George W. Ahmadinejad

Now that the Iranian election is in the books and the protesters have taken to the streets one must ask the musical question: Why did the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his puppet master, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fix the results in such a ham-handed fashion?

I mean, really now, if Ahmadinejad and his party had let the vote count go on in a normal manner the sawed-off mouthpiece for the heirs of cross-dressing reactionary political and religious leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, most likely would have won.

Yet many observers, especially here in the West, question the results based on the speed with which the hand-marked paper ballots were counted. In this country when we had ink-marked ballots counted by hand, the results were known on the same day or at least very late at night, after all Abraham Lincoln was declared the winner of the 1860 presidential race late that November 6 Tuesday night. In the case of Iran, however, Ahmadinejad's "landslide" was announced mere minutes after the polls closed. And that was the other think that raised Western as well as the bushy eyebrows of opponent Mirhossein Mousavi.

But without the guiding hand of a Karl Rove-like figure the good ayatollahs of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council obviously did not have enough confidence in the urban and rural poor of Iran who are Ahmadinejad's most fervent and loyal supporters to deliver the vote. Had Ahmadinejad's handlers used a lighter more subtle touch-- like throwing out a few absentee ballots, losing a box of ballots somewhere on the way to the county courthouse or challenging ever ballot with the first name Muhammad in the signature--they might have gotten away with it. Sure there would have been some protests for sure, but people would have accepted the result and gone on with their pathetic lives, it was a three-way race after all.

But the ayatollahs pushed their luck and fixed the election, declaring their boy, Ahmadineja, the winner with a 63% plurality. Now they've stepped in it. But the reason they did so remains why?

Observes Stephen Zunes at Alternet.org

The only people happier than the Iranian elites over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apparently stolen election win Friday, were the neoconservatives and other hawks eager to block any efforts by the Obama administration to moderate U.S. policy toward the Islamic republic.

By now it is ancient and arcane American history that advisers to then-candidate Ronald Reagan had secret talks with members of the Iranian revolution during the 1980 U.S. presidential election. Those of us old enough to remember recall how the American hostages held by the Iranian revolutionaries at the U.S. embassy in Tehran were released just as the divine Reagan was giving his first inaugural address.

Which leads me to speculate that elements of America's reactionary right may have had contact with elements of Iran's SCRC. Perhaps clandestine promises were made to surreptitiously aid Iran's faltering economy, perhaps secretly buy some oil for Israel or supply the Iranian air forcer with spare parts. We'll never find out the truth.

From an American NeoCon/reactionary Republican perspective keeping the runty bogeyman Ahmadinejad on television scaring the shit out of the dull witted American electorate, is right where they want him.