Iran Feature: Re-visiting the 2009 Election (Keshavarz)

Writing in CounterPunch, Fatemeh Keshavarz re-examines what may have happened in the 2009 Presidential election, bringing in analysis of a recently-leaked audio in which a Revolutionary Guard commander describes interference by the Iranian military before, during, and after the vote.



Keshavarz applies her analysis to the tension in Iran today, 15 months after the election: "The leak of the tape, whether by the IRGC [Islamic Revolution Guards Corps] intelligence [bureau] or unhappy elements among them, makes another point clear. The battle of Ahmadinejad’s government for establishing its legitimacy is not over --- not even among the members of the Guard. The intelligence chiefs therefore deem it necessary to convince their own members that they are in control of the situation --- better still, they themselves have masterminded the current situation in the first place.

More than a year has passed since millions of Iranians marched on the streets calling the 2009 election a military coup carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG), their militia the Basij, and their armed plainclothes hired hands "lebaseshakhsis". The goals of the coup: keeping Ahmadinejad in power and completing the military and economic control of the IRG in the country. After beating up, arresting, and sometimes killing the protesters, the government put a record number of Iranian journalists behind bars (most now serving long sentences) and banned the foreign press from entering the country except to report on officially-orchestrated occasions.

Subsequently, Mir Housein Mousavi, the main opponent of Ahmadinejad and many members of the reformist opposition --- known as the Green Movement --- were put effectively under house arrest curbing their ability to reach the public in Iran. Moving the scenes of its brutality from the streets to jails and interrogation rooms, the regime dropped out of headlines thereby reducing the pressure on the Iranian authorities to answer for their brutal treatment of the opposition.

In the meantime, using its full control over the media, the Iranian government began to promote an alternative account of the 2009 election, an account which has not been without impact on the western left. It goes like this: the Iranian upper and upper middle classes, fooled by the western supporters of the reformists, had assumed that they had the majority while, in fact, in small towns and villages widespread support for Ahmadinejad gave him his 63% victory in the elections. Frustrated with their own miscalculations, the defeated reformists resorted to street violence, and therefore the government had no choice but to use harsher measures to calm things down.

This scenario has many big holes including the fact that, even if Ahmadinejad had the support of the rural areas, the Iranian population is about 65% urban and in fact the large cities are more than able to give any candidate a victory. Furthermore, hundreds of video clips document the peacefulness of the early protest marches in large cities as well as small towns. They also document the unprovoked violence of the security forces against the marchers.

All of this has become relevant again. Less than a month ago, an audio file of a speech by a chief intelligence officer and interrogator from the top ranks of the Revolutionary Guards came to light describing the behind-the-scenes [manoeuvres] of Ahmadinejad’s 2009 victory. The speech was leaked to the opposition websites, and spread fast despite the heavy censorship imposed in Iran. Besides the fascinating details revealed in it, there are other things that make the document important including the fact that no one (not even the government) has disputed its authenticity.

It is, in fact, very likely that the speech was leaked intentionally by the government itself. These facts lead to important questions. Who is the speaker? What does the tape reveal? What is the reformist opposition doing about it? And, why would the Iranian government leak a document that confirms its complicity in a fraudulent election, if indeed the leak has been intentional?

First a quick update on the current conditions in Iran. The country still has the highest number of jailed reporters in the world and only the official news and views are reported on the national media. Expressing political opposition in a blog can lead to five years in jail where the prisoners go on frequent hunger strikes to protest torture, unsanitary living conditions, and insult. Female prisoners will receive reduced sentences if they confess to illicit sexual relations with prominent members of the reform movement. Families of the prisoners who resist making confessions are threatened with more arrests.

And, despite Mr. Ahmadinejad’s claim quoted in The New Yorker’s recent piece “After the Crackdown”, his critics are not free to speak their minds. A standard charge for jailed journalists is “insulting (read criticizing) the president.” To get a sense of the problem, imagine you are an Iranian blogger citing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s claim in his New Yorker interview in your blog and asking, “If it is ok to criticize our president, why are some journalists in jail for 'insulting' him?” You will likely receive a brief phone call from a security agent within days. He will tell you to introduce yourself to one of the intelligence headquarters (or even directly to the main office of Evin Prison). If you are smart, you will do so immediately and quietly.

Side by side with these “security” measures, the National Iranian Radio and Television works to uphold its conspiratorial master narrative: the discovery of a “foreign” plot to end the supremacy of Islam in Iran. Those who would criticize the government are agents of this foreign “enemy.” One does not even need a blog to be considered a foreign agent. It is enough to mention an anti-government protest to a friend in an e-mail, or, worse still, attach a picture of the protest to the e-mail. Last week, in anticipation of the official Quds Day celebration, the day the Iranian government reiterates its support for the Palestinians, the e-mail use was reduced to three hours a day.

The universities (particularly the schools of humanities and social sciences) are perceived as infested with sympathy for the foreign enemy. In the past ten months, Ali Khamenei the Supreme Leader, major cleric Mesbah Yazdi, and Sadeq Larijani, the head of the Iranian judiciary, have all spoken about the unsuitability of the humanities for Iranian universities. Mr. Larijani targeted sociology, psychology, and the branch of philosophy that addresses human existential issues as the most unsuitable ones.

Against this sustained discourse of a foreign threat --- versus the dutiful, legitimate, and honest efforts of the government to offset the treat –-- there is now the newly leaked audio-file of a speech in which, a major Revolutionary Guard intelligence officer and interrogator brags about saving the Supreme Leader’s glory via keeping Mr. Ahmadinejad in the presidential office. This has, according to him, been done single-handedly by members of the Revolutionary Guard through sensible planning and timely action: that is identifying the enemy (the reformists), and using all means (obstruction, violence, spying, threats, and arrests) to stop them from winning the election.

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