A 'Coup' by Iran's Rulers?

On Friday, Iranians went to the polls to decide the fate of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One day later, government officials announced the results: 62.6 percent of the vote for Ahmadinejad and 33.75 percent for the lead opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The numbers were quickly disputed by Mousavi's supporters, who, according to an unidentified witness on CNN, "were mostly young 20-something men and women." Large protests such as the one seen here took place, and many others have occurred over the past few days.

The government blocked text messaging, Facebook, and YouTube, but this did not stop the technologically-minded opposition youth from communicating about ongoing protests, new election information and other events. Fox News reported that Twitter remained running, "a possible accidental omission on the part of Tehran's censors." The tag #iranelection has remained near the top of trending topics for Twitter since Saturday. Some even used Twitter to organize the hacking of government web sites. (See my colleague Andrew Clark's piece for more on Twitter and Iran's youth.)

This reaction is not entirely a surprise, given a December report from the BBC depicting Iran as "one of the most vibrant blogging communities in the world" and explaining Ahmadinejad's rush to restrict the Internet and the widespread use of social networking.

Retaliation against opposition student groups soon took place at Tehran University, a public institution and the country's largest university, in a difficult-to-detail assault, though there is evidence of an attack on the university's dorms that resulted in injuries and building damage. Outraged, 119 members of Tehran University have quit and asked the president of the school to resign over having failed to protect the students.

As the restrictive actions of the Iranian government continue to pile up -- including interference in the distribution of Mousavi's Green Word newspaper -- Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor and Iranian affairs adviser to three U.S. administrations, saw signs of what he termed a coup. "All of this had the appearance of a well -orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people."

Ahmadinejad's uncommon behavior for a supposedly re-elected politician seemed even more suspicious given new analysis of the election results. Though some pre-election polls had Ahmadinejad leading, a closer look at the data by Nate Silver revealed that fear may have swung both the polls and the election results. An inordinate amount of Iranian voters may have responded to pollsters by falsely declaring themselves undecided or non-voters, to avoid controversy. Time questioned Mousavi's loss in his hometown of Tabriz and stronghold metropolitan areas, as well as the quickness of the announcements of tallies: "The Interior Ministry announced the first results within an hour of the polls closing and the official result less than a day later. The ministry is supposed to wait three days after voting before it certifies the result, to allow time for disputes to be examined."

Though the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, surprisingly called for an inquiry into the election, few hold any optimism that the Guardian Council will oppose Ahmadinejad after the 10-day review period.

Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. John McCain are among the many U.S. politicians who have questioned the election results. Some, including Mitt Romney, were quick to attack President Obama's cautious response, though his brief address yesterday was generally well received for praising the energy seen in the election, especially among the youth population. Obama said that he became "deeply troubled" as the protests grew violent and that, "we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran."

The BBC explained Obama's approach to the matter. Since his promise to meet with any world leader still stands, the president doesn't want to worsen the United States' already shaky relationship with Iran's rulers. His avoidance of stirring up trouble may also help the Iranian opposition by not agitating Ahmadinejad and the current administration.

No matter what the end result of this election may be, I join my fellow Crammer Parisa Saranj in hoping that America and the world realize the bravery of the students and others involved in the Iranian protests.