A Crash course in what the F just happened in Iran

Ok so It's come to my Attention that there are many of my friends, and many people who aren't my friends, who have no idea what's happening in Iran right now, or they know but they don't know exactly what it's about. I'm going to do my best to explain it in an easy, readable, poli-sci esq way. Forgive me if I get anything wrong there's not a lot of news coming out of Iran right now so it's hard to get the facts, but more on that later.

To start I'm going to talk about the 10th annual Iranian presidential elections that took place this weekend. The thing about Iran is that the president is really a figure head position. The country is really controlled by a religious faction (the interior ministry) which is lead by the Supreme Leader. Because the president is a figure head position, the voter turn out in Iran is usually low because moderate candidates are not usually allowed to run and people don't show up to vote for guys they don't like, so more conservative leaders like the current leader, Ahmadinejad, are put into power which suits the Supreme Leader just fine. This year however a (marginally) more moderate candidate by the name of Mousavi was actually favored to win in pre election polls and all sings were pointing to the fact that Ahmadinejad would not be returning for another year. The 2009 elections brought out an 85% voter turnout, which is amazing in any country. Two hours after the polls closed the interior ministry under direction from the supreme leader announced that Ahmadinejad was the winner.

There are a couple of things wrong with this picture. First, historically in Iran high voter turn out means that the moderate candidate wins. Ahmadinejad won last vote with a low turn out, why would 85% of the eligible population turn out this year when they didn't last year. Second the winner was announced after two hours which means they counted 10 million more ballots 30 times faster than they ever have before. Third was the fact that Ahmadinejad won with a reported 68% which is crap, because in the last elections when Ahmadinejad was more popular he still didn't get enough votes to avoid a run off. Fourth is a city called Tabreeze which always always votes for the moderate candidate, except reportedly in this election they voted 2 to 1 for Ahmadinejad, it would be like Alberta suddenly going liberal. Fifth, supposedly the interior ministry called Mousavi to tell him that he won, and then an hour later announced Ahmadinejad as the new president. (NOTE: this may not be reliable but i thought it was important to mention the possibility. So as you may be able to see there are many reasons that the Iranian election results may have been forged. Although Mousavi may not be much more moderate than Ahmadinejad it's important to note that this is what the people seem to want.

As a result of the forged election results there are many protests in the country, mostly in the city of Tehran. The protests are mostly lead by university students and have turned violent because of police evolvement, there have also been some very violent riots. In an attempt to stop information from leaking out of the country the government has put a ban on media and is blocking internet site out of Iran. Right now the most reliable source of information is Twitter. It's amazing really, all these young student are able to share information with each other and the world and they are able to make the story known. They have also organized protests through twitter, the biggest one being a protest on the roof tops of Tehran at four o'clock in the morning where they chanted Allah Akbar . These people are being hunted down and persecuted for seeking freedom. I marvel at the bravery of these people and I hope that this whole situation doesn't turn into Tian an men square. That would be heart breaking.

The revolution is being called the green revolution and I hope that it works out and I wish there was more I could do, but I hope after reading this more of you will be informed and you will spread the story of what is going on in Iran right now., Because the world needs to know what the Iranian government is trying to hide; It's people will not back down from their right to free speech anymore than any one in Canada or the United States or any Free democratic country would.

Here is a list of Iranian Twitters who are Tweeting right now from Iran. I urge you to go check it out because really I haven't even scratched the surface of what's going on, and really, they know better than I do.

http://www.h3x.no/2009/06/14/iranians-on-twitter-during-the-june-clashes/

Update: Here are some really amazing Pictures from Iran

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html

Thanks,
Julie