On the Iranian Elections

The current internal strife following the recent Iranian elections has escalated greatly within the past few days, due to supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi desperate and baseless claims that the election was rigged. When in reality they lost by millions upon millions of votes, and only secured about 30% of the popular vote. Election fraud on such a massive scale would be highly improbable, but yet protesters refuse to recognize this simple fact. This broad claim of election fraud on this scale is made on a minuscule amount of solid information too, only going to further point out the ignorance of the protestors.

People all around the world are being fed a biased and misleading story on these events as well; merely by being shown the side of this conflict which believes the election was fraudulent. When the world’s populace sees a massive protest in Tehran, they believe that represents the voice of the country, this is not the truth. Tehran itself may have a large amount of Mousavi supporters, but that is not a valid demographic for the country. In Tehran itself, there have been massive counter rallies in support of Ahmadinejad, showing the reality that the entire country of Iran is not revolting in such large a scale that many people believe it is.

As for the violent measures being used against protesters, Mousavi's supporters knew the risks they would take when the blatantly defied the legitimate government's orders to end the protests. Any violence can and should be blamed on their own foolishness and inability to grasp the political situation. And to be fair, much of this violence is being committed by pro-government militia forces which are out of Ahmadinejad's control as well, so placing blame on the current Iranian government for this violence is just uncalled for, and is a misconception.

On the matter of government censorship, perhaps the Iranian leaders foresaw the mess which would ensue on western news networks if information of the riots got out to the world. Perhaps they predicted that the world would undoubtedly receive a biased view of the story and sought to prevent this from happening and legitimizing Mousavi's wild and outlandish claims of election fraud.

President Obama has recently made a few poorly thought out statements on the use of violence as well. This of course being quite ironic because the US stood idle while Israel invaded Gaza and murdered hundreds of Palestinians, and violated their civil rights for a wholly unjust cause, and I will not even begin to cite the countless incidents of police brutality which have occurred within the confines of America's very borders, but yet when this breach of civil rights is committed by pro government militia; as in not controlled by the government, and in the name of ultimate internal peace, it is condemned. Oh the hypocrisy, though this is US foreign policy so this sort of thing is to be expected.

-R.M. Rogers