Admissions and Rejections

The Iranian regime continues operating as though the election results actually meant that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. They're not going to rescind the results, even though their own calculations show that the results were bogus (and outside statistical analysis confirms). They just don't consider the results significantly bogus to annul the results:

On Press TV, the English-language state television satellite broadcaster, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, declared: “If a major breach occurs in an election, the Guardian Council may annul the votes that come out of a particular affected ballot box, polling station, district, or city.”

“Fortunately, in the recent presidential election we found no witness of major fraud or breach in the election,” he said.

“Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place.” He was speaking late on Monday in Tehran and his remarks were posted early Tuesday, Tehran time.

That said, there are reports the Guardian Council is contemplating what was previously considered unthinkable. They are contemplating sending Ahmadinejad packing and/or adjusting the role of the Supreme Ayatollah, a position held by Ali Khamenei.

I consider both of those options farfetched, and frankly resemble the rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic. This regime has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and most of the world (except for the US State Department, which apparently wants to go forward with hosting barbeques for Iranian diplomats at embassies around the world to celebrate July 4th).

Meanwhile, the regime keeps cracking skulls of protesters and those caught up in the protests:



And they're continuing to make threats that the courts will teach those protesters already arrested a lesson. They're also trotting out people they claim show that the protests were the result of foreign influence. No doubt coercion and propagandists are at work here. It's what the regime does:

Iranian state television, in broadcasts clearly intended to discredit opponents defying a ban on protests, paraded people it said had been arrested during weekend violence.

"I think we were provoked by networks like the BBC and the VOA (Voice of America) to take such immoral actions," one young man said. His face was shown but his name not given.

A woman whose face was pixilated said she had carried a "war grenade" in her hand-bag. "I was influenced by VOA Persian and the BBC because they were saying that security forces were behind most of the clashes.

UPDATE:
The general strike against the regime is on. Ahmadinejad and the Guardian Council had warned anyone striking would be fired.

The stakes are being raised.

At the same time, the regime keeps exposing its depravities for all the world to see. The regime is charging a bullet fee to those killed by the regime's thugs:

A 19-year-old shot in the head and killed during the demonstrations... and Iranian officials asked his parents to "pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a 'bullet fee' -- a fee for the bullet used by security forces -- before taking the body back." One of the most tragic stories I've read in a long time, by the Wall Street Journal's exceptional Farnaz Fassihi.

UPDATE:
This goes to something I've noted before. Mousavi's background doesn't make him a sainted figure either in the opposition to the thug Ahmadinejad. In fact, it appears that he's got just as thuggish a past as Ahmadinejad.

You see, it appears he participated in the attack on the US Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983 among other terror attacks:

"We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon," retired Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in Lebanon.

"The Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target U.S. personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a 'spectacular action' against the Marines," said Lyons.

"He was prime minister," Lyons said of Mousavi, "so he didn't get down to the details at the lowest levels. "But he was in a principal position and had to be aware of what was going on."

Lyons, sometimes called "the father" of the Navy SEALs' Red Cell counter-terror unit, also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Center in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons, including the first Navy woman to die in a terrorist attack.

Bob Baer agrees that Mousawi, who has been celebrated in the West for sparking street demonstrations against the Teheran regime since he lost the elections, was directing the overall 1980s terror campaign.

He may have had a change of heart, but he was clearly one of the Guardian Council's chosen few to run for President, so he would have been amenable to continuing their policies. The thuggish way they've handled matters since has changed Mousavi's role and that of the regime itself.

UPDATE:
President Obama is giving a press conference and taking questions. In his prepared comments, he noted that the Iranian claims that the US is instigating the protests is patently false. His prepared comments are pretty good, but then decides to use the term "extraordinary debate" to describe the ongoing situation there.

Extraordinary debate?

People are being murdered by the regime in cold blood (and being asked to pay for the "privilege" of being murdered to boot). and that's debate? Sorry, but it was an extremely poor choice of words.

This isn't a debate. It's a struggle for power between an entrenched regime that wants to retain all the power for itself, and the rest of the Iranian people who have finally seen the veil lifted on the totalitarianism of the Iranian political system. The election didn't matter, because the outcome was predetermined. It was rigged.

UPDATE:
Iranian soccer players who wore green armbands in solidarity with Mousavi have apparently been punished for that action. They have been "retired."

According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka’abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been “retired” from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday’s match against South Korea in Seoul.

They were among six players who took to the field wearing wristbands in the colour of the defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, which has been adopted by demonstrators who believe the 12 June election was stolen.

Most of the players obeyed instructions to remove the armwear at half-time, but Mahdavikia wore his green captain’s armband for the entire match. The four are also said to have been banned from giving media interviews.

Also, there's a new video out that shows Ahmadinejad and mullahs discussing items in Farsi. The translations so far speak to laying the groundwork for the events we've seen unfolding.

Farsi translators need to get their hands on this. If true, it shows the determination of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs to thwart the will of the people of Iran and pursue their own agenda.

UPDATE:
Iran is scheduling Ahmadinejad's "swearing in". Tin hat dictators do not get sworn in. They take power and the people have no choice.

That's what happened. Stop treating Iran as though it is a representative democracy; it never was. It was a totalitarian regime that used elections to give it a veneer of legitimacy, and the veneer has been shorn off by the thuggist tactics of Ahmadinejad and his co-religionists.