I wasn't going to post anything about the Iranian election initially because frankly, the "republican" part of that regime is a minor blip in comparison to the power that the mullahs and specifically Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds in the country. Yet the aftermath of this apparently manipulated election is what makes the story in Iran so important. Khamenei had initially decreed that the results were "divine" but the only thing that matters is that if the people believe it to be so. Despite Ahmadinejad's attempts to beat his opponents into submission, social unrest has led Khamenei to walk back god's rule and will now hold an investigation into President Ahmadinejad tainted the political process.
From UPI:
TEHRAN, June 15 (UPI) -- Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Monday ordered an investigation into fraud allegations surrounding the country's troubled election, state-run media report.Khamenei also urged Mir Hossein Mousavi to pursue his challenge of election fraud through legal means, CNN reported.
Mousavi is disputing the official results of Friday's elections that declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner with more than 62 percent of the vote to Mousavi's 33 percent. Since the results were released, Mousavi's supporters have staged demonstrations, clashing with Ahmadinejad supporters and police.
Now the determining factor is how far this investigation gets. If Khamenei allows investigators to show the fraud allegedly committed, then we'll see if Iran will hold another election, retabulated the results to show the actual vote totals or merely ignore the opposition after claiming to look into the matter. That is still up for debate, but it rests heavily on how the opposition persists in the coming days and weeks. Of course, if the people truly want reform, they'll have to not only go after the authoritarianism of Ahmadinejad, but the entire state apparatus.
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