In the Violent Wake of a Disputed Election

Faces bloodied by police, fiery riots, and protestors thronging the streets; these are the images of Iranian unrest on countless blogs and social networking Web sites, snuck through the regime’s Internet clampdown following last week’s disputed presidential election.

Although all four candidates for Iran’s presidency were prescreened by the nation’s Council of Guardians, charged with (among other things) interpreting the constitution, approving candidates, and supervising elections, the campaign leading to last Friday’s vote became a real contest. Many expected that a runoff election would be necessary if neither Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or his top rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former Iranian prime minister, won more than 50 percent of the total vote. While Ahmadinejad has strong support among rural and urban poor and religious conservatives, Iran’s economy has slumped and its world isolation has intensified during his presidency. Moussavi’s more moderate reformist attitudes attracted massive crowds of vocal supporters, particular women and young urbanites.

Instead of the expected close race, within hours of the polls closing the Iranian government announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad (putting his tally at 62.6 percent of about 40 million votes, compared to 34 percent for Moussavi), a result quickly blessed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Tehran and other major cities claiming fraud, met by police, tear gas, and pipe-wielding supporters of Ahmadinejad. On Monday, Moussavi addressed a massive rally in Tehran, which had gathered despite an official ban. The march and rally were largely peaceful, although violence broke out after dark and several people were shot dead in clashes between protestors and militia linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Also on Monday, Khamenei agreed to an official inquiry into the election by the Council of Guardians, which will conclude in about a week.

Protesters again massed on the streets yesterday, backing both the incumbent and his main rival. As tensions rose, the Iranian government began revoking journalists’ press credentials and Moussavi rejected the Guardian Council’s announcement that it would order only a partial recount.

For perspective on unrest in Iran and what it may mean for that country and for America’s Middle East agenda, we turned to Charles Dunbar, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of international relations and a former ambassador to Qatar and Yemen. Dunbar began his diplomatic career in Iran during the 1960s and speaks fluent Farsi.

BU Today: What does your gut tell you about the validity of last week’s Iranian elections?
Dunbar: My gut tells me that Ahmadinejad won the election, but my gut is unreliable. There is a very large body of articulate Iranian opinion that the election was stolen, based on the fact that the results were announced so quickly, the rush by Khamenei to credit those results, and finally the way those results weren’t broken down by voting constituencies, as they had been in the past, but were declared as nationwide vote percentages for each candidate.

What do you make of the fact that young people and the universities seem to be fueling this protest, just as they did in the 1979 Islamic Revolution?
In the late 1970s, young Iranians were against the Shah, many were out of work and blaming the Shah’s government, and the religious establishment was able to capture them ideologically. Those people became the shock troops of the revolution. Now there is a lot of opposition to Ahmadinejad and the country is in bad economic shape, but he has captured a nationalist sentiment.

Yes, there are a lot of youth who want change and a lot of older people who also want change. But it’s the young people who are visible to the West and to outsiders, many in big cities such as Tehran. But since the 1979 revolution there have been tremendous strides in terms of education. The new younger generation is much more broadly educated, millions of them did not exist earlier. And it’s those young, educated people out in the countryside that it’s hard to know about.

I’m not sure that this youth today is like those shock troops of the Revolution. I don’t think they’re as capable of persisting even as they get their heads cracked and watch people get thrown in jail or even killed. My gut tells me that Iran is not ready for another revolution and that these demonstrations will subside like they did in 1999 and 2003. But, as I said, my gut is an unreliable predictor.

What do you think will come of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s call for an official review of the election?
All the evidence is that Khamenei has no intention of examining these results carefully and is simply telling Moussavi to stop demonstrating and put his complaints into legal channels. Khamenei may be giving himself the option, if a lot of heads get cracked and the protests still don’t go away, to say to whomever advises him, “We’d better take another look at this.” If so, then the regime may be blinking and these demonstrations may amount to more than I think they will.

If Ahmadinejad remains Iran’s president, should the Obama administration continue to attempt negotiating over uranium enrichment and other issues?
There’s a strong argument that nobody who was running in this election was going to suspend the Iranian nuclear program. I think the administration has no choice but to say that we will deal with this government. For now, they need to confine themselves to saying exactly what Vice President Biden said about the Iranian electoral process: there seems to be some doubt and we’re waiting to see what happens.

If the protests continue and grow and turn into a very major deal, then we’d have to think very carefully about changing the rhetorical position to say that the election seems to be widely disputed. We should immediately start deploring excessive use of force. But as far as lending support to the opposition, I think we want to be very, very careful about how we do that.

We need to pursue the policies that Obama had begun to pursue, including the concession he made that we would be willing to begin discussions with Iran even without a halt in its uranium enrichment program. Of course, those opposing Obama’s policy will say, “You’re delusional, trying to deal with an illegitimate leader.” 

Some Arab governments have officially congratulated Ahmadinejad on his victory. What are the implications of this power struggle for the broader Middle East peace process?
This has dealt a real blow to Obama’s efforts to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Obama wants to pressure Israel to halt settlement construction in the occupied territories. It’s going to be a lot harder to do that now. The Israelis are genuinely concerned about Ahmadinejad, and they may be more inclined to put aside negotiations over Palestine, seeing their real problem as Iran. They will favor taking a strong line against Iran and will be pressuring the United States to do the same.

Chris Berdik can be reached at cberdik@bu.edu.