The commentators who are pushing the idea that Iran's election results (the state-reported "official" results) reflect the will of the people, are these commentators who have historically been Israel hawks?

Israel needs Iran to be a bad guy, so Israel can continue its belligerent attitude and threats of bombing Iran while it continues to annex Palestinian land.

Iran electing a moderate government would leave Israel with one less credible excuse to make peace, which would mean an end to annexing land.

he declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory a "divine assessment."

And we should expect a "divine" result of the investigation.

As I stated in a previous comment, I am a little concerned about the fraternity known as Terror Free Tomorrow ...a collection of deep thinkers also incuding John McCain and Bill Frist.
http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/template.php?section=AU
Anyone can find a poll to support their theories as Faux and Rasmussen have shown us.

are these commentators who have historically been Israel hawks?

Based on comments in other Washingtonmonthly posts, they include a lot of people who strongly disagree with Israeli policies, too.

Sounds too good to be true. If the situation wasn't so scary it would be laughable. "Free election" in Iran is an oxymoron for sure. Pass the popcorn and turn up the laugh sound track. The real Iranian leader has spoken. Again...

And from the archives, it has been learned that one Adolf Hitler appointed one Reinhard Heydrich to investigate the rumors of Ernst Rohm and his friends having been awakened, apparently, very rudely in the night.

Hey berttheclock, you are obviously well versed in this part of history. For many your allusion to the 'Rohmputsch' might be a little bit obscure, but I'm afraid, it probably is spot on. One hopes though, that Moussavi will come out of this alive.

One hopes though, that Moussavi will come out of this alive.

Unlikely.

We need to invade Iran immediately to free those people from the oppressive tyranny of their dictatorship...oh wait, W isn't in office anymore.

Carry on.

Gotta love the notion of subjecting a "divine assessment" to legal review.

How times change - During the Blitz, Americans awaited the spoken word of Murrow from London via the radio - Fast forward to the TV images from Nam or the once proud CNN and their, at the time, intrepid reporters scurrying from debacle to debacle. Now, as Richard Sambrook, the BBC's Director of the BBC Global News writes about Twitter and YouTube:

"If you had a reasonable understanding of social media, how to set up and access information, if you had a reasonable understanding of news flows, a developed sense of skepticism and an above average understanding of the political situation in Iran, you would have emerged much better informed than the lay viewer relying on TV or radio news"

sir,there is much illitracy ,mostly people are uneducated,there are not great socialworkerand hard worker toeducate people what is democracy and why it is essential forthe people.usa must help them in iran and arab and muslim world by usa social workersand around the world social workers with loveand slowlyand step by step with modren sorces,it is very challangend hard working job for the world.it will take long time and need great petaince for world practical soccial orker.this is very essential for world.thnkyou

All due respect to Mr Doherty and Mr Ballen but the Iranian people themselves seem to have very different opinions regarding the legitimacy of their election. Or is that a reflection of Western opinion also?

Hey, why wait for all of this to play out ? Let's give full rein to our natural born instincts to shove our collective nose into everyone's business and judge everyone else in the world by our own flawless standards, and just go in there, bomb the shit out of Iran, and give them democracy just like we did in Iraq and just like we're doing so successfully in Afghanistan !

Gee, Mousavi is not under house arrest as alleged ?

This is interesting. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2009/06/about_those_iran_polls.html?wprss=behind-the-numbers

Why does the op-ed leave these important caveats out? 52% didn't even respond. What is the Washington Post up to?

I wrote about this last week. The Supreme Leader of Iran is the one who makes all the rules in Iran. He makes all the decisions in the country or controls all the decisions.
In order to even be on the ballot you must be approved by a 12 person panel. 6 of that panel are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the other 6 are appointed by a group that is hand picked by the Supreme Leader.
Read more about it here and stick around for more good stuff-
http://libertarianhumor.com/2009/06/12/iran/

berttheclock: And from the archives, it has been learned that one Adolf Hitler appointed one Reinhard Heydrich to investigate the rumors of Ernst Rohm and his friends having been awakened, apparently, very rudely in the night.

That's a good one. A group of Iranian clergy will review the election results and report that the most extreme of the clergy-approved candidates won -- coincidentally the one who is currently the nominal commander in chief of the
security forces, who has used his incumbency to promote his backers within the security forces. The security forces will doubtless guard the recount offices to insure their integrity. A pessimistic view, but not beyond possibility.

Meanwhile, thinking of the diverse historical analogies is about all we in the US can do.

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