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The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

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Iran: Boycott the vetted election, not the mass protests

category international | anti-capitalism | other press author Thursday May 16, 2013 14:22author by Barry O'Sullivan Report this post to the editors

Yassamine Mather looks at the candidates for the presidency, who have to be approved by a council of clerics, and reckons they have anything to offer to the ordinary people.

On the last available day, ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani registered as a presidential candidate. Rafsanjani was the Islamic republic’s fourth president and is standing as a ‘reformist’. In reality he is the candidate of capitalism and probably one of the richest men in Iran. The newst that Rafsanjani had entered the race ‘to save the country’ generated hysteria. The principlists (conservative, hard-line supporters of ayatollah Ali Khamenei) accuse Rafsanjani of holding back before making his last-minute move in order to surprise his opponents. There is some truth to this claim: principlists entered the presidential elections with at least 7 serious candidates and another 14 less serious contenders. Had they known they would be facing such a figure, they would have tried to rally round a single candidate.

Some of Rafsanjani’s allies have claimed he was waiting for the approval of the supreme leader before putting himself forward. Two weeks ago he said he would only go ahead if Khamenei wanted him to do so, but a few days later there was a slightly different version: he would only put his name forward if the supreme leader did not object to his nomination. His telephone conversation with Khamenei1 or one his close advisers2 (depending on which version you read) only took place at 4.30pm Tehran time on May 11 - less than one and a half hours before the deadline. Rafsanjani’s daughter confirms this.3

Whatever the truth, Rafsanjani, who is now benefiting from the full support of the ‘reformist camp’ led by Mohammad Khatami, is no opponent of the Islamic regime. In fact he does not even claim to be a reformist: he is, in his own words, a “moderate”. Some consider him to be a “pragmatist conservative”4 - someone who tried to mediate between the ‘reformists’ and the conservatives after the debacle of the 2009 elections. Now he has, according to Khatami (Iran’s last ‘reformist’ president) made a “major sacrifice” and come forward to fulfil his duty to the “nation, the Islamic Republic and the faith”. ...

Related Link: http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/iran-boycott-vetted-election-not-mass-protests
author by NOPIpublication date Mon Jun 03, 2013 16:31author address author phone Report this post to the editors

WHY THE MYTH OF IRAN’S “STOLEN” ELECTION STILL MATTERS - http://www.raceforiran.com/why-the-myth-of-iran%E2%80%9...tters

The cartoon below was typical of the coverage of Iran’s 2009 election. [The cartoon could itself be described as racist.]

In fact, ballots in Iranian elections are neither physically transported to nor counted at the Interior Ministry in Tehran.

Ballots are counted in each polling station, by election officials and candidate observers. The counts are transmitted physically and electronically to the Ministry which aggregates national results. It is the electronic transmission of counts from polling stations that allowed the Ministry to announce results as they came in from the field after polls closed on June 12, 2009.

It was compelled to do this by Mir Hossein Mousavi’s public claim he had been informed by the Ministry that he had won—a statement made while polls were still open, Iranians were still voting and not a single ballot had been counted.

As stated earlier: Pre-election polls carried out by James Zogby (hardly a pro-regime stalwart) indicated that the 2009 Election was NOT stolen - the final results tallied quite closely to the pre-election polling carried out by Zogby.

Mir Hossein Mousavi’s public claim he had been informed by the Ministry that he had won was what was fraudulent.

The so called "green movement" is to all intents and purposes actually part of a deliberately orchestrated destabilisation attempt by imperialists to remove a Gov't they consider to be an enemy, as explained in the indymedia feature article on Gene Sharpe.

see here for more information: - http://www.indymedia.ie/article/102162

460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_electioncamel2.jpg

author by NOPIpublication date Mon Jun 03, 2013 16:19author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"after the debacle of the 2009 elections."

the 2009 elections were no debacle -

What WAS a debacle was the US/Zio-Nazi/Western attempted Coup-de-tat which was carried out using the tried-and-tested, and well known now to be fake, Gene-Sharp methods of declaring that there has been election fraud, even though there wasn't, and then getting useful idiots amongst the privileged upper-middle class, with their expensive smart phones and twitter accounts and US-Zio-Nazi sponsored "media training" to start rioting.

It is a FACT that the exit polling confirmed the final election tally - the exit polls were carried out by the Zogby org, and exit polling is a fairly exact science these days. The polls showed that the final result was very sound. There is little or no evidence to support the fraudulent claims that there was wide-spread election fraud., despite any claims either you or HOPI may make in that regard. The FACt is that the available exit-polls indicate that there was no wide-spread fraud at all, as alleged by HOPI and by the fake "opposition"

The only "fraud" on display after that election was the fraud being perpetrated by the US-Backed "opposition", and others that went around claiming fraud (such as hopi)

author by Zionism+Nazism=Felix Quigleypublication date Mon Jun 03, 2013 16:10author address author phone Report this post to the editors



if this was a Zio-Nazi operation, why was its control in britain? - Looks more like a joint Brit-ZioNazi op.

    AAP, Jun 3 2013 - http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/iran-busts-m...53890

    Iran has dismantled a terror-network backed by Mossad which planned to disrupt the Jun 14 presidential election in the Islamic republic, the state broadcaster says. IRIB said on its website on Sunday, quoting a statement by the ministry:

      The intelligence ministry has identified and arrested the members of this terror network, and confiscated their weapons. The network comprised 12 members, all of whom have been held. Their leader originated from a regional Arab country. The network had been instructed to conduct terrorist acts, ahead of and especially on election day, as well as creating ethnic and religious divisions in various regions. It had already hit several targets in one town. Its main culprit was in contact with a headquarters in Britain.

    Iran accuses USrael of waging a deadly campaign of sabotage against its disputed nuclear program, announcing from time to time the arrest of suspected USraeli spies . . . . . Last month the Islamic republic said it had hanged two convicted spies, one found guilty of working for Israel, and the other for the CIA.

author by Turingpublication date Sun Jun 02, 2013 22:43author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Full story at link.

On May 22, the US moved closer to imposing a full trade embargo against Iran, as the Senate reaffirmed US support for Israel - should it be “compelled to attack Tehran’s nuclear programme in self-defence”.

The Senate voted unanimously to adopt a non-binding resolution urging Barack Obama to fully enforce existing economic sanctions against Iran and to “provide diplomatic, military and economic support” to Israel “in its defence of its territory, people and existence”.

All this is happening in the middle of an election farce in Tehran. A day before the Senate resolutions, Iran’s religious supervisory body, the Guardian Council, announced the final list of eight candidates it deemed acceptable to contest the presidential elections on June 14. It did not include either the former president and main hope of the ‘reformists’, Hashemi Rafsanjani, or the outgoing president’s chosen successor, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Whoever gets elected on June 14, Iranians are resigning themselves to the fact that confrontation with the west will continue, and so crippling sanctions and devastating economic hardship will persist. The supreme leader had promised an ‘epic year’, when massive participation in the elections would prove the nation’s tenacity in confronting the foreign enemy. But the final list of mediocre candidates will make it difficult for even the most hard-line supporters of the regime to muster any enthusiasm.

The deteriorating situation has persuaded sections of the Iranian left to openly support regime change from above. In early May the Canadian government held a two-day ‘global dialogue conference’ at the University of Toronto, where foreign minister John Baird said: “The people of Iran deserve free and fair elections. Not another version of ayatollah Khamenei’s never-ending shell game of presidential puppets. Not the rise of a regressive clerical military dictatorship.”3 Also attending was Iran Tribunal prosecutor Payam Akhavan, who was quoted as saying: “Canada should continue to explore every avenue of assistance to civil society with a view to facilitating non-violent change.”4 Last weekend “republicans, leftists, constitutional monarchists and the green movement”5 joined forces to hold a two-day conference in Stockholm, at the invitation of the Swedish Democratic Party. They decided to form an umbrella organisation: United for Democracy in Iran.

In Hands Off the People of Iran we have always maintained that the Iranian people have to confront simultaneously two enemies: imperialism and their own rulers. Any compromise with either of these camps will tarnish the left and represent a betrayal of the interests of the working class. Adherence to this principle is as important today as it was in 2007, when Hopi was founded.

Related Link: http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/iran-boycott-sham-elections
 
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