Re: [Marxism] WWP: Iran: What Fraud? [retry]

[Tom Cod <tcod@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Iran: What fraud?

> Workers World 
> Published Jun 17, 2009  4:27 PM
> 
 > The first thing to make clear about the Iranian election is that the U.S. and
> other imperialist states have no right to intervene. The media here are now
> filled with moralizing, even racist scolding of Iran over the election 
> results.
> Who are they to act so hoity-toity? Remember George W. Bush’s open theft
> of the 2000 election in Florida?And then there are the self-righteous 
> European imperialists. Only 43 percent of
> the people voted in the recent EU elections. Compared to that, Iran’s 82
> percent vote makes it a vibrant capitalist democracy.
 
> The second thing is that absolutely no evidence has been dredged up of
> significant electoral fraud. Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent
> total is completely consistent with his 2005 vote total of 61.7 percent. It is
> also consistent with the only election poll taken. Ken Ballen and Patrick
> Doherty polled a thousand Iranians and predicted a two-to-one win for
> Ahmadinejad. (Washington Post, June 15)Given that the Iranian economy is 
> continuing to grow, despite the world
> capitalist contraction, it’s reasonable that a majority would vote for
> the incumbent.
 
> The vote breakdown by neighborhood, as provided by the official election
> authorities, is also consistent with political reality. Ahmadinejad lost in
> Teheran City, a bourgeois stronghold. He was weakest in the wealthier northern
> part of the capital. But he swept the rural areas and did well among the urban
> poor.

> All the Iranian candidates—and here we will discuss just the president
> and his nearest rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi—are part of the Islamic
> Republic’s ruling circle of politicians. It would be surprising if any
> deviated far from generally acceptable politics in Iran. That means capitalist
> economic development and projecting Iranian power in the region. And
> maintaining some independence from the imperialists—not easy if your
> economy is integrated with the world capitalist market.
 
> Ahmadinejad is closely identified with militant support for the mass-based
> resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon, and also with the determined
> public defense of Iran’s nuclear power program. With a high vote for him,
> the Iranians thumb their noses at the imperialists. This also explains the
> strong hostility from the U.S. ruling class.In Iran, the reelected president 
> is also considered a populist who will fight
> for economic concessions to Iran’s poor—which explains his strong
> popularity outside the middle-class and wealthy districts.
> 
> Mousavi was first seen as a reformer who might relax cultural and social
> restrictions and give more leeway to organize for rights. He got some support
> from women’s organizations, labor and even some progressive circles. By
> the end of the campaign, however, Mousavi was obviously allied with the power
> broker and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom Ahmadinejad
> defeated handily in the 2005 election.

> All reports—even from anti-Ahmadinejad sources here—describe the
> Mousavi-Rafsanjani followers as the wealthier, college-educated Iranians who
> dwell in the cities.Rafsanjani, who still holds a position of power in the 
> regime, is identified
> with the wealthiest sector of Iranian society, with privatizing industries,
> with a more conciliatory approach to imperialism. Mousavi is now linked to 
> him,
> and it’s their grouping that the imperialists either want to win or want
> to cause enough internal trouble to weaken the government. In the end, what 
> the
> imperialists want is to reverse the Iranian revolution and get back control
> over its rich resources.

> But 2009 is not 1953, when the CIA overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh and
> installed the Shah. The Iranian people have benefitted enormously from their
> revolution and cannot easily be turned back.


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