I mean that very seriously, not flip.

I can't find any mention of an actual fraud mechanism. It appears that the allegation is based on the assumption that it was going to be a split election and not much more. There were some polls, but with turnout spectacularly high, pre-election polls are bound to have been wrong, and even they were not so clearcut (at least one poll predicted a 2:1 advantage to Ahmedinedjad).

I don't doubt that there are many young middle class to upper class voters that rejected the nationalism, populism and strong religious bent of Ahmedinedjad, and many that simply wanted change. But that doesn't mean they'ld be a majority. In a relatively poor and very religious country with a horrible experience dealing with the West, I would be stunned if a high turnout didn't benefit Ahmedinedjad.

So, in stead of getting all wrapped up in the media frenzy, why not look into the facts? Much of the world was stunned that the US re-elected Bush after his disastrous first four years, where he wrecked the US finances, started two wars (of which at least one by choice), ignored international law and basic human rights and alienated the rest of the world. But that doesn't prove that he rigged the elections either.

Good question.

Everybody from Pipes to Friedman is scratching their head on this one.

Best actual reporting I've seen so far is this one.

gmat:

Good question. Everybody from Pipes to Friedman is scratching their head on this one. Best actual reporting I've seen so far is this one.

The best evidence I've seen for Fraud comes from the Rachel Maddow show. In elections, politicians usually when in their home distracts, states, provinces, whatever. The first time the current Iranian President won, I can never spell his name correctly, he lost in eleven provinces and lost badly in his rival's home provinces and districts. In this case, he totally crushed ALL of his rivals in their home districts by ridiculous percentages. While this does happen legitimately at times, Gore loosing Tennessee, McGovern loosing in every state except Mass., it is very rare. It is especially rare when a politician is crushingly defeated in his home district. This is pretty good but not perfect evidence of fraud.

Regardless of whether there was fraud or not, the United States and every other nation on the planet, Muslim or not, should set this one out and let it play out naturally. The price of intervention is higher than the price of non-intervention and the people friendly to us or at least less hostile towards us have a greater chance of succedding if we do not intervene.

Yes, it is the only sensible policy.

Bravo! The only post I've seen so far that mentions that the entire article is based on an unsupported assumption! From the pre-election coverage, anyone honest admitted that Ahmedinadjad (sp?) had strong support in basically all non-urban areas. Iran has a much larger rural population vs. it's urban population compared to the U.S. It could very well be the case that the opposition had strong support in the cities and still lost the election by a landslide - there is no contradiction here. That urban centers would feel slighted by that sort of a situation is also understandable, but still doesn't prove fraud. There may have been fraud, and if so it may have been enough to impact the results, but this article has no evidence to support the assertion. As far as I can see it is a case of urban bias which doesn't question itself.

gmat, the article you link is not particularly good. I was particularly interested in what it says about Grand Ayatollah Sanei, but as far as I can tell this is typical of all the western reporting: it can be tracked to a comment from an anonymous reader of an Atlantic blog that translates a Farsi article into english. I don't know what to make of it, as I can't read the original, and can't find anyone else that has translated it. It would be an interesting source, but I imagine that if this anonymous reader was correct, someone would have officially translated this article by now. I also imagine (considering his fatwas) that Sanei is a supporter of Mousavi, and it would be necessary to understand how he came to think there was fraud (does he know anything, or is he guessing?).

The problem with the polls is also nicely explained in your linked article. The lead that the polls found was in the 10 big cities only - which is also were the foreign journalists were, and the rallies, and the cameras. But the lead there was at most only 4%, with large margins of error. With most of the countryside poorer and more religious than the cities, it is to be expected that Ahmedinedjad would win with a big margin there. Estimating the population in small cities and rural ares at 40%, a 50/50 urban vote and an 80/20 rural vote would give Ahmedinedjad 62% of the vote. It's not that I think there was no fraud at all, but I don't believe that it's been shown to have made a big difference.

Good thread. Every day I've been scanning the news for some concrete evidence of mass voter fraud but so far haven't found anything satisfactory. The reason very well may be that it's impossible for anyone to do any serious reporting in Iran right now. Twitter is a fascinating phenomenon, but it's definitely not a reliable source. The margin of Ahmedinejad's victory was so great that if Moussavi actually did get more votes than him, the scope of this alleged fraud would have to be monumental. We're not talking about a percentage point or a few thousand votes -- it's millions of votes manipulated or fabricated.

It will be interesting to see what this investigation ordered by the Ayatollah uncovers. If it is indeed massive fraud, he may choose to keep it secret rather than declare a new winner or call a new election. This election was not a sham as Christopher Hitchens argues -- regardless of whether Iranian citizens hold the same constitutional rights as westerners, this event functioned like a real election and the people expect justice.

Interesting take here on Iran's islamist enemies, and how they might benefit from ongoing instability in Iran.

Also how that threat might ultimately lead to a US-Iran rapproachment.

The fraud would appear to be that the Interior Minister, who was appointed by Amadinajad announced the results too quickly. Apparently, some junior members of the Ministry of indicated that it wasn't that the votes were miscounted but that they weren't counted at all.

Chrisle, can you source that? I was under the impression that the result was announced with a bit over 80% of the votes counted. If you take the victory margin at face value, it makes sense not to wait for the full count to finish as it couldn't alter the result anymore. Even if every single uncounted vote was for Mousavi, Ahmedinejad would have had more than 50% of the votes.

Nonetheless, the early announcement was a bad idea as one can imagine that the full count ends up giving Ahmedinedjad only 55% of the vote, meaning that there may not have been a discussion at all if they had waited for the full results (although I doubt that - the riots were almost guaranteed considering the heated rhetoric).

But the main point is that the western press has made up its mind about this election, which is doubly unhelpful as it ties the hands of the western diplomats and it reduces our credibility.