Thursday, January 22, 2015

Remember Iran's 'Stolen' Election?

"Even stolen elections have results that matter. The election that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole from the Iranian people last weekend is no exception. Its consequences are almost all bad. If any election is the prelude to conflict, with all the tragedy and terror that entails, this was it. First, the good news. Huge numbers of ordinary Iranians took serious personal risks to demonstrate their disgust at the demented rhetoric and sterile extremism their President and the mullahs behind him offer them. Everything that was good and decent and brave and creative about Iran was alive with hope in the days before the election, and in the heroic resistance afterwards." (Don't pin your hopes on change in Tehran, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 18/6/09)

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"Five years after the 2009 post-election unrest in Tehran came under the world's spotlight, stunning footage was shown on Iranian state-owned TV showing Mir-Hossein Moussavi's chief voting inspector Abbas Akhoundi five days after the election telling a meeting of key campaign members of all the 4 presidential candidates with the Supreme Leader that there had 'basically been no election fraud' at work." (Historical footnote made public: key Moussavi campaign official admits to no fraud in 2009 election, farsnews.com, 4/1/15)

See also my 19/10/10 post Was Iran's Election Stolen?

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