Jo today. Do you folks think Ahmadinedschad gets the chance for round two? I hope not.

The election is fixed so he will get reelected.

Sure

Ahmedinejad for the win

With the way things are going, I'll give the totalitarian rule of Iran 20 years tops. Iranians themselves are liking their system less and less each year, so revolution is going to come down sooner or later.

The president of Iran has no real power anyway. It's all in the clerics...

I am hoping these revolts lead to something.

At this point, I don't think they will. Not immediately. But they are changing the attitudes, which will show in the long term.

The Iranese society is bubbling under, and has been doing already for some time. The main thing that keeps the current status quo is the fact that a lot of Iranese still live in the countryside, and are ignorant and uneducated - Easy to program.

But they are going through the same changes in infrastructure as the rest of the world. People move to cities. Education improves. Information becomes more and more available. All those things are necessary if Iran wants to improve economy, science, industry... Hell, even military.

It would take some really, really hard hitting politics from the goverment to stop that process from happening, and that in itself might lead to a revolution.

It's a slow change, but it's happening.

The situation needs a few days clear air before the truth emerges. I lean towards Admandiahsksjad having nicked it since to honest he is your typical nationalistic opportunist politician, but then I remember his political savvy really is good at capturing votes and doubts creep in.

Mayhap, but the powers that be WANT Ahmedinejad in. Blood will be shed otherwise.

A president who would want changes would be a MASSIVE development. Sure, he wouldn't have any actual power. But there would be someone at the top who would be selling his democratic and liberal ideas to the people of Iran 24/7.

...Which is why they (probably) fixed the election. But still, times are changing.

It's rather sad to read neo-con's like Bolton argue that Mousavi as just as bad and that military action against Iran should still be considered in any form. Although he's not as blatant as this

It's amazing to see the mass protests in Iran despite the repressive regime. Imagine if Americans protested when their elections were stolen. Luckily the media keeps everyone passive. In the end, it's hard to tell who lives under the most repressive regime.

Stop posting.

LOL yeah right we live in an oppressive regime, I forgot about the nazi guards walking around in the streets.

There's more than one way to skin a cat...

No, seriously, stop posting. You're worse than 18 year old Ron Paul retards who HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT, MAN!

Ron Paul hate?

So this whole situation reminds me of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 (in which, I am proud to say, I am was indirectly involved). What frustrates me is that while we had a good coverage out of Ukraine, it's very hard to come by a decent analysis out of Iran. Maybe it's just my bias, so I wonder if anyone else is getting that feeling.

Particularly, what I would like to know is this:

-How massive are the protests really? How common is that in Iran? On NPR today they said the numbers were comparable to the Revolution - is that really so?

-What are the alleged improproeties in the election? I know everyone's claiming vote rigging - but the polls indicate a gap of 10 million. I find it hard to believe that it's easy to rig that many votes. Which doesn't mean that the election is legitimate - how common were the occurrences of voter intimidation, uneven access to media, etc.?

-What's the rest of the Muslim world thinking? Is the Iranian election making such big headlines elsewhere around the world as well?

-What are the possibilities for a peaceful resolution? Is some sort of coalition possible?

Krem, they announced election results within 2 hours of polls closing. There were, I think, 17m or so votes to count, by hand. Exactly how were they able to count that many votes in such a short time by hand? I think the accusations regarding the voting is that the Iranian rulers simply flung away the election results and came up with the figures on their own.

Some Iranian/Mid-East expert dude on the BBC said that reports in the Muslim world, at least in the Middle East, are roughly the same as in the West, with Al Jazeera having no more or less access to the situation than the BBC.

I hear you, Box. If that's the case, then this reminds me of the Ukrainian election of 2004 even more. The powers that be (were?) simply figured that the backlash wasn't gonna be huge, and rigged the vote. Even so, the gap wasn't anywhere near as huge - it was only 3%, not 30% like in this case.

Yes, that seems to have been the case. I think what's fueling this more than anything else is that the Iranian people have been gravely insulted by their government.

I believe Canada still uses hand written ballots and then count their ballots by hand. Their population is 40 million, so there must be at least 17 million voters in a national election. From what I've found online, their election results are usually announced within a couple of hours of polls closing unless it's a very close vote.

Canada most certainly has better infrastructure. It's the numbers themselves that are fishy--regional strong candidates dropping from 50% in a region in '05 to 5%. They were probably concocted before the election. Were the votes even counted? It'd be so much easier to see how fraudulent this was if it was actually transparent.

So the Ayatollah has spoken. Its now official.

Listen, I know being born a Red traumatized you, but getting all reactionary on that ain't gonna solve shit.

It's his stupid fans consisting of impressionable students who find Che passe and bearded weirdos in Montana who think Barack Obama was installed by the Elders Of Zion.