Pepe Escobar: Ahmadi Big Bang

Pepe Escobar: Fishy vote count + Guile + Tactics: Why Ahmadinejad won

Iran has been hit by a political "earthquake": against worldwide expectations, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide victory and a second term in the Iranian presidential election. At least that's what the Iranian regime says -- to the disbelief of quite a few Iranians, not to mention the puzzlement of the world. Pepe Escobar argues this has been a mix of a very well organized state operation, and Ahmadinejad's real appeal to Iran's vast rural and working classes. The objective was to prevent a "threat" to the Iranian revolution principles from emerging, embodied by the "green revolution" of Mir-Hossein Mousavi's young supporters. The official margin of victory though, is simply not credible. The Iranian revolutionary system -- embodied by top clerics and the Republican Guards -- won. But will they get away with it?

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