The Latest in Iran (19 November): It’s the Nukes Today

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Abdofazl Fateh was the editor of Ghalam News, a publication close to Mir Hossein Mousavi before it was shut down by the Iranian Government. His account of what happened on the night of the Presidential election, 12 June, has re-surfaced.

Alongside the account of Mousavi advisor Alireza Beheshti, which we published on 25 August, Fateh’s recollection puts forth the story of an opposition that feared manipulation of the results. Indeed, that fear prompted one of the key moves of the crisis, Mousavi’s decision to hold a press conference before the votes were announced. The subsequent decision to write a letter to the Supreme Leader about the concerns brought this response from the head of Ayatollah Khamenei’s security, Mr Vahid: “From his words I sensed that I must consider the election over. He said that he had sent a reminder to the Interior Ministry about the way they plan to announce the results, but he said that Mr. Ahmadinejad would win by a big margin.”

Thanks to Pedestrian for the translation:

Thursday morning [11 June] we had consecutive meetings with Mr. Mousavi. The main topic of discussion was the provisions for election day. Numerous reports had reached people in the campaign which made us really worried about the election process. Supervising the ballot boxes was of serious concern to us.

Mir Hossein Mousavi chose a number of friends to follow up on these issues in parallel. One problem was that the text messaging service had been completely shut down by the ministry.
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