'It's hard for the West to believe Ahmadinejad won'

Benjamin Jofe-Walt: "The electoral system is computerized, each voter's identification is in a computerized database and their fingerprints are on the stubs of the ballots," Dr Marandi added. "Even independent Western-based polls prior to the elections put Ahmadinejad well ahead."

Kourosh Ziabari, a political correspondent with the Foreign Policy Journal, agreed. "Even if we take into account the possibility of electoral fraud, which I categorically think should be investigated, it is still realistic to believe that Ahmadinejad was the winner," he told The Media Line.

"As a self proclaimed reformist journalist I am trying to be unbiased and objective, and whether the elections have been rigged or not, Mr. Ahmadinejad enjoys high popularity, especially in the countryside and among low income city dwellers. His victory was not such a surprise, even to reformists."

Iran's Guardian Council said Tuesday that there was "no major fraud" in the disputed June 12 elections and ruled out setting aside the results - less than 24 hours after conceding that there had been voting irregularities in 50 Iranian cities.

The council, Iran's highest legislative body responsible for overseeing controversial elections, rejected calls to annul and repeat the elections despite over a week of the worst protests Iran has seen in decades.

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Conversazione con Noam Chomsky

Non c’è bisogno di alcuna nota biografica per presentare Noam Chomsky. Egli è senza dubbio l’analista e il conferenziere di sociologia politica più importante del periodo contemporaneo. Come scrive il Guardian, «fa parte delle dieci fonti più citate nel campo delle lettere insieme a Marx, Shakespeare e la Bibbia, ed è il solo vivente tra gli autori di tali fonti».

Alle Nazioni Unite, il presidente venezuelano Hugo Chavez ha accennato a Egemonia o sopravvivenza. I rischi del dominio globale americano [Milano: Marco Tropea Editore, 2005, ISBN 88-438-0460-X] in questi termini: «Vorrei rispettosamente invitare quelli tra voi che non l’hanno ancora letto a farlo».
Nel 2006, in risposta a una domanda rivoltagli da un corrispondente del New Statesman, Andrew Stephen, a proposito di ciò che avrebbe fatto se fosse stato presidente degli Stati Uniti, Chomsky ha suggerito: «metterei in piedi un tribunale di guerra per processare i miei stessi crimini, perché se mi assumessi l’impegno di questa posizione, dovrei poi occuparmi della struttura e della cultura delle istituzioni, nonché della cultura intellettuale. E la cultura deve essere guarita». 
Nel corso di questo colloquio con il professor Chomsky si è parlato di Iran, della questione nucleare, delle relazioni tra Washington e Teheran e dell’impatto globale delle lobby sioniste. Un estratto di questa conversazione è stato pubblicato sul Teheran Times, il principale giornale iraniano in lingua inglese.

Iran's Crisis: What the Youth Think

Kourosh Ziabari - Islam Online: Perhaps the voices of protestors on Iran’s streets are not as loud as they were last week, but the political stalemate in the Islamic Republic is still the subject of debate both domestically and internationally. With both the government and the opposition refusing to make compromises, Iran’s crisis is far from over. IslamOnline.net talked to a number of young Iranians about the ongoing unrest in their country.

Mostafa, 20

“The Friday sermon of the Supreme Leader was a warning to Mirhossein Mousavi and his supporters…Mousavi who called for adherence to the law…before the elections and criticized the incumbent president for breaching the law, is breaching the law now by calling for illegal rallies and demonstrations.

“The words of the Supreme Leader were clear and precise…Now the violators of the law will face the consequences of their actions.

“Our system is not weak and fragile to rig the votes of 11 million people to help a certain candidate to win the election.”

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'The Barrier is Broken and Women are Throwing Rocks'

The Media Line - Benjamin Joffe-Walt: The iconic images of Iran's elections: a young woman in full hijab hurling stones at riot police, the wives of reformist candidates actively and aggressively campaigning and a shot woman named Neda bleeding profusely out of her mouth, slowly dying on video.

For a male-dominated political event - an election between four men, in a poll controlled by a Guardian Council of 12 men, in a country run by a male supreme leader, women have played an eye-catching, almost dramatic role both in the Iranian elections and the succeeding unrest.

"The sheer number of females that have either been hurt or killed show that women were in the front line of the recent demonstrations," Kianoosh Sanjari, an influential Iranian blogger, told The Media Line. "For the first time since the Islamic revolution, women felt they could make a difference and have their voices heard without stepping outside of the Islamic boundaries."

"Women have even taken the step of asking reformist clerics for advice on how their rights can be protected while remaining within the boundaries of Islam," Sanjari continued. "The barrier is broken; women now feel empowered not only to throw rocks, but to make an impact on society as a whole."

Sanjari argued that it was the shooting of a woman - Neda Soltan - during the demonstrations that sparked international outrage about the protests. "Her death and strength also pushed and forced world leaders, such as Obama, to discuss the human rights violations that the people, including the women, were facing."

Symbols of transformation in Iranian gender relations were apparent early in the election campaigns, as presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi openly asserted the need for greater rights for women: he called for an end to legalized gender discrimination, an increase in women's participation in Iranian workplaces and politics and a curb in the powers of religious police.

To differing degrees, the other opposition candidates followed suit and for the first time since the Islamic revolution, women's rights entered public discourse.

Many analysts have credited defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard with spearheading the gender change.

"Many compared the role of Rahnavard with Michelle Obama," Sanjari said, referring to the United States First Lady. "She has become a symbol for the women's rights movement.

Kourosh Ziabari, an Iranian journalist and the political correspondent at Foreign Policy Journal, agreed. "Zahra Rahnavard has played a significant role in persuading and encouraging the young women of Iran to take part in the elections," Ziabari said. "Zahnavard's coalition with one of the most prominent female political activists of Iran, Masoumeh Ebtekar, who was the first female vice-president of Iran under Mr. Khatami, created a vigorous enthusiasm and zealousness among the young women in Iran."

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Has the U.S. Played a Role in Fomenting Unrest During Iran’s Election?

Jeremy R. Hammond - Foreign Policy Journal / Global Research: ... The popularity of the latter claim was in no small part due to a post by Andrew Sullivan in his popular blog “The Daily Dish” at The Atlantic. Sullivan reported, “Yes, the president of Iran’s own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime’s own electoral monitors beak [sic] ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy?”[61]

Sullivan linked to a Farsi language website as his source, Peykeiran.com,[62] but Sullivan admittedly cannot read Farsi, so he was clearly merely relaying information he saw elsewhere, perhaps on Twitter, without attribution. Sullivan’s relayed claim, whatever its true origin, was promptly repeated in blogs across the net following his posting it at The Daily Dish.

But when shown the post and the linked-to page in Farsi, Kourosh Ziabari, an Iranian journalist and correspondent for Foreign Policy Journal, replied, “Actually, Andrew Sullivan has made a mistake, as far as I see. The one who asserted that the election results were invalid was Ali-Akbar Mohtashami, the Administrator for the Committee of Votes Preservation at the national campaign of Mir-Hossein Mousavi.”[63] This is hardly the same “huge news” Sullivan claimed it to be.

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