Feel my pain, Juan Cole.

Juan Cole feels my pain when he points out that he's been vindicated in what he's been saying for a while now about Ahmadinejad's supposed threat to "wipe out" Israel:

I made the same point in 2005 and was raked over the coals by the late Christopher Hitchens and his Neoconservative friends, and by Likudniks ... and Israel’s military chief of staff, Gen. Benny Gantz, came out and said that Iranian leaders are rational actors and that they have no current nuclear weapons program, not having decided to go for warheads.

And, of course, I’ve been saying these things for years and vilified for it, but this is the Israeli Army chief of staff speaking now.

Now if only Juan Cole also conceeds that there was no evidence of election fraud -- as I and some others like Eric Brill have also been saying for years - even though he was promoting that view without any evidence (or, the evidence he cited was debunked) and he has yet to retract it (specifically, the Chatham House study he cites as "definitive" was faulty because it was an apples-and-oranges comparison, as the Leveretts pointed out.) So, how about feeling some more of my pain?

Comments

[Liz]

Mohammad Alireza - 60 million people voted in those elections, so they didn't think that it was a "sham" and about 1/3rd of then voted for Ahmadinejad. Any one in any country can complain about the election process - note that even in the US there is a less transparent method used by the two parties to restrict the number of options available to voters (through corporate donations and the two-pary system's grip on the process of drawing election boundary lines which they use to minimize competition.) The matter of whether the elections were "fraudulent" or not is very significant in the narrative that is constructed about Iran -- and the claims made about the post-election rioting. Were those really "pro-democracy" riotors, or people trying to undo popular election results through force and intimidation? And finally, the truth and facts are worthy of being defended, for their own sake. The fact is that there is no evidence of any election fraud, like it or not. Anlaysts like Juan Cole who claim expertise and objectivity should be held to account when they claim something. This is true in academia as anywhere else.

[Mohammad Alireza]

Salam Cyrus,

What I don't understand is why the issue of the 2009 elections being stolen or not gets you so worked up.

The entire election process in Iran is a sham. The screening out process carefully weeds out the "undesirables" and the "non-khoddi". Election financing is very murky and one wonders where the money comes from for huge banners hanging from the side of buildings, especially when often the candidate is a government employee earning just enough per month to cover the cost of ONE of these banners.

Clearly the election process in Iran is not free, or fair, or open. Therefore any discussion about the 2009 elections being rigged or not is like arguing about how many angels can fit on the end of a needle.

Iran is a clerical military dictatorship and holding an election here is automatically a big hoax, which unfortunately a majority of Iranians have fallen for.

Peace,

Mohammad Alireza