Iranian Election: We Call Shenanigans

Just in case you haven't been paying attention, something smells funny in Iran and it's not just the thousands of people in the desert heat.  In the recent Iranian election, there was a reported 85% turnout and incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a surprising 62.6% of the vote.  While this might not be in itself a strange result, the fact that his victory was announced before some of the polls closed, and before many of the millions of paper ballots could possibly have been counted.

This week the Ayatollah went on national television to declare that the vote was not rigged.  Thousands of Iranians are still planning on protesting on Saturday despite the despotic decree that protesters be "held responsible" if these protests continue which sounds like code for "crackdown."  In something eerily out of the plot of V for Vendetta, Iran is blaming outside threats for the internal turmoil and is basically threatening violence on the populace if they don't stop expressing their dissent.  Hell, Iran has its own secretive shock troops called the Basij.

So, when the crowd shows up looking like this → the Iranian regime will need to run for the hills.  While the approach the protesters are taking is mirroring that of Ghandi, the power of peaceful protest is still great and it is doubtful that the Iranian country would react well to a crackdown on peaceful protesters.  The longer these protests continue, the greater the threat to the Ayatollah and the mistake of effectively giving the election to Ahmadinejad could be the turning point and potentially bring about change in the country.