Iran's Election: Latest News

NEW: Video of Protests in Tehran and Protests in Shiraz and Mashhad

Related Post: Iran's Election - Ten Indications That The Results Were Altered
Related Post: Iran’s Elections - Surprise and Uncertainty
Related Post: Iran’s Election - “Ahmadinejad Victory!”

2230 GMT: We're signing off until the morning. Thanks to everyone who sent us information today. To friends in Iran: our thoughts are with you.

2200 GMT: We have now posted the English translation of the letter released by Mir Hossein Mousavi to his supporters this afternoon.l

2145 GMT: In addition to the video of this afternoon's protests in Tehran, which we posted in this entry, we now have posted footage that the riots have spread this evening to the university in Shiraz and to the city of Mashhad..

2000 GMT: Juan Cole has posted a thoughtful analysis, "Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen", with re-construction of how the process might have unfolded. We have posted it in a separate entry.

1930 GMT: Mobile phone service was cut almost two hours ago. Many Iranians are now relying on the Internet for information, but there are concerns that this might be disrupted tomorrow. BBC Persian has now been blocked.

Some streets are still  crowded with demonstrators  shouting for Mousavi.

1740 GMT: President Ahmadinejad now addressing the nation. CNN has live feed. At times, CNN International television is going split-screen, putting Press TV's pictures Ahmadinejad address side-by-side with footage of demonstrations.

1735 GMT: A pro-Mousavi Twitter user suggests a way to access Facebook from Iran.

1715 GMT: An (unverified) story that we heard two hours ago is now circulating widely: Ministry of Interior officials called the Mousavi campaign to inform them of their candidate's victory. Mousavi was to write a victory speech, and a celebration was to be held Sunday (which, indeed, is what the Ahmadinejad campaign is now planning).

Shortly afterwards, however, the "information" was withdrawn without explanation.

1710 GMT: The correspondent for the American television network ABC reports that security forces have confiscated his crew's camera and videotapes. They are now shooting footage on cellphones.

1700 GMT: Facebook is blocked and SMS/texting systems are still out of service. Clashes continue between demonstrators and security forces around the Ministry of the Interior.

A correspondent notes that while the Supreme Leader has moved with unprecedented haste to endorse the election outcome (under Iranian law, the process is supposed to take at least three days), Iran's Guardian Council has not ratified the results nor has the Speaker of the Parliament, Ali Larijani, congratulated Ahmadinejad.

There are reports that Mousavi, Karroubi, and former President Mohammad Khatami are gathering at the house of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.

UPDATE 1640 GMT:A notable split is emerging in Western coverage between those who are ready to call the election rigged, such as Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation publishing the opinion of former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi on an Ahmadinejad "coup d'etat", and those who claim that Ahmadinejad's landslide should have been foreseen, such as Abbas Barzegar in The Guardian.

Mehdi Karrubi's campaign manager is providing updates via Twitter.

UPDATE: 1530 GMT: The Flickr stream of Mir Hossein Mousavi is carrying a number of photos of violent clashes between police and demonstrators in Tehran.

UPDATE: 1500 GMT: Government websites put Ahmadinejad's vote at 22 million and Mousavi's at 11 million.

Both Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have said that this is "the beginning of events" and they will stand up "to the end". Attention now turns to the statement of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

There are reports of closing of streets near the Interior Ministry and detentions by military forces. Some people working in Tehran are afraid to return to their homes.

Press TV English, which had provided relatively open coverage of the election, is saying nothing about today's tension over the outcome.

There are reports of clashes around the Ministry of Interior between demonstrators, police, security forces, and Basiji (unofficial security units).

Military forces gather around the Ministry of the Interior

UPDATE: 0830 GMT: To limit the possibility of demonstrations, universities are closed. There are military forces scattered throughout Tehran. Some websites, including the BBC English-language site, have been blocked.

The official overseeing elections will shortly be speaking. More importantly, Mir Hossein Mousavi will be making a statement in the next few hours.

Pro-Mousavi correspondents from Tehran write of "a state of shock" at the outcome. One says simply, "Iran is mourning today."

UPDATE: 02.00 GMT: BBC reports that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has so far 66 percent of the vote. Officials say that almost 70 percent of votes has been counted.

18:00 GMT Iranian election officials are calling the voter turnout "unprecedented", with queues of up to three hours. Polling stations were kept open an extra three hours.

In Washington President Obama said that the choice of President was "up to the Iranian people" but added that he hoped for "possibilities of change". In a far from coded reference, he said that he hoped the Iranian outcome would follow the example set by Lebanon on Monday.

5pm GMT: Voting has been extended by three hours (to 9pm local time) due to the heavy turnout, according to the BBC.

1pm  GMT: Turnout is very heavy throughout the country. An EA correspondent reports from north Tehran that there is an intensity and excitement in the public mood. Other correspondents report high expectations and hopes that there will be no "disruptions" in the count.

Government authorities are trying to damp down speculation of any altering of the result. The Intelligence Minister says that there have been no reports of electoral breaches while the head of the Parties' Desk declared that any reported misconduct would be dealt with swiftly. Amidst reports of 10 million phone texts being sent in recent days, the Telecommunications Ministry says it is investigating reports of disruption to SMS service.

Senior politicians and clerics are calling both for high turnout and fair conduct to hold up Iran as an example to the world. Candidate Mehdi Karroubi has called for tonight's decision to have the "respect of the nation".

Iran's Election: Six Indications That The Results Were Altered

From Juan Cole:

1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended.

So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.

2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.

3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.

4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.

5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.

6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.

The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election.

This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players.

More in my column, just out, in Salon.com: "Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud," where I argue that the outcome of the presidential elections does not and should not affect Obama's policies toward that country-- they are the right policies and should be followed through on regardless.

The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation.

My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers.

So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two.

What I've said is full of speculation and informed guesses. I'd be glad to be proved wrong on several of these points. Maybe I will be.

PS: Here's the data:

So here is what Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said Saturday about the outcome of the Iranian presidential elections:

"Of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent)."

He announced that Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent).

Mohsen Rezaei got 678,240 votes (1.73 percent)

Mehdi Karroubi with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent).

He put the void ballots at 409,389 (1.04 percent).

Iran's Elections: Surprise and Uncertainty

The least that could be said this morning is that the overnight outcome of Iran's Presidential election was unexpected, to observers outside the country and I suspect many inside it. It is the more that might be said --- and done --- that now occupies attention.

The latest announced vote count, as I write, is about 18 million votes for President Ahmadinejad and 9 million for former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, with about 250.,000 each for Mohsen Rezaei and Mehdi Karroubi. With Iranian official saying that 32 million ballots were cast, the total already allow Ahmadinejad to claim a majority victory.

The President's advisors are already doing so eagerly. Meanwhile, Mousavi is considering his next step. His campaign's immediate response was there had been widespread irregularities in the campaign, although their initial statements focused on those prevented from voting before polls counted.

The bigger question is whether the totals were "massaged" to ensure Ahmadinejad did not have to face a widely-expected second-round contest with Mousavi. The challenger was reportedly meeting with the other candidates, Rezaei and Karroubi, to consider next steps.

It appears many in Iran are holding their breaths waiting for developments. Ahmadinejad supporters have been celebrating in the streets, but there are no reports on conflicts beyond the break-up of one gathering of Mousavi enthusiasts. Mehr newspaper is reporting, however, that authorities have warned rallies are prohibited.

Iran's Election: "Ahmadinejad Victory!"

Shirvin Zeinalzadeh, interviewing Iranian voters in London, offers his viewpoint on the Iranian election:

The Interior Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran has just officially announced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to serve a second term. This news has come as a shock to some, but no surprise to others as he seals an overwhelming landslide victory.

The celebrations and tension will of course continue into the night and for the rest of the week as Mir Hussein Moussavi declares false results and unfair issues within the voting booths, however, the sheer difference in the vote percentage, and support for Ahmadinejad has shown that once again Iran’s high voting turnout has stunned the West with its ever growing strength and belief in the Islamic Republic.

I was fortunate enough to visit two polling stations in London, one in the Consulate Section of the Iranian Embassy, and the other in the Islamic Republic of Iran School, also in London.

As I witnessed the many protestors and press outside the consulate section, the support was clearly balanced between the two main candidates, (although it is worth a mention I could not find a single voter who claimed to be voting for the other two candidates). The school had a very different electoral populous however. Away from the media glitz, and protestors who threw paint over an official, the school was surprisingly just as busy, and from my personal view and self conducted exit poll, Ahmadinejad clearly took the majority of votes.

It really comes as no surprise that his victory was so big. Many fail to realise the supporters of Moussavi were the young elite rich of Northern Tehran, who already possess dual nationality to Western countries, and are merely trying to adapt their Western life styles to suit them in a selfish was in Tehran. (By selfish I mean allowing them more freedom to behave in the way that they enjoy). But one must not forget that Iran is not solely made up of this 1% ultra rich North Tehran populous, and Ahmadinejad’s supporters can be found in the majority of rural towns, countryside and cities, as well as the remaining massive population of Tehran.

The dust will soon settle both in Iran and the West, once this happens, we will begin to see the consequences of this election.

I will be looking closely at the reaction of Barack Obama, will he be returning the letter of congratulations Ahmadinejad sent, and will this send a message of finally cracking on with the bi-lateral diplomacy needed between the two states, safe in the knowledge that the terms have now be set, and that there are four solid years for the two leaders to find mutual interests.

Or will this lead to the more probable result of Ahmadinejad gaining more confidence in his second tenure as President of the Islamic Republic, leading to more national achievements and more defiance of ‘enemies’ in Iran’s next four years of foreign policy.

Recent EU and council elections in the UK showed a 30% turnout, Iran’s Presidential election was over 80%, therefore this strong voice is truly the opinion of the majority, which is more than can be said in the precedent case. There is no doubt that the scale and importance of the elections were not in the same league, but this kind of turnout is fairly common in Iran, and should be congratulated.

My final point brings me back to the Iranian School, this small and tucked away polling station seemed to have given a good indication of the election results. As a teacher there myself, I have followed this election closely with my students and their parents, and it has been a long accepted notion that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was going to serve his second term as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Now is the time to reach out to Iran and use this occasion to build up relations with the continuing government of Ahmadinejad, and to work on bi-lateral relations, regional security and more importantly the support and trust that Iran and the West need to build with each other to develop the nation into a serious contributor of peace and example setting in the region and international arena.

Iran: A Preview of Tomorrow's Presidential Election

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In Enduring America on 12 February, Chris Emery evaluated the announcement of former President Mohammad Khatami that he would stand in June's election. He wrote, "[It is] an error...to link Khatami’s entry to the tentative prospect of normalised relations between Iran and the US," and focused on internal dynamics of Iranian politics: "It had been widely reported that Khatami would not run if former Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mousavi chose to....So all Iranian eyes will now watch if Mousavi, another popular reformist, is now the one to withdraw."

Three months later, and 24 hours before Iranians cast their votes in the first round of the Presidential election, I read Chris' piece with pride. He was half-right on the issue of the potential challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad --- it was Khatami who withdrew, leaving Mousavi in the race --- but months before many "Western" journalists and analysts noticed the campaign or dismissed it out-of-hand (only yesterday Thomas Friedman cast it aside as a "pretend election"), Chris saw its significance. This would not be a procession for the re-election of Ahmadinejad or a charade for Supreme Leader Khamenei to hand-pick a winner but a political space for Iranians to consider their political and economic present and future. Equally important, he got to the core of the issues that would shape the outcome: "It will be over presidential legacies and broken promises."

Yet, with respect, not even Chris could forecast how dynamic --- and potentially important --- this campaign has become.

From the moment that the field of major candidates was settled in March --- Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, and former Speaker of the Parliament Mehdi Karroubi --- it was clear that the President faced a very real challenge. Two words should have made this clear: The Economy.

When he took office in 2005, Ahmadinejad promised an uplift of Iran's people, especially its poorer people, through distribution
of state revenues and advances in technology, investment, and production. Generally speaking, that has not happened. There have been repeated conflicts between the President and his leading economic ministers and advisors, investment in key sectors has not progressed, and the over-reliance on oil income has tied re-distribution in part to the vagaries of the international market. (Of course, US-led sanctions have continued to constrict Iranian development, but these alone cannot account for Ahmadinejad's handling of the economy.)

Continuing difficulties do not doom the President. He still appears to retain a solid base of support amongst many voters who still the prospect of an improvement in their economic status, and Ahmadinejad --- normally a shrewd speaker and campaigner --- could overlay the power of his office with the appeal of nationalism. That in part explains why, far from US-Iranian relations and President Obama's "engagement", Ahmadinejad has ensured the appearance of Tehran as a front-line actor on the world stage, with setpieces such as his speech to the World Conference Against Racism and his recent summit with Afghan and Pakistani leaders. (It also probably explains in part why there have been high-profile test-firings of new Iranian missiles.)

However, as Ahmadinejad broadened the campaign beyond the economy, so did his opponents. Rezaei called for more accountability, Karroubi appealed for wider social rights, and Mousavi argued for meaningful change to ensure representation of and response to the populace's concerns. And, doing so, they (perhaps unexpectedly) opened the gates for an extraordinary escalation in the political process.

"Reform" has always accompanied the Islamic Revolution in its political discourse. President Khatami promised changes in his 1997 victory (and, arguably, was undone because he failed to deliver in his eight years in office). Ahmadinejad promoted reform in his surprise rise to the top in 2005. Lest it be forgotten, he ran as the outsider against the "establishment", defeating former President Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round.

The convergence of economic concerns and repeated disappointment with the lack of political and social reform can lead to resignation that there will never be improvement. However, that convergence also carries the potential for moments of great change. (Forgive my one moment of a superficial jump from Iran to a "Western" analogy, but think USA 2008.) And, from my outsider's perspective, that moment may have occurred this year in Iran.

Symbolically, the catalyst appears to have been the Presidential Debates. The mere announcement that there would be, for the first time in Iran, head-to-head discussions between the four major candidates raised public interest. However, it was the second of the debates, between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, that lit the touchpaper. Thousands of people came onto the streets to watch the big-screen broadcasts. Politics turned into political theatre as Ahmadinejad --- again trying to stay off the ground of the economic situation --- levelled charges of corruption against not only Mousavi but also former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani but impropriety against Mousavi's wife and, equally importantly, as Mousavi overcame initial nervousness to put an effective case against the President's four years in office.

What does it means tomorrow? Any prediction of a victor would be not only fool-hardy but premature. After all, this is only the first round of the election when, unless anyone captures an unlikely majority of the vote, four candidates are narrowed to the top two. (I really do not believe many Western journalists, in their simplified renditions of the campaign, have noticed this.)

Those top two --- although this should not diminish the efforts of Rezaei and Karroubi --- will probably be Ahmadinejad and Karroubi. So, once more on the narrow but important ground of the pragmatic, there will be assessments of whether Karroubi will endorse Mousavi and his voters will follow (probable) and whether Rezaei will express any second-round preference, publicly or privately (uncertain). Ahmadinejad will likely re-double his paradoxical effort to portray himself as the "outsider" running, after four years in office, against the corrupt establishment of political figures such as Rafsanjani, although this may be curbed by the increasing disquiet not only of many voters but also of politicians and clerics over the tactic. Mousavi will turn the President's tactic around, portraying Ahmadinejad as not only the insider but the leader who has frittered away his mandate, and the good of the Iranian people, since 2005.

But what will happen tomorrow and even in the second round does not capture the ongoing importance of these recent months.

On my visits to Iran, and afterwards in correspondence with friends and colleagues, I have learned about and been reminded often of the "third generation", those Iranians who came of age after the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Quite often, the third generation was characterised as detached from the Revolution, disillusioned, dissatisfied. In recent weeks, however, the third generation --- and more than a few other Iranians --- have been in rallies, on the streets (on Monday, there was the largest outside gathering in more than a decade), and, yes, even on Facebook with excitement and some expectation.

I don't know if this constitutes a "Gradual Revolution", another phrase that I have frequently heard. I certainly would not twist and misrepresent it with the politically-loaded "Velvet Revolution". But, again as an outsider, there has been an opening of debate and thus of political space which could be significant not just for this election but for years to come.

Put simply --- and anticipating Western headlines after Friday about "The Obama Effect" in Iran, about "moderates" v. "hard-liners", about reinforcement or downfall of an Axis running from Iran to Syria to Lebanon's Hezbollah to Palestine's hamas --- these events first and foremost are not about the US. They are not about a clash in the Middle East, in nuclear arsenals, between civilisations.

These events are about Iranians: their concerns, their hopes, their ideals. And, whatever the outcome tomorrow and in the second round, they should be respected as such.