In a massive outpouring reminiscent of the Islamic Revolution three decades ago, hundreds of thousands of Iranians streamed through the capital Monday, and the fist-waving protesters denounced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim to victory in a disputed election.
Standing on rooftops, pro-government gunmen opened fire on a group of protesters who had tried to storm the militia's compound. One man was killed and several others were wounded in the worst violence since the disputed election Friday.
Angry men showed their bloody palms after cradling the dead and wounded who had been part of a crowd that stretched more than five miles (nearly 10 kilometers) supporting reform leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.
The huge rally reinforced what has become increasingly clearer since the election: the opposition forces rallying behind Mousavi show no signs of backing down. Their resolve appears to have pushed Iran's Islamic establishment into attempts to cool the tensions after days of unrest.
So far, our government is quiet about the looming bloodshed. As long as the Basij stay loyal to the regime and the army and Pasdaran stay at least neutral, the regime will eventually kill and arrest their way to calm if the protesters don't go away.
Of course, it is possible that the people of Iran haven't had their choice stolen, despite the president's Cairo speech that was supposed to represent a reaching out to the Moslem world:
The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.
That would be inconvenient for the people who view Iran as just a friend we haven't made yet.
Yet focusing on the quick announcement and vote tally misses the point that the vote is the last tainted sham in an entire sham electoral system:
Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not "run." Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. ("They fell for it? But it's too easy!") Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.
In theory, the first choice of the ayatollahs might not actually "win," and there could even be divisions among the Islamic Guardian Council as to who constitutes the best nominee. Secondary as that is, it can still lead to rancor. After all, corrupt systems are still subject to fraud. This, like hypocrisy, is the compliment that vice pays to virtue. With near-incredible brutishness and cruelty, then, the guardians moved to cut off cell-phone and text-message networks that might give even an impression of fairness and announced though their storm-troop "revolutionary guards" that only one form of voting had divine sanction. ("The miraculous hand of God," announced Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had been present in the polling places and had announced a result before many people had even finished voting. He says that sort of thing all the time.)
Of course, given that the entire vote was between two candidates viewed as acceptable by the Guardian Council, it is at some level silly to portray Mousavi as a democrat. Lots of Iranians poured their hopes into him for some hope of freedom as the anti-Ahmadinejad, but Mousavi is hardly a reformer. Still, some see Ahmadinejad's victory as a potential slap in the face to the West to realize what we are up against:
If the mullahs were really canny, they would have let Mousavi win. He would have presented a more reasonable face to the world without changing the grim underlying realities of Iran’s regime–the oppression, the support for terrorism, the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He is the kind of “moderate” with whom the Obama administration could happily engage in endless negotiations which probably would not accomplish anything except to buy time for Iran to weaponize its fissile material.
But instead it appears that the mullahocracy was determined to anoint Ahmadinejad the winner–and by a margin which no one can take seriously as a true representation of Iranian popular will. Ahmadinejad is about the worst spokesman possible to make Iran’s case to the West–a president who denies the Holocaust, calls for Israel’s eradication, claims there are no homosexuals in Iran, and generally comes off like a denizen of an alternative universe. Even the Obama administration will be hard put to enter into serious negotiations with Ahmadinejad, especially when his scant credibility has been undermined by these utterly fraudulent elections and the resulting street protests.
So good comes from a stolen sham election, eh?
Come on! Not a chance. The cause and effect chain continues. If the Pasdaran and army are no worse than neutral while the Basij remain ready to kill and smash protesters, Ahmadinejad will ride out these protests. That's the key. If enough security forces remain with the regime, the regime survives this round.
And with "stability" restored in Iran, the Obama administration reaches past the protesters to the regime to get that grand bargain they hope will get them the Nobel Peace Prize.
And our president will get that prize--no matter that the deal will never be honored by the Iranians, as we'll discover after President Obama is out of office.
All he has to do to get the Nobel Peace Prize is look away and pretend that he has no role in this drama, and then carry on with his plans. What's a bunch of dead students when the liberal view of the world is at stake?
And a bunch of dead students will look cheap compared to the price we will pay if we don't destroy the Iranian regime before they get nuclear weapons. We're getting a glimpse of what lies beyond the Gates of Hell. We'll walk through soon enough, I'd guess, if we miss this chance to stand up with the people of Iran who don't want to live under the mullahs any more.
