Interesting news about Mubarak and Mousavi

Russian TV is reporting that according to unnamed sources Mubarak is now in a coma.  As soon as I heard that, I began suspecting that he was killed by somebody in the security or military.  Indeed, on Thursday evening he categorically refused to leave power, and yet he stepped down the very next day, though unlike all the other announcement which he delivered personally, this one was delivered by Suleiman.  I mean - I know the man was sick, but still, this is one heck of a weird coincidence in timing don't you think?

Also, according to the BBC, Mousavi has finally been arrested by the Iranian authorities.  I have to say that literally from "day 1" I suspected that Mousavi was a puppet of anti-Iranian forces (please check my posts on that topic here and here written one and two days following the election in Iran).  But going after the puppet is not enough - the government needs to proceed carefully, of course, but it needs to finally hold Rafsanjani accountable for his role in destabilizing Iran and threatening the very existence of the Islamic Republic.  Here is what I wrote about this on the day following the election when Mousavi annouced that he had won without even waiting for the elections result:

Also keep in mind that the post of President holds no real power in Iran to begin with. Why bother with fraud?  No, the fraud accusation is an insult to everybody's intelligence. Either that or, which is far more likely, it is a carefully orchestrated destabilization operation against Iran. I say that this is the latter.  Mousavi is no idiot for sure (check out his resume here), and since he is not an idiot, he must know that he lost this election and that, in fact, Ahmadinejad won by an un-fakable landslide. Still, he choose the destablilize his own country at a moment when that country is facing a possible military agression from abroad. What does that tell you about Mousavi? It tells me that he is objectively the tool of yet another US backed destabilization campaign. It matters little whether Mousavi himself is a paid CIA agent, or whether his entourage is carefully using his ego to push him towards the kind of action he has taken now. The bottom line is still that Mousavi is now hurting his country and helping to destabilize it.

And as I predicted, Mousavi and his puppeteer Rafsanjani failed, completely.  But this is hardly a reason to let them continue their campaign.  It is quite clear that these two will now use any, and I do mean any, pretext, crisis or difficulty as a pretext to attempt to destabilize Iran again.  For them, the sole guideline henceforth will be "the worse, the better".  I do think that Iran is stable enough to neutralize such efforts, but to let the Guccis keep on with their campaign would be fundamentally wrong.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in the same situation has Hugo Chavez - by ignoring the very real threat of US-run destabilization campaign they do risk ending up in the same situation as Mossadegh in 1953 or Allende did in 1973.  This being said, both Chavez and Khamenei should not conflate any and all opposition movements with the ones controlled by the USA.  Thus, the crackdown should be very selective and not a pretext to turn Iran or Venezuela into dictatorships.  A difficult balancing act for sure, but a vital one nonetheless.

Gucci leader open letter to the Iranian people

Found on the FOX News website:

The following is the translated text of a letter purportedly from Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi to the Iranian people, posted on Flickr.com Sunday.

———————————

My Fellow Compatriots,

From all over the country complaints of irregularities of this election have reached me. I am confident that this outpour of complaint is being sent not because of me but because of a concern that a new style of politics is being imposed on our country.

What we have witnessed over the past few days has been unprecedented in the Islamic Revolution. And if people are following the turn of events with great concern it is because they are worried about the great achievements obtained over the course of this Islamic revolution.

Those people that have committed enormous violations in this election and are showing unbelievable results are now seeking to validate the results and start a new history for our country.

During the election I clearly talked about violations and escape from the law and reiterated that the use of such tactics could lead to dictatorship and authoritarianism. And our people today have reached a point where they can sense such a threat in the distance.

We who are committed to the Islamic republic and its constitution firmly believe in the "vlayat Fagheeh" [Ayatollah Khomeini's theory of Islamic governance] as one of its pillars and will follow our political moves within this framework. I hope that the outcome of our moves will demonstrate the incorrect results of this turn of events. While at the same time I warn that in this country no one who is passionate about the Islamic revolution will not accept the current outcome. This is what the blood of thousands of martyrs commits us to taking responsibility to our actions.

Dear People

Today, I through a letter that I sent to the Guardian Council have requested that the results of this election be void and I see this as the only way to regain public trust and support in their government. My suggestion as your public servant is that you continue your rallies in a peaceful and non confrontational manner.

We have request from the officials a permit to conduct a nationwide rally in all of our cities so that our people can through their vigilance demonstrate their dissatisfaction of the election results. The acceptance of such an act will be a good way to avoid current discontent.

With the color green which symbolizes faith, freedom and tolerance and religious faith, and with the slogan of "Allah o Akbar (God is great) which goes back to the roots of our revolution we shall continue our rally.

This color and slogan is unifying of our support base and is the best way to communicate with each other and reach each others hearts.

Regrettably there has been an effort to disconnect our communications and in doing so this movement can go astray from a movement with a clear objective to one that can cause great harm and disarray. I am certain that your creativity will help us find new ways of communication with each other so that our actions can deliver the right kind of results that we want and in doing so we can serve our political system in the right way.

As a supporter of our police force I strongly suggest that they restrain from using brutal and violent means to suppress spontaneous demonstrations so that people do not lose confidence in this invaluable institution. These people are out in the streets to protect their rights just as much as yours and they are your brothers and sisters. The strength of our military force comes from their unity with the people and in the future shall this unity remain.

In hopes of better days.

Why was Mousavi allowed to run?

I am coming back to one of the points I made yesterday - the issue of why a person like Mousavi was ever allowed to run.

In the comments section of my previous article on the elections in Iran, altigerrrr make a very good point that the Guardian Council could not prevent Mousavi from running because he is a reformist. I understand that, but that is not quite what I meant. In fact, I like the idea of giving the Iranian people as big a choice of candidates as possible - that is the basic goal of any democracy. So I don't see being a "reformist" or a "conservative" as either good or bad (as I mentioned yesterday - I find these concepts rather meaningless to begin with). But here is what puzzles me:

The Iranian Guardian Council is composed of 12 jurists who are highly respected and who are entrusted with a vital mission: to vet Presidential candidates. I therefore assume that they must have access to the very best information about these candidates available to the Iranian government.

One of the very basic activity for any intelligence or security agency is to maintain very detailed and carefully crafted psychological profiles of all key personalities in any important country or political movement. I assume that the Iranian intelligence and/or security agencies have exactly the same basic set of tasks as their colleagues in any other country.

The Iranian security services *must* have had a very detailed psychological of Musavi. If not, then they are not doing their job properly. Likewise, I assume that the members of the Guardian Council should have been given access to this profile. If not, then there is something fundamentally wrong in the structure of the Iranian government. Intelligence work is composed of three "A": Aquisition, Analysis and Acceptance. The latter means dissemination to the relevant decision making bodies.

Musavi's psychological analysis should not have to include such vague political categories as "reformer". What is should have contained is a clear warning that the guys is an ambitious politician who will place his personal ego over the welfare of his country and that should he be allowed to run, he would not accept a defeat without trying to create chaos.

The Iranian security services should have figured out what kind of guy Mousavi is, they should have passed on this information to the Guardian Council, and the Guardian Council should have either taken action directly or, at least, passed this information to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who should have stopped Mousavi. But none of that happened.

The question is why? (Considering the highly sensitive nature of this question, we will probably never get an answer to it).

Finally, Mousavi could have been nailed for his corruption and the way his wife used Musavi's political infuence to to obtain her academic positions. But other than having Ahmadinejad mention that once, nothing was done.

But what is the point of having a vetting system, a Guardian Council and a Supreme Leader if none of that can prevent the likes of Mousavi to run?

Another thought:

HAS ANYBODY SEEN ANY EVIDENCE OF ELECTION RIGGING OTHER THEN THE RIOTS THEMSELVES?

Yep. Nothing. Nothing besides the riots and grand statements by politicians.

Which just makes me wonder how some, shall we say, "less than critical" minds can simply assume that the elections were rigged ONLY on the basis of riots (which, according to my info, were limited to one city and were not that big - not by Iranian standards for sure).

The Saker

Musings on yesterday's elections in Iran

Let me begin my saying that I did not follow the campaigns of the four contenders to the post of President of Iran very closely. Nor did I carefully scrutinize their electoral platform. I did have a vague preference for anyone the West would consider a "moderate" (an utterly nonsensical concept) if only because it would make a military aggression on Iran by Israel and/or the USA harder to sell, and therefore (very) marginally less likely.

As for Ahmadinejad, I had carefully read his speeches, I listened to several of his interviews, I saw the full videos his speeches in the USA, (at the UN and in Columbia U) and I basically liked him. He is very smart, his arguments are always well thought through, and I like his calm but firm stance towards the constant US and Israeli sabre rattling. But Ahmadinejad has a huge drawback: he is not photogenic (a key factor for the Western public) and some of his statements can be easily distorted to paint him as a raving lunatic. In other words, Ahmadinejad is a good target for the Zionist press and that is why I had personally hoped that a guy like Ali Larijani would become the next President.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I was generally leaning towards a change of faces in the Iranian Presidency, and if the new face was a "reformer" (another stupid concept, but hey - if they like it, let's give them what they want, no?).

And then this:

Ahmadinejad wins by a landslide and Mousawi declares the elections "stolen" and riots break out.

Considering the current situation in Iran and, even more so, around Iran, Mousawi's attitude is worse than irresponsible, it smacks of outright treason, if you ask me.

First, he is insulting our collective intelligence when he speaks of fraud. Yes, fraud can happen anywhere, including Iran, but not with the following figures:

The final results of Iran's closely-contested 10th presidential election indicate that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide victory.

According to Press TV, of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent), Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent).

These are figures which are impossible to create by fraud, that is obvious. Dubya could steal the elections from Gore with a couple of hundred of votes, yes, but he simply could not have done so if Gore and received almost the double number of votes. No election rigging technique allows that kind of thing. If that is what a regime wants to do, then it simply cancels the elections, period.

Also keep in mind that the post of President holds no real power in Iran to begin with. Why bother with fraud?

No, the fraud accusation is an insult to everybody's intelligence. Either that or, which is far more likely, it is a carefully orchestrated destabilization operation against Iran. I say that this is the latter.

Mousavi is no idiot for sure (check out his resume here), and since he is not an idiot, he must know that he lost this election and that, in fact, Ahmadinejad won by an un-fakable landslide. Still, he choose the destablilize his own country at a moment when that country is facing a possible military agression from abroad. What does that tell you about Mousavi? It tells me that he is objectively the tool of yet another US backed destabilization campaign. It matters little whether Mousavi himself is a paid CIA agent, or whether his entourage is carefully using his ego to push him towards the kind of action he has taken now. The bottom line is still that Mousavi is now hurting his country and helping to destabilize it.

And that brings another question to my mind, and that question is a scary one: how could the Guardian Council ever approve Mousavi when it clearly turns out that he is precisely the kind of candidate which should should have been carefully vetted (and rejected!) by this body?!

I don't think that this Mousavi thing is going anywhere. Both the vast majority of Iranians and the entire power structure of the government will never let him destabilize the country. Sure, the Western press will constantly remind us that "Ahmadinejad stole the election", but it's not like Ahmadinejad was ever popular with the Zionist press corps, or like anybody in Iran really cares.

But the ability of the Iranian Vilayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists) system to vet presidential candidates is now clearly in doubt. Sure, Mousavi probably had impeccable Muslim credentials, but why 12 members of the Guardian Council were not informed of his character and inclinations is rather puzzling for me. Either that, or they did know, but could do nothing to prevent him from running. In either case, this entire business seems to show that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not as impermeable to destabilization operations as one might have thought.