeed heavily supportive of Mousavi. In Sweden,
Germany, France, the United Kingdom, as well as Norway, Mousavi received
75-85% of the vote [11].

The idea that a few thousand ballots needed changing is patently ridiculous. It
was predicted that Mousavi would easily carry the expatriate vote, whose
numbers were never going to be big enough to sway the result of a decisive

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election. Martin Fletcher of The Times of London also asserted (based on Dr
Ali Ansari’s comments) that the UK embassy had reported that 70% of the
ballots were for Ahmadinejad when the exact opposite was true. An official
complaint was made to the British press watchdog and The Times was asked
to remove this misinformation [12].

It is important to realise that the Interior Ministry’s role in all this was simply to
collate and tabulate all of the data it received from the various polling stations
across the country where the ballot counting was conducted at a local level.
Moreover, these results were observed and certified by over 40,000 election
monitors for Mousavi, not one of whom has since come forward claiming that
any of the tallies for the 45,632 ballot boxes, whose results were released
within 10 days of the election, was in any way incorrect or that their signatures
were fraudulent. This in itself would effectively nullify any notion that the
figures were simply concocted by the central government.

3) The results were essentially uniform and there were no regional

variations in the vote, including in the home provinces of the
opposing candidates

Again, this claim made by Roger Cohen and others has no factual basis. Of
the 366 districts (shahrestan) in the country, 47 were won by one of the other
3 candidates, along with even more sub-districts (bakhsh). Mousavi did very
well in Azeri, Kurdish ,and particularly Baluchi, areas of the country, winning
81% of the vote in Khash. He also won his home district of Shabestar as well
as four of the major cities of Iran (Tehran, Yazd, Ardabil and Zahedan). He
also narrowly lost to Ahmadinejad in Tabriz by a few thousand votes.
Ahmadinejad did win the Azeri vote overall, but it is truly an absurd thing to
suggest, as Karim Sadjadpour did, that Azeris would have supported Mousavi
in the same way that blacks supported Obama in 2008 (with around 95%).

Also, in the first round of the 2005, the only Azeri candidate, Mohsen
Mehralizadeh, won a plurality of the vote (29%) in the Azeri provinces but fell
well short of a majority. Compounded to this, The Terror Free Tomorrow
(TFT) pre-election scientific poll showed that Azeris favoured Ahmadinejad
over Mousavi by a large margin [13]. Sadjadpour’s argument, as with the
speed of the ballot counting, is completely unintelligent and baseless.

For his part, Mohsen Rezai did well in the few ethnic Bakhtiyari-majority areas
of Iran, winning in his hometown of Lali. Even though Mehdi Karroubi did
relatively poorly in his home province of Lorestan, he did 25 times better in his
native town of Aligodarz than he did nationwide. An analysis of the ballot box
data shows that support for Ahmadinejad varied right across the board from
0% to 100% of ballots cast, as expected from a natural process. Therefore,
this is just an argument from ignorance rather than anything else.

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 4) The turnout was greater than the number of eligible voters in
many districts

Another inane claim is that turnout exceeded that for the electoral roll in many
places and that this is indicative of ballot stuffing. However, this would appear
to then invalidate the claim that the numbers were simply made up since it
implies that vote tallies were inflated by physical means. The issue really
amounts to nothing anyway when one realises that Iranians can vote
anywhere in the country so long as they have a proper ID card.

In June, many Iranians from the big cities holiday in the Caspian littoral
region – it is therefore no surprise that many districts in the northern province
of Mazandaran recorded turnouts in surpassing the census. Indeed, in 1997
when Khatami was elected, this phenomenon was also observed. It is also
worth pointing out that in the affluent Tehran suburb of Shemiran, which
Mousavi won with 63% of the vote, the turnout was several times in excess of
the census numbers due to the number of commuters and visitors from other
parts of the province or country casting ballots there.

5) The high turnout should have favoured the challenger, and not
the incumbent

This is just an assumption. It ignores the fact that the election campaign was
the most exciting ever, and that the populace was galvanised by the televised
debates and felt that, unlike in previous contests, they had a reason to vote
and could identify with one of the candidates. It is also widely acknowledged
that Ahmadinejad won the debates and that this clearly influenced the
outcome of the election in his favour [14]. Indeed, it would appear to have
completely arrested any “surge” in support for Mousavi prior to polling day.

6) The results defy all historical trends and don’t make any sense

Quite what this means is unclear. Every sitting Iranian president has easily
won re-election in the history of the Islamic Republic. The huge media
exposure afforded to the incumbent greatly maximises his chances of
electoral success. It has been suggested that the conservatives are simply not
popular enough for one of their candidates to muster such support. However,
this assumes that the situation that was true of the Khatami era would persist
to the present time when all of the evidence shows that the Iranian people
have regularly switched their voting patterns.

For example, Lorestan province voted for a conservative candidate in 1997, a

reformist in 2001, again for a reformist in the first round of the 2005 election
and then a conservative in the second round. The political preferences of the
Iranian people, especially in presidential contests, is essentially candidate-
based; moreover, Ahmadinejad did his best to project the impression, at least,

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that he was an independent populist and nationalist figure, and not one tied to
any particular faction.

7) Statistical studies indicate that widespread fraud occurred

The answer to this is simply, no. A number of statistical studies were

conducted in the immediate aftermath of the election, all purporting to show
evidence of fraud. None of these survived the test of serious scrutiny. The
most comprehensive mathematical analysis, including all of the claims made,
was authored by Thomas Lotze who found nothing suspicious with the
numbers themselves [15].

Walter Mebane, an expert in electoral forensics, offered a mixed picture. He

admitted that there were no significant distortions with the figures for Mousavi,
but suggested that there was a correlation between the proportion of votes for
Ahmadinejad and a declining proportion of invalid ballots – he concluded this
could be inferred as evidence for ballot stuffing.

However, this is by no means uniform. In the southeastern province of Sistan

va Baluchestan, Mousavi won the counts of twice as many ballot boxes with
fewer than one invalid vote, than did Ahmadinejad. Therefore, to follow
Mebane’s reasoning, Mousavi was assisted by fraudulent means in this
province! Rather, Mousavi tended to do best in metropolitan and ethnic
regions whereas Ahmadinejad received rock solid support in heavily Persian
and rural areas. The former have a tendency to record more protest votes
(particularly in places like Kordestan) than does the latter, and this adequately
explains any observed relationship.

8) The huge demonstrations and violent crackdown proved a “coup

regime” stole the election

This is perhaps the most popular claim made by deniers. It seeks to invalidate
the election result because of the numbers seen demonstrating against the
result and regarding what happened in the ensuing unrest. Firstly, it is worth
realising that Mousavi won decisively in the city of Tehran and that the bulk of
the election protests were centred in the capital. Therefore, it was no surprise
to find so many of his supporters visibly out on the streets demonstrating.

Furthermore, some of the numbers cited for the green rallies are clearly
exaggerated. For example, the biggest demonstration on the 15th of June
actually involved 300,000 people [16] whereas it was claimed that 3,000,000
attended (absurdly, about 3/5 of the adult population of the city). Also, news
media like the BBC deliberately played down the numbers attending the
victory speech of Ahmadinejad or the Friday prayers sermon of Ayatollah
Khamenei on the 19th, at one point taking images from a pro-government rally
and audaciously claiming the people present were Mousavi supporters [17].

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As regards the violence, it is worth recalling that even the western media did
not deny the fact that riotous elements, some armed, had clashed with police
from June 13th onwards, hurling rocks, petrol bombs and the like at them.
While the vast majority of demonstrators were indeed peaceful, a minority
clearly were anything but that and this inevitably provoked a harsh response.

Nonetheless, the media seized upon this as evidence of “authoritarian

repression.“ Despite the fact that the regular military never once fired live
ammunition into the crowds, as witnessed in Kyrgyzstan and Thailand earlier
this year, the charge was made that the crackdown attested to a military
regime desperately holding on to power by force, and not the ballot box.

This also ignores the fact that General Yadollah Javani, head of the
Revolutionary Guards’ political bureau, had warned several weeks
beforehand of a possible “velvet coup” in the offing whereby Mousavi would
reject the outcome of the poll as fraudulent if he lost and turn to protests to
force victory, as in fact happened [18].

Iran indeed has a precedent for this – the popular premiership of Dr

Mossadegh was overthrown by foreign-backed street tactics as part of the
CIA-MI6’s Operation Ajax. The media also seemed to pay no attention to the
fact that Mousavi declared himself the “definite winner”, but with no results in,
thereby discrediting the outcome in advance. None of this, in any case, can
be used as serious evidence of electoral fraud.

9) The post-election surveys were conducted in an atmosphere of fear

and repression

Since the June poll, three independent post-election surveys (WPO,

Globescan and the University of Tehran) have been released that almost
exactly mirror the official figures. Naturally, the deniers have been quick to
dismiss this as useful evidence owing to the precarious political situation in
Iran and the assumed reluctance of people to divulge their true sentiment. It is
a gross misrepresentation that right across Iran there existed a fear of
reprisals. The vast majority of Iranians, especially those resident outside of
the capital, were unaffected by the unrest.

Since Mousavi was one of the four approved candidates, there was hardly
any crime in respondents stating that they had voted for him: a measure of
reticence might be expected, but not deceit. Moreover, even if we accept this,
the Globescan survey was conducted just one week after the June 12th poll,
long before events turned for the worse, and it provided results of striking
similarity to final figures [19]. The question, therefore, is that if respondents
were not being entirely truthful in their answers why are the results so
congruent with the Interior Ministry’s statistics? Below, is the data from the
Globescan poll - in parentheses are the actual percentages received for each
of the four candidates from the count of the ballots.

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 Ahmadinejad: 56% (62%)
Mousavi: 32% (34%)
Rezai: 2% (2%)
Karroubi: 0% (1%)
Refused: 10%

In the WPO survey, of the 87% of people who said they had voted, 62% said
that they had “strong confidence in the election result”, the same percentage
as who voted for Ahmadinejad according to the Ministry of Interior data.

10) The authorities were never going to allow Ahmadinejad to lose

Given the efforts made by the incumbent president to win the election of 2009,
touring the country for four years and risking all by publicly attacking senior
figures like Hashemi Rafsanjani in the televised debates, it seems odd that he
would have gone to such trouble when all he had to do was fix the result.
Also, the notion that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was not going
to permit anyone other than his clearly preferred choice win is not borne out of
the reality from previous contests.

In 1997, he tacitly favoured the conservative candidate and personal friend,

Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, who was resoundingly defeated by reformist
Mohammad Khatami. In the 2005 election, he was reported to support the
candidacy of the then police chief and now mayor of Tehran, Baqer Qalibaf,
who ended up coming fourth [20].

The electoral process in Iran is a means by which factions and personalities

within the ruling establishment resolve their disagreements and compete for
influence. It is also clear that Khamenei considers elections as particularly
important for conferring popular legitimacy to the Islamic system, and should
therefore be respected whatever the outcome.

Conclusion

The western media was hardly going to come out in favour of the government
of President Ahmadinejad. However, the commitment to journalistic standards
and at least some measure of objectivity was expected, particularly in light of
what had transpired over Iraqi WMDs. But instead the media decided to seize
upon the reports of fraud emanating from the green movement in Iran and
dispense with any impartiality and concern for the truth.

Their reaction to the result, a rejection of the will of the majority of Iranians
and defiance of reality, exposes a visceral hatred for the Islamic Revolution 30
years on. Simon Plummer writing in the British Daily Telegraph remarked that
“nowhere was the bankruptcy of the revolution more apparent than in last

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June’s presidential election. “ Simon Tisdall of the Guardian claimed that the
unrest in Iran represented popular anger over the “Islamic coup of 1979”.

The idea of a “stolen election” is therefore necessary for those in the western
media to justify their own beliefs regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. To
accept the result would undermine any talk of a “tyranny” in power in Tehran
and the need for “regime change”. Neoconservatives had been threatening
Iran with either waging war or fomenting revolution long before the June poll.

It is also necessary to delegitimize the Iranian government in order to advance

the argument for punitive sanctions or, as is seriously been given
consideration now, military action of some form or the other.

The West prides itself on having a “free media”. But the reaction to the Iranian
election is an example of how this freedom of speech is limited for
disseminating wholly false or misleading information, and not in reporting the
facts as they are. It also exposes the hypocrisy of those in the media who talk
of promoting democracy but who reject electoral outcomes not to their liking.

It is interesting that Ahmadinejad is accused of “Holocaust denial” when his

western and Iranian opponents are so clearly in denial of his re-election. If
anything has been rigged, it is the truth regarding the poll of June 2009 by the
western media and its corporate/state sponsors.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/opinion/28iht-edcohen.html
[2] http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/media/comment/iran_election_dalton/
[3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article7131176.ece
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7771496/Death-to-
the-Dictator-Witnessing-Irans-Election-and-the-Crippling-of-the-Islamic-Republic-
by-Afsaneh-Moqadam-review.html
[5] http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100526/wl_mideast_afp/
iranpoliticsoppositionkarroubi
[6] http://iran2009presidentialelection.blogspot.com/
[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaLxOWqokzg
[8] http://www.mowj.ir/ShowNews.php?7208
[9] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/22/iran-election-voters-
numbers
[10] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/0617/p06s01-wome.html
[11] http://www.irantracker.org/analysis/2009-iranian-presidential-election-
expatriate-and-foreign-voting-results
[12] http://www.pcc.org.uk/case/resolved.html?article=NjI0OQ==
[13] http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20
Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf
[14] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6427440.ece
[15] http://thomaslotze.com/iran/
[16] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1192958/300-000-
salute-Irans-election-LOSER--man-shot-dead-police-open-rally-Ahmadinejad.html
[17] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8104362.stm
[18] http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=102264&sectionid=3510302
[19] http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/
652.php?lb=brme&pnt=652&nid=&id=
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad-
Bagher_Ghalibaf#2005_Presidential_campaign