The “fatwa” also appeared in an article in Newsmax by Kenneth Timmerman. Writing a day before the election, Timmerman followed the “narrative”:
As the wildest campaign of the past 30 years winds down, Iranians are worried that their votes won’t decide the result of the election Friday. Instead, they fear, the unelected officials at Iran’s Interior Ministry in charge of counting those votes will sway the outcome.
Timmerman provides some further insightful information about the “fatwa” letter:
Supporters of “reformist” candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, with the backing of the Persian Service of Voice of America, claim to have discovered a secret “fatwa” or religious ruling issued by a radical cleric close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They contend that it encourages bureaucrats at the Interior Ministry to do “whatever it takes” to get their man elected…. The “fatwa” was revealed in an open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from a pro-Mousavi group of Interior Ministry officials, who asked him to intervene to keep the election fair.
Thus, if Timmerman is correct, the “open letter” was an example of a “copy and paste” job by Tehran Bureau of information propagated by the Mousavi campaign and the VOA.
Timmerman also reported that while there was a movement among opposition groups both in Iran and the U.S. (and elsewhere) to boycott the election, the VOA had “urged Iranians to go to the polls no matter what” in coverage slanted towards Mousavi:
Well-respected parties, including the Iran Nation’s Party, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, Marze Por Gohar (Glorious Frontiers), and others have called for a boycott. But in recent weeks, editors and supervisors at the Voice of America’s Persian Service have banned them from the airwaves.
“It would be one thing if they just closed their eyes,” Roozbeh Farahanipour, a spokesman for Marze Por Gohar, told Newsmax. “But it’s as if the State Department and Voice of America had become campaign advisers to Mousavi.”
Some Iranians believe that has happened.
Saeed Behbehani, the owner of Mihan TV in suburban Washington, D.C., says he recently spoke with a well-known Iranian-American businessman who boasts of his ties to the State Department and who just returned from a trip to Dubai. The businessman said he met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali.
“The day after they met, VOA put Khazali on the air,” Behbehani said.
Some of the VOA broadcasters themselves are upset at how slanted the U.S.-taxpayer funded network has become.
Timmerman also had this prescient comment (again, recall this was one day prior to the election):
And then, there’s the talk of a “green revolution” in Tehran, named for the omnipresent green scarves and banners that fill the air at Mousavi campaign events.
The “green revolution” as it has since come to be called, refers to protestors who support Mousavi and charge that Ahmadinejad’s win was the result of electoral fraud. Why would there be talk of a “green revolution” before the election results were announced? Unless, of course, it was all part of the “narrative”, planned beforehand to lead to the protests – which were “not spontaneous”, we may recall – in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime.
Timmerman continues with a perhaps even more extraordinary acknowledgment about the role of the NED (emphasis added):
The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting “color” revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.
Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.
And Kenneth Timmerman, as Daniel McAdams has pointed out, is perhaps in as good a position as anyone to know. He’s the President and CEO of The Foundation for Democracy, “established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.” He’s also the author of the book Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran.
The claim of the “fatwa” was picked up by Jeremy J. Stone and repeated in the Huffington Post in a piece entitled “How the Iranian Election Was Stolen”. Stone touts the report from Tehran Bureau as evidence for his assertion that the election was stolen:
According to an open letter of early June by a group of employees who work on elections in the Interior Ministry — after May polls showed that Ahmadinejad would lose the election – [Iranian Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah] Yazdi gave the Interior Ministry employees a Fatwa, a religious degree, authorizing the changing of votes.
Muhammad Sahimi likewise repeated the claim at Antiwar, stating matter-of-factly that the results of the election had been “rigged” and describing it as an “election coup”. The men behind this “coup” have as their “spiritual leader” Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, the person who allegedly issued the “fatwa” for the elections to be rigged. Sahimi states without qualification (and without a source) that:
Two weeks before the elections Mesbah issued a secret fatwa – which was leaked by some in the Interior Ministry – authorizing the use of any means to reelect Ahmadinejad, hence giving the green light for rigging the elections.
This is the only piece of evidence in the entire article to support the assertion that the election was “rigged”.
“As loony and baseless as possible”
The Iranian regime, of course, has claimed that the U.S., Britain, and Israel are behind the claims of a fraudulent election. “Americans and Zionists sought to destabilize Iran”, asserted Intelligence Minister Mohseni Ejei, rejecting allegations of vote rigging.
While remarks from Iranian government officials are certainly not evidence for it, it nevertheless certainly remains a perfectly plausible explanation, despite a strong tendency by commentators in the U.S. media, both mainstream and alternative, corporate news and blogs, not only to dismiss the possibility, but to portray the very suggestion as an absurdity.
US/Israel mostly benefit from Ahmadinejad policies. Israel has managed to distract global attention from its atrocities toward Iran who is posed like an international threat and its current rulers just promote that image.
US/Israel could hardly achieve such comfortable position, should a democratically elected government was in Iran. They are selling weapons to Arabs, commanding their policies, only because of Iran! Whatelse could have been in their wish list?
It seems that you are just supporting whoever shouts anti-US slogans! Either you are so naive to believe in what you see, or you are also part of the team.
You must live in Iran with Iranians, before being able to write about us, unless….
Yes, i believe Ahmadinejad won by his own ability. The son of late Shah, Reza Pahlavi wants to be a new candidate puppet like his father and grand father.
These neoconservatives like Timmerman are criminals. I have noticed their enormous amount of distortions and lies about almost everything. They won’t succeed, because Iranians won’t allow it. They are not stupid.
If one is stupid, then one believes lies and distortions. Only intelligent and wise people ask for evidence for an stolen election. Such an evidence does not exist! What exists is lies, distorions, propaganda planted by CIA, neocon or Straussians who want to manipulate masses for the elite.
While some of the Iranian diaspora work underground, others such as Haleh Esfandiari work out in the open at the Wilson Center on Pennsylvania Avenue.
She was a fellow of the NED in 1995 and the Wilson Center gets a third of its funding ($9 million) from Congress and the rest from big oil, big banks, big business and Soros’ OSI – well known for his involvement in color revolutions.
http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?esfandiari.htm
Is Haleh Esfandiari a CIA asset ?
“….If a democratically elected government was in Iran….”
This is such a stupid statement: Are you trying to imply that israel is demonizing and trying to Persuade US to bomb and nuke Iran because it does not have a “democratic” government like Jordan or Mubarak’s Egypt ? Go find yourself an even more naive or stupid audience like yourself.
Dear DELAVARAN,
Perhaps you have misunderstood my point. US/Israel LOVE undemocratic governments like those you named AND Iran (under current rulers). Just look at the outcome Iranian government activities bring for US/Israel. Maybe unknowingly, maybe not! But it is a fact that as long as you benefit from something you don’t do anything seriously to change it, even if these governments “unknowingly” act in their favor. I am not implying that Ahmadinejad is an agent of US/Israel, but it does not make a difference as long as his activities benefits them! He might not have acted much differently even if he was an agent. He is destroying Iran’s economy and infra-structure, who could have “really” challenged US/Israel interests in region. Without a prosperous and successful Iran, what we can do, but to shout “down to US/Israel” at our own streets!!! And if Iran is eventually attacked, whose policies have given public legitimacy to such an attack, which can eliminate Iran from political equations for decades to come!? Ahmadinejad is either an honest stupid, or a deliberate traitor, but I believe it does not make a difference for the US/Israel…… they love him!
The unfriendly gestures in media by US/Israelis toward Iran is required to convince public that we are really enemies! This is a must in order to show goes on! Just focus on eventual results… (in past and in future)
Thanks for all the work! This was very useful. We are being manipulated by our crass media and public diplomacy (aka propaganda) specialists, just like in the buildup to the war in Iraq. We need people like you to exercise independent, critical thinking.
Than you for writing this.
As an amateur propaganda enthusiast I am struck by how clumsy and self-defeating a lot of modern propaganda (from what should be the world’s foremost experts) is nowadays.
The old futurist gripe goes that I though we’d have jet packs by now and Philip K Dick fans might note the absence of psychotropic pharmaceutical propaganda anyone can swallow, but here we have established overt enemies of a government shilling for a one-sided self-glorification with only themselves as a source.
If Kelly Niknejad is reading, I’d like to assure her that I have the stamina and other properties of a horse and the bank account of a horse breeder, and that I can be absolutely trusted as an authority on these true facts that are not lies.
whois lookup for TehranBureau.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/tehranbureau.com
Try reading my answer, Mr. Hammond. There might be hope for you yet.
http://www.qlineorientalist.com/IranRises/hammond/
There’s no hope for me, Evan. I really do expect claims to be backed by evidence. I’m a lost cause. My answer to your answer: http://hammond.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/30/dr-evan-siegel-responds-to-the-case-of-the-fatwa-to-rig-irans-election/
President Obama who appears to have picked up the reigns of past puppets of US-Empire elite also appears to be continuing the Iran “Evil Axis” from past cabals.
President Ahmadinejad and Shia-Cleric Overseer continually asking for change and peace talks with the US-Gov is not what the “Constabulary” crowd want, Mir Hussein Mousavi terrorist agenda (as Iran head of Foreign Ministry) is more the “Axis Enemy” needed to keep the Empire ‘perpetual war economy’ going.
It’s going to be a while before we see any CMS cloud offering from the likes of Oracle. Acquia have lately established Drupal Gardens which is a cloud dependent service which feels very promising. There are a host of reasons why we are not traveling onto the cloud more promptly, the principal reason is organizational change where budgets and contracts are determine and granted years for 3, 4 even 5 years. Come renewal time some clients are asking CMS in the cloud but then have to consider other subjects such as integration with CRM & some other back office systems. I guess it will materialize eventually.
Absolutely superb!
Bravo ! Hats off !