Parviz: Khamenei’s Aura of Invincibility Shattered

June 20, 2009

[editorial note: I just received this email by MoA regular Parviz (not his real name) who lives in Iran and I decided to publish it immediately without any change or correction – b.]

Hi Bernhard,

Your monitoring has been atrocious but I submit the following as a new thread to redress the balance and compensate for all the doubts you have expressed about the genuineness and independence of Iran’s reform movement:

TITLE: Khamenei’s Aura of Invincibility Shattered

MoA threads and comments were so one-sided that I left the Blog, but I’ve decided to stop lurking and recommenced commenting out of a sense of responsibility to your armchair intellectuals, and especially in support of those non-Iranian posters (God bless them) who are continuing to ask the same questions I and others repeatedly asked and to which you pointedly refused to respond.

(Some examples: How can you defend “counting” done in complete secret by security officials? What about Karroubi’s missing 7 million votes? What about the statement of powerful Ayatollahs in the Holy City of Qom – Grand Ayatollahs Montazeri, Sanei and the Qom Seminary — that the election was rigged? Why does the Guardian Council say it needs 10 days to check 10 % of votes when the ENTIRE election votes were allegedly counted in just one hour? Exactly how ‘random’ do you think those ‘samples’ will be? Why do all the titles of your threads invariably defend Khamenei/Ahmadinejad and cast doubts on Moussavi’s credibility and on the broad-based strength of the protest movement that reached 3 million on Thursday in Tehran alone? etc.,.):

Today I tried to participate in the peaceful demonstration (which is permitted under Article 27 of the very same Islamic Constitution that the Islamicists have subverted, meaning that no Interior Ministry permit is constitutionally necessary), and managed to walk past huge groupings of riot police, Revolutionary Guards and plainclothes militia (Baseej), plus huge numbers of Arab troops (I guess on loan from Hamas and Hezbollah), all heavily armed and wielding truncheons and other weapons. Near Tehran University (= 2 km from Enghelab Square where the peaceful demonstration was to occur) I was stopped by some ugly looking Baseej group which threatened to beat me and my friends up if we walked even one step further south.

When they drew their weapons we were forced to give up the venture, and the thugs probably inadvertently did my group a favour by turning us back before we could get anywhere near the proceedings, because many others who got through have been beaten up, many are missing and Tehran is in chaos and under military rule. I am now back home watching Al Jazeera that showed video footage of one young girl shot through the head by a sharpshooter, among other atrocities.

b, here is what the regime you inexcusably defend actually did today as reported by this eye-witness:
They had troops, Guards and militia stationed at every crossroads and along the length and breadth of every route from the very “upper-middle-class” North of Tehran down to Fadayeen Street (= a total area of about 200 square miles). I guess maybe up to one million regime “helpers” were involved in a Clausewitz-style show of overwhelming strength. This was because, as officially declared by the current Mayor of Tehran, the street protests reached a peak of 3 million on Thursday and were growing daily. As you correctly point out above (sometimes I can agree with you) the regime’s aim was to PREVENT millions of people reaching the focal point, so they could kill and maim and arrest the few who actually made it. They closed off all approaches to the Square and then (as evidenced by the latest videos) picked off the demonstrators like penned-in animals.

I believe (but have no proof) that the ‘coincidental’ bomb explosion near Khomeini’s tomb was set off by the regime itself as an excuse for an even harder crackdown. Khamenei mentioned the possibility of bombings at Friday Prayers, and right on cue the next day (today) such an event occurs 25 miles away from the demonstrators. Funny that it served the purpose of ‘desecrating’ Khomeini’s tomb even though the bomb went off outside, giving the regime the excuse it needed to label the opposition ‘Godless’ and escalate violence even further against these clearly peaceful protesters.

If the regime hadn’t cracked down so hard today the crowds in Tehran alone would have swelled to well over the earlier 3 million, as those not bribed/coerced by the regime are sick to death of 30 years of religious hypocrisy and misrule.

Anybody here still believe the Islamic regime is ‘democratic’? It’s a regime of thugs, run by thugs on behalf of thugs. Any help to Hamas and Hezbollah is not to help Palestinians but a) for leverage against the U.S., and b) to generate ‘coupons’ that they can use in situations like this. Everybody I spoke to today thought we were in Lebanon after seeing so many heavily armed Arabs in and around Ferdowsi Square and Chamran bridge.

The main thing is that the aura of invincibility and (God forbid) ‘Godliness’ about Khamenei has been shattered. This won’t end until the regime is either overthrown or reforms dramatically and becomes part of the Revolution.

Nobody I know gives a damn about the U.S. or Israel. We are all simply fed up.

Best wishes to all,

Parviz

[additional note: I do not have time today to respond to Parviz’ note, but I promise to do so tomorrow – b.]

Posted by b on June 20, 2009 at 18:59 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Parviz
Thanks for answering my questions.

Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 19:24 utc | 201

Dragonfly, that post deserved a separate thread to counterbalance all b’s threads that clearly doubted (if not discounted) the possibility of rigging. b, how about it? A separate thread by Dragonfly?
Also, many monitors’ cards were not issued in time and the candidates’ observers were not allowed into the polling stations on such technical grounds.
b, you and many others simply don’t understand that the entire system has become rigged in ways unimaginable to outsiders. The Guards have taken over levers of the the Iranian economy and all political instruments of intimidation and control.
Read the Chatham House report on the “It’s Over” thread.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 20:05 utc | 202

Parviz @ 163:
The prize for MoA’s Most Illogical Poster goes to poor Sam who asks why the regime is still in power if I claim it’s so unpopular.
Every regime stays in power via support of a large portion of the people. The state apparatus connot function without people. Your claim is bullshit as you yourseflf reaveled in your front page post – The Iranian Election – An Economic View. You predictied that Khatami would win the election and would lead to great prosperity with a grand new “rapid rapprochement “with the US wherin the “the populace will choose the lesser of two evils”. There is not even a mention of any real revolution because you know that it does not exist as a popular movement. Your most absurd statement in the thread was this one:

Israel has caused much loss of blood, treasure and reputation to the U.S., so in due course the U.S. will bring Israel to heal.

The fact that you could even think that Iran could replace Israel as America’s client state in the ME is most revealing and so delusion I don’t even know how to address it. Funny how when I stated that Israel does not control America, it is the other way around, you jumped all over me and called me an AIPAC apoligist, even as your above statement clearly shows that you feel exactly the same. Why attack me for something you agree with? Is there a bias there Parvis? More revealling words:

The Left are seen in Iran as opportunistic traitors and have no future.

Is this why you attack me Parvis? Do you really hate liberals? Is this why you can dismiss the rape and torture of an innocent liberal woman under police custody? Interesting that you blame it on the sepah (for those that don’t know Iranian Revolutionary Gaurd) even though they voted overwhelmingly in favor of your reformist candidate who was in power at the time. In your own words:

The Rev. Guards voted 70 % for Khatemi in 1997 and even more in 2001

You were praising them for their pragmatism back then when they supported your candidate. But when your candidate refused the common decency of returning the body to the family they suddenly morph from your pals to those evil thugs did it? Even more astounding is that your entire premise for that post was that the people would choose Khatemi over Ahmadinejad for economic reasons. Here’s what you said when you first learned that Mousavi may have entered the race:

b (26), Moussavi was an economic disaster for Iran as its P.M. in the Eighties

You claimed that economics will determine the election and then state that the loser was an “economic disaster”, and now you claim suprise that he lost? One of those claims is a delusion. Which one is it Parvis? And there’s more. You clearly state that if there is US interference in the election then your side will lose but you fail to make the connection when it happens:

regarding negative propaganda, my wife and I have been astonished to note the number of mainstream T.V. channels recently flooding the airwaves with sympathetic portrayals of Iran
…
My point is that the world is being ‘softened up’ for a rapprochement. All these simultaneous programmes cannot be by mere coincidence. Even the CIA’s own VOA-Persian is softening its stance (ever so gradually!).

You acknowledge it is “negative” but you take it as a good sign and completely ignore your earlier warning. Talk about drinking the kool-aid and you take the cake when it fits your agenda. You claim to be against the Ayatollahs but it is obvious you are only against the Ahmadinejad Ayatollahs and very much support the reformist Ayatollahs. What? Your set of dictatorial moollahs is nicer? Does it sadden you that I don’t support the nice dictators? You are a walking talking condatradiction Parviz. You can’t even believe that your own fellow countrymen are suppressing you so you invent stories of foreign Arabs in the streets taking away your freedom. Like you said above liberals are hated in your country, and that is the answer to your original question of why the regime stays in power. You wrote the answer and you have the gall to call me illogical?
The fact is there will be no grand bargain unless you do like Libya did and sign on the oiled line. Any moron knows this will be the basis for any “rapprochement”. They don’t care who is in the government or what kind of government it is. History is the proof for anybody to see. Just what were you predicting Parvis?
Sam denigrates the courage of 3000 unarmed students against thousands of Darth Vaders
Now there is a prime example of you juming to conclusions because they coincide with your preconcieved notions. You don’t need any proof to attack me as you even use the words of others to do it. It doesn’t matter that I never said such a thing I must be guilty eh?

Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 22:41 utc | 203

Dragonfly@199.
your post is instructive and heres what I get out of it:
1) you have not provided any data or numbers regarding the extent of the factors you discussed. Do you have any ?
2) going by your characterization of what candidate-representatives are allowed to do, it would seem they do not play any role in the voting & counting process. So, why would any candidate bother to send representatives ?

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jun 22 2009 5:39 utc | 204

“why would any candidate bother to send representatives ?
Precisely. The whole system is fake.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 22 2009 5:45 utc | 205

Wrong again. It is 18 and the heavily Ahmadinejad-stacked Parliament refused a reduction to 15 to prevent an even greater youth vote against their incumbent monkey:
This is certainly a guy to take seriously.
Actually, irony aside, why is he taken seriously? Hamas? Hezbollah? Depriving the fifteen year olds of their vote? Parliament stacked? How, when?
Because Parviz says so?
Unreal.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 22 2009 6:08 utc | 206

Unreal is your claim, and the claim of others, that there was no massive, widespread state-sponsored fraud. I assume you were one of the beneficiaries.
Don’t take my word for it. Check the Press TV website.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 22 2009 11:05 utc | 207

jony_b_cool @ 204
you have not provided any data or numbers regarding the extent of the factors you discussed. Do you have any ?
This requires a bit of technical jargon. Suppose I have a finite number of polling stations, say 45,000 and I want to know (a) If the election administrators and the GC representatives belong the Ahmadinejad faction; (b) If they are members of Basij or the IRGC; (c) How old they are. I can either do a complete census of all 45,000 stations or draw a sample of those. Obviously I cannot run a census on all polling stations since the MOI and the GC will not release the names of the election workers at each polling station such that I can then find out the answers to my questions. So I need to draw a sample. The easiest way for this is to draw a simple random sample (SRS). A SRS of size about 1,200 is probably sufficient given the population size 45,000 and the level of error I am willing to accept say 5%. But taking a SRS requires the cooperation of the MOI and GC and a big pot of money which I don’t have. So I am going to have to resort to the poor man’s sampling method. This is called snowball sampling and has some nice properties under certain conditions. The idea is for me to find someone at random and ask him if he knows a MOI or GC representative. If the answer is yes, I will ask this person my questions and record the answers. Then I will ask him if he knows someone who knows a MOI or GC representative until I hit someone who doesn’t. Then I find another person at random and repeat the process. I have done this for a couple of provinces. Since the GC and MOI are centrally structured organizations with little variation in their command structure, it is safe to assume that the recruitment process for election representatives is quite uniform across provinces. Furthermore, the GC operates offices in each province year-round, meaning they have had plenty of time to pick and vet who they wanted to represent them at each polling station. The results of my little sampling effort so far is an overwhelming positive and some “I don’t know”.
going by your characterization of what candidate-representatives are allowed to do, it would seem they do not play any role in the voting & counting process. So, why would any candidate bother to send representatives ?
This requires a long historical background. In short, the election system in Iran is based on the idea of adversarial policing. Throughout the post-revolution history of Iran the MOI and the GC have always been at loggerheads on the issue of elections with the MOI generally taking the side of the candidates and the GC promoting a specific set of candidates loosely called the Right or the Extreme Right; at this stage Mr. Ahmadinejad’s faction is the favorite of the GC. This presidential election is the only one where both the MOI and GC supported the same candidate. So the MOI and GC simply colluded at the polling stations rather than balancing each other out. In the previous post I did not elaborate on the relations between the GC and MOI representatives at the polling stations — It is another kettle of worms altogether — because of the fact that in this election they were on the same team: Mr. Elham a member of the GC is Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Justice Minister and Spokesman; the Ayatollah Jannati the powerful, untouchable Secretary of the GC has openly supported Ahmadinejad; another powerful member of the GC, former judiciary chief the Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi has barely if ever hidden his longtime hostility to Mr. Mousavi and Karroubi; the Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani another GC member has openly said that people’s votes does not provide the government with legitimacy, but with efficiency. This has a profound consequence: since the legitimacy of the government is divine, people can only express their support for the government to make it more efficient not to topple it; in essence people’s votes can be ignored if they oppose the government.

Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 22 2009 17:12 utc | 208

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