MM
> Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 4:09 PM
> Dear Professor Chossudovsky
> I just read James Petras' appalling article about 'the
> stolen election 'hoax' in Iran'.
>
> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018
>
> For a well known and respected scholar of the left to write
> such an uninformed and outrageous piece, at this critical
> time, when unarmed and peaceful protesters are being
> arrested, tortured, and openly gunned down by what can only
> be called fascist forces of repression in Iran is, to put it
> simply, shocking!
> Petras is not alone in taking this ignorant position. Many
> others on the American left, equally contently misinformed,
> have taken similar positions in support of a mounting rise
> of fascist repression. I can appreciate the good hearted,
> politically correct, sentiment behind this misguided
> article. Petras is worried about a possible strengthening of
> imperial US tendencies if the Iranian regime is demonized.
> All good and well. Many of us have opposed and continue to
> oppose US imperial policies. But Petras, like many other
> sincere members of the US left, is reading Iranian political
> developments entirely through the more familiar lens of
> anti-imperialist critiques of US foreign policy, and/or
> knowledge of the class and regional fragmentations of some
> Latin American states. Iran is specific, not only for its
> regional or religious identity, but for its particular
> postrevolutionary political development and culture. The
> strength of a thoughtful and principled
> left has always resided in the ability to distinguish
> between proto-fascistic populism and genuine democratic
> movements, rather than simplistically supporting what the
> opposition opposes. Perhaps a re-reading of 'the 18th
> Brumaire' would have prevented this gaff!
> I also cannot help but think that Petras,
> a scholar of Latin America, but certainly not Iran, should
> have done some minimal background research about electoral
> patterns in Iran, or at least consulted with someone who
> knows a bit more about the topic, or can read the language
> and provide access to the enormous amount of online
> information in Persian, before venturing an opinion. Among
> other US sources the journal I co-edit, Middle East Report
> (Merip) has written numerous pieces in English on the
> subject over the past few years.
> The simple facts are these:
>
> 1] Legally, election observers have to be present when
> ballots are counted, and sealed. They sign the result sheet,
> and are given a copy. This is the law, respected for the
> past 30 years. This time they were expelled from the room
> BEFORE the counting, and were not given copies of the
> results.
>
> 2] 57m. ballots were printed (40 m people voted), but in
> major polling stations ballots ran out at 10 am, leading to
> voters being unable to vote for up to 8 hours. Extra ballots
> were used to pre-stuff and pre-seal boxes, which is why
> Ahmadinejad's vote tally never changed during the counting.
> Officially Rezaei is supposed to have received 600 thousand
> votes. He asked those who voted for him to email him their
> national card numbers. He has received 900 thousand emails!
> In his case alone the obvious fraud makes a 50% difference.
> What if we were to apply the same ball park figure to
> Mousavi who officially received 13m. votes?
>
> 3] Mr. Petras should STUDY 30 years' pattern of ethnic and
> provincial voting before he ventures to express an opinion
> about a place so far from Latin America! Those patterns are
> clear. Go to www.merip.org as just one source, and read
> about the past elections and voting patterns.
> I have worked for the past 20 years in Khuzestan's rural
> and provincial areas. Other observers who do regular
> research in rural Iran have already written about what has
> taken place in peripheral areas (Eric Hooglund, for example
> who has worked in rural Fars). Reliable reports from across
> the country confirm the same point: Ahmadinejad lost
> heavily, including in rural and provincial areas, which is
> why we are facing a coup d'etat.
> Ahmadinejad does have popular support. No one denies that.
> But local elections 2 years ago displayed the extent of his
> popularity. This time around, reliable polls in working
> class satellite towns around Tehran, like Eslamshahr,
> Sardasht, Varamin, etc. where his support was supposed to be
> strong, indicated that Moussavi had 55% popular support,
> Karoubi and Rezaei had a 10% total support, and Ahmadinejad
> 35%. These polls, as well as the unprecedented illegal
> behavior of the Interior Ministry after the elections are
> the bases of the popular outrage and the claims of
> widespread election rigging. As to the numbers, the
> conservative mayor of Tehran has estimated the number of
> protesters over the last few days at around 3m! These are
> NOT only middle class people. Look at the pictures, if you
> cannot follow the flood of material coming online.
>
> In these elections a third of the historically passive
> electorate decided to cast their votes this time around, not
> to affirm Ahmadinejad's administration, but because in the
> last week of the election they witnessed 2 things:
> 1. The strength and organization of Mousavi's campaign
> which led them believe his campaign can accomplish the
> changes he is promising, and
> 2. in the televised debate they witnessed first-hand the
> reality of the divisions that are splitting Iran's ruling
> elite. The population realized the elections are not a show,
> and the division among these candidates are real. Within
> this division the voters sought to express their desire for
> reform through peaceful means.
> 3. They were profoundly shocked and outraged by the brazen
> lies and the vicious tone of Ahmadinejad. The man looked at
> the camera and lied about inflation figures which his own
> Central Bank had published. People may not know about
> statistics, but they can tell how much the price of basic
> needs has inflated!
> People in Iran are not fighting to establish a neo-liberal
> order, or a client state of the West. Iranians have endured
> 3 decades of revolution, war, and isolation, not to go back
> to what they rejected under the monarchy, but to establish
> an independent polity, which is democratic and respects
> social justice and the public culture of the population.
> Today they are risking everything to establish a state of
> law, which is the next stepping stone toward accomplishing
> that goal. They deserve the support of the international
> forces and figures who claim to share the ideals of social
> justice and democratic politics.
> Petras claims Ahmadinejad has strong support in 'the oil
> provinces', and that he is opposing neo-liberal
> privatization policies that Mousavi supports! I wonder if
> your journal has an editorial, fact finding policy at all?
> For Ahamdinejad's position on privatization please see my
> piece in the recent issue of Merip (
http://merip.org/mer/mer250/mer250.html). Suffice it so
> say that Ahmadinejad's model of privatization is close to
> what took place in Yeltsin's Russia, distributing near
> worthless vouchers to the poor, concentrating wealth in the
> hands of a new oligarchy of military-security allies who
> enjoy preferential access to banking capital. If this coup
> succeeds we will witness the rise of Iranian equivalents of
> Gazprom and Neftogaz, semi privatized econmic empires run by
> Ahmadinejad's allies.
> Mousavi's economic policy, on the other hand,
> has been shaped by a number of vocal critiques of
> privatization, and by economists who had clustered in the
> Institute of Religion and Economics. The core of their
> arguments about the economy is based on good governance,
> institution building, and maintaining sate enterprises for
> their employment generating role, while channeling surplus
> oil revenues to expand an independent private sector: A
> social democratic policy.
>
> Over the past century, at great cost, Iranians have made
> several attempts to build an accountable polity. In all
> these attempts they have been frustrated and eventually
> betrayed by a combination of domestic reactionaries and 'the
> West'. The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 was eventually
> crushed by the Great Game of Russian and British
> imperialisms. The Oil Nationalization movement was
> overthrown by the 1953 British and American coup d'etat. The
> democratic aspirations of the 1979 revolution were
> extinguished under the double blow of the repressive forces
> that today support Ahmadinejad ( a point emphatically made
> by Mousavi in his televised debate with Ahmadinejad), and a
> bloody war with Iraq instigated and supported by the US and
> European powers. The 1997 reformist movement was shunned by
> the West and eventually defeated by Khamanei's intransigence
> and sabotage. When Khatami was calling for dialogue abroad
> and rule of law at home, Bill Clinton pushed
> for dual containment and George Bush called Iran an Axis
> of Evil. These betrayals by the international community have
> harmed the development of democratic politics in Iran.
> Let me be clear: Iranians are not looking to anyone but
> themselves to build a democratic polity. This is NOT an
> American inspired and financed velvet revolution. They are
> not facing the vicious violence of Khamenei-Ahmadinejad
> forces to build a neo liberal client state. They are trying
> to build a state of law, where the real differences of
> opinion that exists in this society are recognized and
> respected, and that politics is shaped by mutually respected
> rules, not demagoguery and violence.
> If successful, this movement will revolutionize the
> politics of Iran, and the region.
> The least Iranians can expect from the progressive
> international forces, if they are not going to show
> solidarity and comprehension, at least do not stab us in the
> back, yet again!
>
> I hope you will pass this along to James Petras. Ideally I
> would like to ask you to print this as a response to the
> Petras piece, but of course that is up to you. However,
> given the gravity of Petras' piece this debate should be
> made public, and I will seek to have it published elsewhere
> if you decide against posting it.
> Thank you for your time
>
> Sincerely
>
> Kaveh Ehsani
> Assistant Professor of INternational Studies,
> DePaul University, Chicago
>
> Editorial Board Member, Middle East Report (Washington DC)
> Goftogu (Tehran)
>