Anti-Ahmadinejad Street Protests Continue

Iran remains in a state of turmoil after Friday’s much-anticipated elections ended in a result strongly disputed by opposition candidates and many thousands of their supporters. Today, Iranian officials refused to allow the leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters to hold a major rally protesting the re-election of President Ahmadinejad. Demonstrators began calling for the election to be canceled after the Interior Ministry announced that President Ahmadinejad had won over 62 percent of the vote. The official results gave Mousavi less than 34 percent of the vote. Heavily armed riot police have been cracking down on street protests that continued through the weekend. Early Monday morning, security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University, injuring fifteen. Opposition websites report that over a hundred prominent opposition members were detained and then released over the weekend. We speak to Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and David Makovsky, co-author with Dennis Ross of a new book called Myths, Illusions, and Peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Iran remains in a state of turmoil after Friday’s much-anticipated elections ended in a result strongly disputed by opposition candidates and many thousands of their supporters. Today, Iranian officials refused to allow the leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters to hold a major rally protesting the re-election of President Ahmadinejad.

Heavily armed riot police have been cracking down on street protests that continued through the weekend. Early Monday morning, security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University, injuring fifteen. Opposition websites report over 100 prominent opposition members were detained and then released over the weekend.

Demonstrators began calling for the election to be canceled after the Interior Ministry announced that President Ahmadinejad had won over 62 percent of the vote. The official results gave Mousavi less than 34 percent of the vote. The massive turnout his campaign generated was expected to give him a larger share of the vote. Some 40 million people voted in Friday’s election, an estimated turnout of nearly 85 percent.

Conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaie, the former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, came a distant third, and the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi came in fourth.

The opposition candidates and their supporters are alleging fraud. Both Mousavi and Rezaie have registered formal complaints about the election with the Guardian Council, and the council will reportedly rule on the elections within ten days. A group of moderate clerics have also said the elections were rigged, and some reports indicate the president of the Committee of Election Monitoring also requested the Guardian Council to annul the election. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, however, quickly endorsed the results.

President Ahmadinejad defended his re-election to a crowd of tens of thousands of his cheering supporters Sunday and said the elections were, quote, “clean and healthy.” In a press conference earlier in the day, Ahmadinejad responded to a question about the safety of opposition candidates from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour by comparing the police crackdown on protesters to dealing with excited fans coming out of a football game.

       PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] The situation in the country is in a very good condition. Iran is the most stable country in the world. And there’s rule of law in this country. All of the people are equal before the law. And the elections have witnessed—the presidential election has witnessed people’s massive turnout. As I said, even in a soccer match, that the people may become excited, and that may lead to a confrontation between them and the police force. This is something natural. A person coming out of a stadium and may violate the traffic regulations, he will be fined by the police, no matter who he is, an ordinary person or even a minister. So these are not problems.

AMY GOODMAN: US Vice President Joe Biden cast some doubt on the elections in Iran, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. But he also noted he would withhold comment until he had a full picture of what happened.

        VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: There’s an awful lot of question about how this election was run. And we’ll see. I mean, we’re just waiting to see. We don’t have enough facts to know—to make a firm judgment.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the latest news, we are turning to two people here in our firehouse studio. We’re joined by Trita Parsi. He is author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US. He’s also president and founder of the National Iranian American Council. And we’re joined by David Makovsky, author of Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East. He co-wrote the book with Dennis Ross, who is the US envoy to Iran.

We’ll begin with Trita Parsi. What are you hearing on the streets of Iran right now?

TRITA PARSI: I spoke to a couple people just about an hour ago, before coming to the studio, and it seems like the psychological shift right now in favor of those who are protesting, because of a couple of developments. First of all, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of fear left. Even in the demonstrations, although I think most of them would be against violence, nevertheless you see that they’re fighting back quite extensively.

You’ve also seen that the supporters of Ahmadinejad in the Interior Ministry and as well as in the state-run media have apparently committed some mistakes. They have, for instance, announced that Mohsen Rezaie, the conservative opponent to Ahmadinejad, had come out and endorsed the elections and essentially wanted to move on. That was then later disputed by Rezaie himself, who said that he wanted to see the votes and he wanted to see the serial numbers of the ballots.

And the signal that that sent is essentially that the Interior Ministry is trying to create a fait accompli, essentially giving people the impression that this is a done deal and that there’s absolutely no value in protesting. But the reversal, or actually Rezaie coming out and countering what they reported that he has said, was a clear indication that that doesn’t seem to work very well, and that has further emboldened the supporters of Mousavi, who are calling for a recount or actual, perhaps, account of the votes.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s decision to order an investigation into the election, when at first he certified the elections?

TRITA PARSI: Well, I think there are some question marks about that, as well. I looked briefly at the language, and it didn’t seem to be as categorical as it’s been reported. But nevertheless, there seems to be some backpedaling by Khamenei here, and it’s partly because of the pressure that is now coming on him, not only from several of the other ayatollahs in Qom that have been apparently rallied over the weekend by Rafsanjani and others, but also by the fact that it seems like they were bluffing, and the opposition is calling the bluff. They’re not backing down. They’re going for the protests. They are not accepting that this vote count is final.

AMY GOODMAN: And the communication in the streets, getting information? Also, reports that some people have been killed? Is this true?

TRITA PARSI: I’ve been trying to verify that. It’s been extremely difficult. A lot of people are hearing that. A lot of people have said that they’ve heard rounds of bullets, etc., but it may also have been teargas canisters, so it’s not really clear. I’ve not been able to speak to anyone who actually can say that they saw this happen, but everyone seems to have heard the rumor. And if anything, right now a lot of rumors are being spread. And a lot of rumors are being spread by various side in a part of a psychological warfare that is taking place right now.

AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of communication, of things like Facebook, cell phones, overall, being shut down?

TRITA PARSI: It’s been very sporadic. I’ve been able to Facebook with people in Iran for the last twelve hours, whereas most of yesterday was very difficult. Most of the people that seem to be able to go on Facebook right now have some sort of a filter blockers. But I’ve also been able to call people’s cell phones, which I could not do yesterday. So it seems to be something that is going up and down.

AMY GOODMAN: You talked about psychological warfare. What do you mean, Trita Parsi?

TRITA PARSI: Well, there’s a lot of rumors spreading. For instance, they’re spreading a rumor that this or that person is in house arrest, and it’s usually meant to be a warning to that person, that that can actually be the case if he or she continues to protest. So—and there is a sense right now that they’re spreading rumors, for instance, that there’s not going to be a rally at 4:00 today, in order to get people to think, “Well, it’s not going to be, so I’m not going to show up.” So, there are rumors spreading, and the psychological warfare is the primary arena in which this is taking place in right now, the struggle between those who support the election results and those who question it.

AMY GOODMAN: As we turn now to a debate on the disputed elections in Iran and what they mean for the Obama administration’s approach to Iran, Trita Parsi is still with us.

We’re also joined by another guest, David Makovsky, the co-author of a new book on US policy in the Middle East, along with Dennis Ross, who is the Obama administration’s special adviser on Iran. According to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, Ross will shortly be reassigned to a new position. Their book is called Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East. The authors call for, quote, “engagement without illusion” and raise the possibility of military action against Iran.

Well, according to two new Israeli polls published on the eve of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address on Sunday, more than half the Israeli Jews surveyed said they supported preemptive military strikes on Iran, should diplomacy fail to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

On Saturday, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said the election results, quote, “prove once again the extremism and the danger coming out of the regime in Tehran” and called on the international community to stop Iran from achieving nuclear capability.

       DANNY AYALON: Unfortunately, Iran has not changed. It is not going to change. And Ahmadinejad is only the manifestation of a very, very large and deep culture in this Ayatollah’s regime of hatred and of trying to reach regional hegemony.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, in their book, Dennis Ross and David Makovsky write, quote, “Tougher policies—either militarily or meaningful containment—will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran in a serious and credible fashion.”

David Makovsky, joining us now from Washington, DC, is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, considered a pro-Israeli think tank, and was formerly executive editor of the Jerusalem Post.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! David Makovsky, your reaction to the announced Iranian results of the elections?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Well, here, I think Trita Parsi and I have—we see it very similarly, actually, which is that developments on the street could outpace all other plans at this point. We just have to take a wait-and-see approach, see what emerges in Iran. It’s too hard to know for sure. You know, we all would like to see free and fair elections there. And we’ll have to see what that outcome is. It’s just—it’s too fuzzy right now. It’s hard to know with any precision how this is going to turn out.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your reaction to a piece in Time magazine. But first, I wanted to ask—I was sorry Dennis Ross couldn’t also join us. But is he forbidden by the Obama administration to go on the book tour with you?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Yes. He’s not even allowed to have any public book parties or anything. He’s—I jokingly call him Casper the Ghost. I mean, he can hover, but he’s invisible.

AMY GOODMAN: But you share, obviously, the same views, as you write this book together, Myths, Illusions, and Peace?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: We wrote a book together, and, you know, I certainly don’t speak for the Obama administration, so I don’t—you know, I want to be very clear about that. But, you know, we wrote this book together for over a year and a half and delighted that it’s just come out.

AMY GOODMAN: And is it true what’s being reported, is that Dennis Ross will be moved to a new position? There are reports of conflicts between his approach and President Obama’s approach to Iran.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: I don’t buy the story that there’s differences between them. But, you know, we’ll see in the coming days if—you know, what is said, what is announced. But I think it’s misleading to say that there are differences between them.

AMY GOODMAN: And in what way do you feel that they actually agree?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Well, look, I mean, Dennis Ross is not a freelance contractor here. He works for an administration. They have daily meetings, I’m sure, you know, on the hour sometimes. And, you know, it’s one administration. So I think that they seem to me, from what I can observe on the outside, very much in sync. And I have no reason to think otherwise.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance, if in the end it’s certified that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going to be the next president, as he has been the past one, what do you think of the significance of this, David Makovsky?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Well, I think, you know, given what Trita said before, I think, look, it would be a sad commentary on Iran that—I mean, it seems very odd to me, and I don’t claim Trita’s expertise on this issue, but it seems to me, from what I’m hearing, that Ahmadinejad claims to have won the hometowns of all his opponents, Mousavi, Karroubi, Rezaie, all these guys. And this seems very odd. So, I think people want to have a free and fair election, should be sad that the only people allowed to run were people that were vetted already by the ayatollahs. But still, the turnout was massive, and we hope that for the sake of the Iranian people, that the election will be accounted, you know, faithfully. Right now, we don’t seem to see that.