Iran: The Madnes Continues.

Today another mass demonstration has assembled in Tehran calling for an annulment of Friday's election amid opposition claims that it was rigged. Overnight it was confirmed that the death toll from yesterday's demonstration has risen from 1 to 7. It has also emerged that at the time the militia opened fire on the protest the protesters were trying to set fire to the building housing the militamen. As such it would appear that rather then being an attempt to violently put down an anti-government protest the militiamen on the ground opened fire in self defence because they were in fear for their lives.

Although Iran's opposition parties have yet to detail how and why they think the election was rigged one of the rumours doing the rounds is that the election must have been fixed because Ahmadinejad won a large percentage of the vote in districts which are perceived to be Mousavi strongholds. Central to this theory is Iran's sectarian or tribal make up. The two main tribes are the Persians and the Azeris. Ahmadinejad is loosely speaking a Persian and Mousavi is an Azeri so the conspiracy theory hinges on the belief that the election must be rigged because there is no way Azeri's would vote for a Persian candidate. The problem with this theory is that Iran is not Iraq and it is not Afghanistan. While many Iranians are proud of the cultural and ethnic heritage there is no great sectarian divide and it's not a major political issue. Saying the Iranian election must have been fixed because the result doesn't reflect tribal lines is like saying that British elections must be fixed because Welsh Celts voted for Anglo-Saxon candidates.

As if to emphasise the flaw in this theory a widely respected and independent American think tank called Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT) carried out a comprehensive opinion poll ahead of the Iranian election. Using standardised polling methods TFT produced an extensive report detailing their findings that can be read here; http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf
One very interesting thing the poll found was that 31% or Azeris intended to vote for Ahmadinejad while only 16% of Azeris intended to vote for Mousavi. They also found that across all ethnic lines Ahmadinejad was expected to win the election by a ratio of two votes to one. I should also point out that one of the directors of Terror Free Tomorrow is Republican Senator John McCain. You may remember that during the US Presidential election Senator McCain stood up and sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!" so if his organisation is biased in any way it's certainly not biased in favour of Ahmadinejad.

In light of this independent evidence I find it very hard to believe claims that Mr Mousavi had any safe districts let alone that there was any need to steal votes in those districts by wrongly attributing them to Ahmadinejad. Further more I can't help but be suspicious of people who are circulating this slightly racist rumour because it seems to be an attempt to stoke up ethnic tensions and divide Iran up along sectarian lines. If that happens it would put Iran in a group of countries that include Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.