Pyrrhic “Victory” in Iran: Ahmadinejad Wins, Khamenai Loses. End of A Mandate of Heaven?
In the complex Pyrrhic War that the wider Middle East has been engaged in for some sixty years, the most Pyrrhic of victories was just declared in Tehran.
It is a maxim of Iranian elections that: when voter turnout is heavy, ‘reformists’ win. This last election had one of the heaviest turnouts, especially among the young who are a majority. Turnout was 85%: you usually vote by that margin when you really really want change. Yet Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a ‘landslide’.
It is not clear how things will turn out on the streets this week, but one thing looks likely: the ruling clergy will do whatever it takes, what even the shah could not do. If they have to, they would send their troops, Revolutionary Guards, into the streets, in order to protect their mandate of heaven. They may already have lost it in the eyes of many Iranians. The process started during the fierce televised debates between the candidates that preceded the vote- debates never seen before in the Middle East.
Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by 63% of the vote, a paltry unimpressive margin by Arab standards (for the couple of Arab leaders who run their own rigged elections, anything less than, say, 85-90% is considered an insult. They may occasionally go lower to placate some notion about double-standard petroleum-addled Western ‘sensitivities’. That is why most of them don’t bother with elections.).
Khamenai himself, selected by a committee, may come under increasing criticism, if not publicly, then through a samizdat-like media, as well as the internet.
Ahmadinejad will get his new term, the mullahs will be satisfied that their will shall be done on earth, if not in heaven, at least for now. There will be no more talk of ‘reform’. But for the first time the Supreme Leader, their own Chairman Mao, or Teng Hsiao Peng, has been brought closer to earth, dangerously closer. His credibility further diminished.
Cheers
mhg
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