Iranian presidential elections - from the blogs

Tomorrow sees the culmination of Iran's presidential campaigns. Millions of Iranians will go to their polling stations and vote. Millions won't. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the diaspora will vote too.

The BBC does have a review of a documentary about Iranian teens and their lives, Mousavi and women's rights, a background to the election, questions about Ahmadinejad and how much support he still has, on the campaign trail (although it describes Ahmadinejad's supporters as salt-of-the-earth types and Mousavi's as internet nerds), the economy and rural communities versus debauched urbanites. New York Times has a video about the election. POMED is doing a good job keeping track of the election news in the Western press (more, more and more).

The opinion from a lot of Iranian English-language blogs has been there people should vote...

If even for one day, for one hour, for one minute over the past four years you have worried about a possible attack on Iran, if you have felt shame about things that have happened in Iran, about the way Iran has been represented to the world, or for words that were said by someone else but whose weight you have carried, consider participating in the elections and showing that you care. (source: From Berkley)

For many, this election is more than a renewal of allegiance. It's something with a real, tangible outcome. Maybe not the end of the Islamic Republic, but certainly an opportunity for a shift in power. And that's why the different factions are competing so fiercely and will stop at nothing to win.

Tehran has painted itself green. Mousavi voters are showing their support. And the support for Ahmadinejad from the trendy young people who've suffered so much (for fashion) under his presidency, boggles the mind.

Mousavi and Karroubi are not the ideal reformist candidates. They may have been able to pass the Guardian Council, but both have history.

Mousavi's political transformation from the President at the time of the 1988 massacres of political prisoners to becoming the hope and aspirations for a more open society is impressive. Azarmehr reminds us who Mousavi's (current) supporters were back then. Even giving Mousavi the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was weak, isolated, unable to interfere... he's still surrounded himself in his campaign with some disreputable thugs.

Blogs seem to be doing a better job than larger media outlets to give some insight into what's happening in Iran and also Iranian opinions on the election.

• Hairy is back in Iran and looks at the elections, lies and woman, the green wave sweeping Tehran, Shiraz and the Ahmadinejad/Mousavi debate.
• Ali looks at the small window of freedom that opens up around election time, everyone's new favourite colour and Dr. Sadeq Zibakalam's defence of Obama's first 100 days in office.
• Ali covers Rafsanjani's letter to Khamenei, the BBC's poorly written documentary about Ahmadinejad and some of the candidates that never made it past the Guardian Council.
• Pedestrian sees this election as Mousavi's second chance. He's changed, Iran has changed and Islamic Republic has changed. There's that colour again, too.
• From Tehran Live, more green fashion.
• Shahrazad asks who really won the Mousavi/Ahmadinejad debate. It was certainly the most important and talked about of the debates. How are Iranian bloggers picking their candidates? And this election belongs to the people of Iran.
• Tori finds the election campaign has given Iranians their mojo back, might help stop the brain drain and maybe people who once backed reformist candidates can be coaxed back to voting, if only because there's something eerily familiar about those cranes holding Ahmadinejad's campaign pictures.
• Kamran is reminded of the importance of this election, but he's a realist and not a fantasist.
• Change has come to Iran and a quiet, non-velvet, revolution is already underway.
• See also Elections and nostalgia.

The daily news updates on the Iranian election campaigns from Iran Tracker have been really useful, especially for giving a flavour to the press coverage inside Iran.

Response on the streets of Tehran after the Mousavi/Ahmadinejad debate

The response on the streets of Tehran after the Mousavi/Ahmadinejad televised debate. A typical Tehran scene... A traffic jam.

More traffic jams...

Full presidential debate timetable

Air time: 1800-1930 GMT on IRTV3

• 2 June: Karoubi-Rezai
• 3 June: Ahmadinejad-Mousavi
• 4 June: Mousavi-Rezai
• 6 June: Ahmadinejad-Karoubi
• 7 June: Karoubi-Mousavi
• 8 June: Ahmadinejad-Rezai

Source: ISNA news agency.

Karim Sadjadpour on Iran, politics the nuclear issue

Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, is always lucid and insightful. In this 2006 video he looks at:

• US-Iranian relations
• the two "ticking bombs" of the nuclear programme in Iran and regime change
• changes in US policy
• internal conflicts in Iran
• why Ahmadinejad provokes Israel and how it benefits from Israel's response
• the prospects for a richer democracy in Iran

Trita Parsi videos on Iran, Israel and their conflicting interests

Nobody interested in Iran could be surprised that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked outrage with his comments at the UN anti-racism summit. Nor would they be surprised that most Iranians find such outbursts embarrassing and out of touch with their own views. What's surprising is that Ahmadinejad keeps doing it. A typical response from Israel is Binyamin Netanyahu's:

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said that while Israel would be commemorating 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, "in Switzerland the guest of honour is a racist and a Holocaust denier who doesn't conceal his intention to wipe Israel off the face of this Earth".

If Trita Parsi is to be believed, both Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad represent the rejectionist, anti-conciliation wings of their own domestic political scenes. Where both countries were once perilously close to reaching an understanding (based on being pariah states in the Middle East and the need for mutual security) they have since moved much farther apart in the past fifteen years.

There are a few reasons why Ahmadinejad continues to provoke Israel:

• it plays well on the "Arab street"
• it gives the Iranians credibility in the Middle East to be seen as a staunch opponent of Israel and defender of the Palestinian cause
• it shows up those Middle Eastern regimes and leaders that ally themselves with Israel
• it offers a way for the Iranians to disguise their otherness in a homogenous region (being non-Arab and non-Sunni)

Trita Parsi on Iran-Israel relations

In this video Trita Parsi gives an insight into the relationship and vying for power between Iran and Israel. Essentially both countries have conflicting interests in the Middle East, both want a close relationship with the US in order to avoid being shut out of power in the Middle East, but at the moment: Iran is on the outside, Israel is on the inside. He also covers the Israeli relationship with the Kurds and how that gives Iran's genuine enemies of Israel power within the Iranian domestic political scene.

Trita Parsi and Barbara Slavin

In this video Trita Parsi and Barbara Slavin discuss how the Iran-Israel tensions affect the internal political dynamic in Iran (strengthening radicals and weakening moderates), the suppression of civil society in Iran, how the US policy to Iran could be improved and provide an insight into internal politics in Iran.

Ahmadinejad's presidency

Jon Lee Anderson sheds some light onto Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's politics and life in his Letter from Tehran. People living outside of the Islamic Republic are unlikely to ever see one of Ahmadinejad's presidential campaign videos, but Anderson details their contents:

The signature videos for his 2005 Presidential campaign were two thirty-minute productions that expertly portrayed him as a man of the people. In one scene, Ahmadinejad is in line for lunch at a self-service canteen; in another, he walks among the poor. The videos were aired on television repeatedly. The campaign tagline was “It’s doable—and we can do it.”

Part of Ahmadinejad's presidential schtick has been his man-of-the-people-ness and simplicity. Whilst he has a personal history that includes many of the key events in the history of the Islamic Republic, he is still to some extent an outsider, frowned upon by the likes of Rafsanjani and the political mullahs:

A European diplomat said that a senior Iranian official had confided to him that before Ahmadinejad became President he was the sort of man whom the official would have kept waiting for thirty minutes outside his office, just to put him in his place.

The complete article that appeared in the New Yorker discusses the upcoming presidential elections in Iran, the different factions and their prospects.