Iran's Leaders Warn Candidate Who Charged Vote Fraud

Michael Slackman, The New York Times:

Iran's inner leadership circle struck back Monday at one of its own, rebuking a candidate for president and senior adviser for his charges that the election had been rigged. In a stern warning, the country's supreme leader said he would not "allow anyone to create a crisis" in Iran.

As the candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, an adviser to the supreme leader and a former Parliament speaker, pressed his claims against conservatives and the military, the front-runner for president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said he supported Mr. Karroubi's calls for an investigation. READ MORE

In a statement carried by the news media here, Mr. Rafsanjani, a stalwart of the revolution who will be in a runoff on Friday, said he also believed that the first round of voting had been tampered with.

"During the election, we witnessed certain organized interferences aimed at directing peoples' votes, which is not clear where it would lead if such behavior is institutionalized," he said, adding that he would like an investigation into the "protest and complaint of my dear brother, Mr. Karroubi, about the election in certain cities."

In its crackdown on Monday, the hard-line government shut down two newspapers that had been planning to publish Mr. Karroubi's charges of election fraud. Mr. Karroubi said the election was rigged by elements of the Iranian military, along with militias, known as Basiji, which are controlled by the hard-liners and the Guardian Council, the cleric-controlled panel that has final say over all government actions. On Monday, he resigned his government posts and vowed to start a new opposition party.

Critics of the election did not expressly say so, but it was clear they believed that the government was trying to push through the candidacy of the ultra-conservative appointed mayor of Tehran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was a Basiji and a member of the Revolutionary Guard, catapulted from near the bottom of the pack of eight candidates to make it into the runoff against Mr. Rafsanjani. He has dismissed the charges of fraud, saying they are the words of a sore loser, and has focused on campaigning for the runoff.

The Guardian Council said Sunday that the runoff vote would go forward as planned if it did not receive a formal complaint. It was unclear whether anyone had filed one late Monday, but a supporter of Mr. Karroubi said it would not make sense to rely on the panel it was accusing of corruption to weigh such a complaint.

In a one-sentence statement issued Monday evening on the Iranian Student News Service, the Guardian Council said it would recount 100 boxes of ballots. The council, as is customary, did not provide any explanation. [Later Monday, The Associated Press quoted a Guardian Council statement on state television that it had finished the recount and upheld the election results.]

Mr. Karroubi, who came in first in 11 provinces across Iran, the most of any candidate, had threatened to go public with his charges if the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not intervene. On Monday, security agencies stopped Mr. Karroubi from making good on his threat by shutting down two newspapers, both associated with reform-oriented political parties, that had planned to print Mr. Karroubi's four-page statement.

With no other alternative, Mr. Karroubi posted it on the Internet, along with a copy of the response he said he had received from Ayatollah Khamenei.

The response was sharp and angry and suggested that the ayatollah felt betrayed by a member of his inner circle. "What you said is beyond your position and is aimed at creating a crisis in the country," the statement said. "Are you aware of what you are doing? Are you aware that what you are doing is aimed at creating a crisis and pessimism among people, and is in line with what our enemies want to do to the revolution and the Islamic republic, and it will catch up with you, too?"

The ayatollah's remarks concluded: "Others may have similar protests. Do you think they should have the right to question everything as well? I was not expecting this from you. And I will not allow anyone to create crisis in the country."

Mr. Karroubi said he had quit his post as an adviser to the supreme leader and as a member of the Expediency Council, the powerful panel that helps mediate disputes between the elected government and the Guardian Council.

He and many of his supporters met Monday to discuss what they would do next. Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a radical cleric who once served as interior minister, said Mr. Karroubi and his followers believed that the government needed to redo the first round of elections in the cities of Isfahan, Qum and Tehran. Many people have pointed in particular to the vote in Isfahan, where results showed Mr. Ahmadinejad receiving 800,000 votes out of 1.7 million cast, a figure they said appeared inflated.

"The issue is the interference of the military and Basiji forces in the election," he said.

As the meeting went on throughout the day and into the night, Mr. Rafsanjani tried to use the conflict to his benefit, hoping to convince people that a vote for him was a vote against extremism. But the whole affair has underscored the fragility of Mr. Rafsanjani's candidacy. While reform groups and others critical of the hard-line leadership have said they would work against Mr. Ahmadinejad, they have not wholeheartedly endorsed Mr. Rafsanjani.

"We think we have to make things clear to people about Ahmadinejad," said Abdullah Moneni, a member of Iran's main student movement, the Office of Fostering Unity. "He is not good for our nation. On the other hand, we are not telling people to vote for Hashemi."

Trying to take a longer view, Mr. Moneni hinted that the spectacle of conflict at the highest levels of government might actually help his cause.

"If we cannot create change," he said, "then it is not bad for senior leaders to fight with each other."

This entire debate, while valuable, obscures the larger debate over the size of the turnout. Anecdotal and Interior Ministry sources claim the actual vote totals were a paltry 7% of registered voters. If accurate, this would mean that 14,000,000 votes were fraudulent.

The international media in Iran has an opportunity to ask the hard questions about the vote. With a few exceptions, they have repeated as fact the vote totals claimed by the regime. The mainstream media has an opportunity to correct this failure to report this Friday. The journalists on the ground in Iran can demand the opportunity to visit polling stations throughout Iran to see for themselves the voter turnout.