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Since this article was first posted, additional information has come to light supporting the charge of massive electoral fraud. This may be the appropriate moment to mention that the article was originally submitted with the title, "Whatever the results of the June 12, 2009 Iranian election are, the U.S. intent is to demonize and destabilize Iran." The OPED editor replaced this title with a very unsatisfactory one, but in order not to make waves I settled upon the one it now bears.
The New York Times reports that Iran's Guardian Council had admitted that there were 3,000,000 more votes counted than could be cast amongst 50 cities, but instead of concluding that there was massive fraud of which this evidence of ballot-stuffing was merely the tip of the iceberg, it concluded that the 3,000,000 set the outer limits of the fraud and thus could not have affected the outcome of the election. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23iran.html?hp
More importantly, a study has just been released by Chatham House, which was formerly known as the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Established in 1920, it is the sister institution to the Rockefeller-dominated Council on Foreign Relations that was founded the following year and that has sponsored the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group that jointly seek to dominate and control this planet. This does not necessarily mean that the results below that indicate massive fraud are mistaken; interestingly, these results are at odds with the previously cited pre-election survey that was consistent with the results as initially reported and was sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation.
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/14234_iranelection0609.pdf
This paper is published by Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews
Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election
Professor Ali Ansari,
Research and Analysis:Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, Institute of IranianStudies, University of St Andrews
21 June 2009
Executive Summary
Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior on the Farsi pages of theirwebsite shortly after the election, and from the 2006 census as published by the official Statistical Centre of Iran, the following observations about the official data and the debates surrounding it can be made.
· In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100% was recorded.
· If Ahmadinejad's victory was primarily caused by the increase in voter turnout, one would expect the data to show that the provinces where there was the greatest 'swing' in support towards Ahmadinejad would also be the provinces with the greatest increase in voter turnout. This is not the case.
· In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.
· In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends. ...
The devastating statistic comes from the third bullet above. According to the official tallies, there were over 10.6 million new voters in 2009, which is usually a sign of a reformist upsurge. To have achieved his reported victory, the conservative Ahmadinijad would have had to have captured all former conservative voters, all former centrist (Rafsanjani) voters, all new voters, and up to 44% of former reformist voters. This could not occur except in someone's wildest fantasies, hence, sadly, there was massive rigging of the count. The interesting question is why the rigging was done so crudely, and the most likely conjecture is that it was done by the Khamenei government under pressure as early results showed Mousavi to be the winner and "corrective action" had to be done on the spur of the moment. If so, this gives credence to the comment from the senior author of the Chatham report, quoted in The New York Times article cited above, despite its pouring gasoline on the fire rather than oil on the roily waters.
