Last Summer's Protests: Tehran, Iran

Last Summer's Protests: Tehran, Iran

On June 11th, 2009, President Ahmadinejad of Iran was reelected with a sweeping victory- in fact, he, as a Reactionary Party candidate, won almost forty-four percent of the Reformist Party’s votes. This result surprised both the people of Iran and the world. It was expected that the slightly more moderate Reformist candidate Musavid would defeat Ahmadinejad due to changing popular opinion in Iran. Iran has a history of vote rigging, and many foreign affairs or Iran experts such as Richard Engle (F.A. Correspondent- NBC) and Bobby Ghosh (Time Magazine) believe it likely that votes were illegally rigged by the President’s administration, a skepticism held also by some parts of the Iranian government. On June 19th, the riots were temporarily stopped while Iran’s Supreme Leader spoke out against the protests. As of June 24th, the protests have led to a death toll between ten and twenty-five Iranians, notably including several high-profile deaths on the streets. In addition, many protest leaders and advocates have been arrested and detained, according to the MSNBC Tehran correspondent.
As all of this has been going on in Iran, Congressmen and the White House have been clashing on how to react and respond to the situation on the streets on Tehran. The Republicans, as a rule, have been pushing for the very pro-Reformist position by the US and US assistance for the rebels. The White House, Democratic Congressmen, and a few key Republican senators such as Senator Lugar of the Foreign Relations committee, however, have taken a more moderate route, enforcing that the US is against violence but not interfering. “We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal right to assembly and free speech must be respected. And the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.” Richard Wolffe, a MSNBC Political Analyst, notes of the Republican, most notably Lindsey Gramm, position, “…if you’re going to talk tough, you really do have to back it up with something. Otherwise, you actually look weaker.” Bobby Ghosh notes that talking tough is a bad idea either way. “To speak out now would be to weaken whatever resistance [to Ahmadinijad] there is, and, in fact, it would put people in harm’s way,” he states. Already, the Iranian regime is accusing the US of interfering in the voting process.
As of December, the protests have silenced- at least in the American media- and any resistance to Ahmadinejad have been on an international scale (UN, etc).