On June 12, 2009, Iran held a presidential “election” that saw the unabashedly anti-American incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win an astonishing and suspicious 66% of the vote, while his only real challenger - moderate reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi- received a mere 33%.
There have been many allegations of fraud made by Mousavi’s supporters, who have been protesting in the streets of Terhan. Nonetheless, it will be difficult to conclusively prove election fraud with the information currently being made available. Lacking concrete proof, the combination of the security council admitting the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters by a combined 3 million votes, and statistical analysis indicating that there is only a 1 in 200 chance the published vote numbers were not altered make it reasonable to conclude the election was fixed. Many columnists have questioned how this ‘farce’ of an election should impact President Obama’s diplomacy with Iran. The spirit of these questions are wrongheaded; I am more curious why so many pundits think the Iranian election th should affect Obama’s diplomacy with Iran in any way.
In his first months in office, President Obama has made it clear he is willing to deal diplomatically with non-democratic, illegitimate regimes, especially on important issues such as national security and nuclear nonproliferation. Clearly the most pressing issue in Obama’s relations with Iran is stopping the Iranian nuclear program. A nuclear-armed Iran is a nightmare scenario for a number of national security experts - so it makes sense that this would be the salient issue for President Obama. In light of the urgency of this issue, why should President Obama care that Iran held fraudulent elections? This question becomes even more pertinent given the fact that Ahmadinejad is currently supporting Iran’s nuclear program and Mousavi supported Iran’s efforts to buy nuclear technology from Pakistan when he was prime minister. Both serious candidates support Iran’s nuclear program, so how much should the fact that the election was fraudulent really matter from Obama’s perspective?
While the Iranian regime’s blatant abuse of both protesters and human rights is, in Obama’s own words, “deeply troubling,” is it so troubling that the United States should subvert its own pragmatic national security interests in an idealistic stand against the human rights abuses the US has had no trouble ignoring in the past? This is a vexing question the goes beyond the scope of the election itself. There is, however, an even more fundamental reason why Iran’s electoral fraud should not impact the US’ relations with Iran. President Obama was willing to engage Iran on June 11th when it was clearly a non-democratic and arguably illegitimate regime. Why should president Obama no longer be willing to engage Iran after June 12th, when it was still a non-democratic and arguably illegitimate regime?
Iran is a country where the “supreme leader” holds all the real power and makes the most significant appointments (including half of the guardian council - a 12-member body charged with electoral oversight and ensuring the government stays true to the principles of an Islamic state). This “supreme leader” is chosen not via direct election but by the vote of a council of government-screened Islamic scholars. What difference does a fraudulent presidential election make in an already clearly nondemocratic Iran?
Taking it a little further, many people wrongly equate accurately tallied votes with free, fair and competitive elections and democracy. However, even if all the votes in this election had been counted correctly, it would have been neither a free, fair or competitive election nor a harbinger of democracy, as some wishful thinkers would hope. This is because in order to gain permission from the Ayatolla to run for president, all candidates ”had to pass an ideological and political litmus test that rejected more 400 other candidates, leaving only Mousavi, Ahmadinejad, and two other establishment types”(link). The Ayatolla all but hand picked which candidates could run for president. The fact that the vote count was likely erroneous doesn’t really matter. Even if all votes for this largely figurehead office had been accurately counted, the process still would have been a far cry from a free, fair and democratic election.
When one considers the preeminent importance of preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran, coupled with the fact that Iran did not significantly change before or after the fraudulent elections, how the Iranian election should affect US policy with Iran becomes a much less interesting debate than why it should at all.
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Tags: iran election, iran relations, iran response obama, obama iran, obama message to iran, obama to iran, obama with iran
