Laura Secor's nonsense review of the Leverett's "Going to Tehran" book

Laura Secor has written a NY Times book review of the Leverett's book, "Going to Tehran," which amounts to a lot of bullshit.

She writes:

The Leveretts argue that the Islamic Republic faces no significant democratic opposition. They scoff at the notion that Iran’s 2009 presidential election suffered from gross irregularities. In their view, it was President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who tried to steal the election by inciting protests that they claim turned violent and that the country’s security forces rightly put down. They assert (without evidence) that virtually all the Iranians who took to the streets in 2009 came from one rich, irrelevant area of Tehran.

What rubbish.

First of all, the burden of providing evidence is on the party making the assertion that the elections were fraudulent in the first place. And the Leveretts pointed out that NO ONE -- not Mousavi, and certainly not Laura Secor -- has been able to provide such evidence. And the fact that the so-called "Green Movement" was based largely on the rich areas of Iran is observable from the election turnout statistics, amongst other things.

 For example, in Shemiranat – the affluent and westernized Northern section of the greater Tehran area, abounding with shopping malls and luxury cars (and where the Green movement is strongest) – Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad by almost a 2 to 1 margin, winning 200,931 votes to
Ahmadinjead’s 102,433.

And while we're on the subject of election turnout statistics, lets take a look at the figures:

For Presidential elections, the turnout in Iran has been*:

1989 56%

1993 51%

1997 80%

2001 67%

2005 63% (Runoff 60%)

2009 84%

For the majlis, the figures are:

1988 59%

1992 59%

1996 71%

2000 69%

2004 51%

2008 60%

 

 

Obviously elections are not viewed as being illegitimate by the Iranians themselves. "Voting is regular and turnout often substantial, with participation rates responsive to rules of the arena, the scale of vetting, and corresponding perceptions of choice."*

Laura insists that the polls cited by the Leveretts are not reliable because of the "repression" however the MULTIPLE, INDEPENDENT polls that the Leveretts cite do not show a scared, repressed pool of respondents. In fact in one poll only 38% of the respondents expressed support for the Ministry of Interior, for example. Hardly the voice of a scared people unwilling to speak out. And as the Leveretts pointed out, all of these poll results generally matched the election outcome too.

 So, sorry Laura, you can't just dismiss these and multiple other polls about Iran.

 Oh and as regrettable as the post-election violence was, if there was no election fraud, that puts a whole different meaning to what happened as well as to the legitimacy of the so-called "Green Movement."

 UPDATE: It seems to me an interesting question of just how much proof is required in the discussion of international affairs to consider a point to have been established. The proponents of regime change and "Green Movements" in Iran have no problem making excess and unsourced claims about the popularity of their movement -- providing NO objective evidence at all and relying entirely on emotional appeals and "blood shirt waving" (literally) -- a and yet they pooh pooh multiple, independent polls of Iranian public opinion conducted by reputable and experienced organizations and demand a degree of certainty about the evidence that is far far beyond what they've provided themselves or what is generally the standard in international affairs. We're supposed to take it for granted that there was election fraud, with no evidence of any quality deemed necessary, but if anyone challenges that presumption, they have to meet a standard of evidence far beyond what is generally accepted in interntional debates, beyond even a scientific standard of proof.

I don't know much about the science of polling beyond my undergraduate statistics course, but I do know that while there are many reasons that a poll can be legitimately criticized, the fact that you simply don't like the outcome is not one of these reasons. Polls in general amount to scientific evidence of a fact, which is a standard of proof far higher than what is even generally accepted in international affairs debates.

In citing these polls, as the Leveretts or I do, we are not saying that they represent Iranian public opinion with absolute certainty, we only point out that the polls amount to very high quality and objective evidence of Iranian opinion. And this objective evidence says the people do generally support the regime. That by itself is more than enough to shift the burden of proof onto the Laura's of the world, who are now obligated to counter that view with their own objective evidence, something which the proponents of the "stolen election" myth have thus far absolutely failed to do.

So in short, are the polls perfect? No. Are they the best evidence we have? Yes. Have the critics of the polls provided any evidence of their own? No. (But don't worry, I'm sure they're cooking up a few polls of their own.)

 

*SOURCE:

Electoral Politics in Iran: Rules of the Arena, Popular Participation, and the Limits of Elastic in the Islamic Republic

By Nigel Parsons

The Middle East Institute Policy Brief No. 30 November 2010

 

Comments

[Reza]

Laura Secor is a complete hypocrite. She decries scientific polling of the Iranian electorate but she cites "Government polls (one conducted by the Revolutionary Guards, the other by the state broadcasting company) that were leaked to the campaigns allegedly showed ten- to twenty-point leads for Mousavi a week before the election."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/06/laura-secor-irans-stolen-election.html

These "Government polls" were reported on Newsweek by Maziar Bahari and nowhere else:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/06/02/iran-s-president-bush.html

[Career Coaching Services]

Laura Secor complains that “Going to Tehran” is too one-sided in its support of Iran’s policy, as if any book that doesn’t repeat the prevailing near-universal condemnation of Iran cannot be worthwhile. There has been a plethora of books condemning Iran; perhaps one that takes a contrary view might be useful, important and revealing in ways big and small that have been shouted down by many in the mainstream media.

[nima]

More garbage from Cyrus.....The Leveretts are such shams and apologists that it makes me gross.

They are legit "tools" of the regime.

[aletho]

But... Noam Chomsky says it's so. So it must be.

Besides, they are all bad anyway. So what does it matter?

Anyhow, we are the free people, so they must be less free.

Just turn on any station or read any paper, they all say the same thing. So that is obviously right, and you, Cyrus, are obviously wrong. It couldn't be simpler.