Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Stratfor, of all things, sees the light
I am rather pleasantly surprised by the fact that it appears that more and more commentators seem to be distancing themselves from the "Ahmadinejad stole the elections" canard. I can't say that the tide is turning, not quite, but at least the hysterical screams are just a tiny little bit less stringent, less overwhelming. Stratfor - the otherwise highly zio-compatible - think tank has just published a critical article by its President entitled Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality. It includes this remarkable paragraph:
Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.
That's not perfect, but it is a good start. Somebody is (FINALLY!!!) asking about the practical issues, the "mechanics" of how such a truly massive electoral fraud could have been pulled off.
Hopefully, in the next days, people will stop mantrically repeating all sorts of nonsense and start looking at the facts on the ground and at what is credible and what is not.
However, if the Rafsanjani camp tries to trigger more violence (see my post about "Deconstructing Sarkozy's zio-logic") all bets are off.
The scary thing is that Rafsanjani has played all his card now and his only hope of salvation is to either get the Assembly of Experts to dismiss the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, or to trigger a bood bath. If he fails at that, he is toast and he surely understands that.
The next days will be crucial.
As a reference, here is the structure of the Iranian Government Institutions (click on image for full size)
Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.
That's not perfect, but it is a good start. Somebody is (FINALLY!!!) asking about the practical issues, the "mechanics" of how such a truly massive electoral fraud could have been pulled off.
Hopefully, in the next days, people will stop mantrically repeating all sorts of nonsense and start looking at the facts on the ground and at what is credible and what is not.
However, if the Rafsanjani camp tries to trigger more violence (see my post about "Deconstructing Sarkozy's zio-logic") all bets are off.
The scary thing is that Rafsanjani has played all his card now and his only hope of salvation is to either get the Assembly of Experts to dismiss the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, or to trigger a bood bath. If he fails at that, he is toast and he surely understands that.
The next days will be crucial.
As a reference, here is the structure of the Iranian Government Institutions (click on image for full size)