I hate theocrats and wished that Mousavi, not as theocratic as his opponents had won. The claim accusation is that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the release of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.

As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.

It seems like the anti-government, pro-Mousavi crowd couldn't get enough protesters on the streets to outnumber the police and pro-government militias. Moreover, the protests seem to be limited to Teheran and there's no indication of serious anti-government sentiments in the countryside or other cities. As much as I despise the mullahs, it makes me wonder what popular support the "greens" really have. Additionally, repulsive as the theocrats are, there hasn't been one shred of evidence yet of actual electoral fraud. It's probably more a situation where the younger people and educated classes are just fed up with the theocratic, medieval mullahs.

When the US right-wing was stealing the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the US public barely shrugged and continued shopping and watching football. That's why I find the prospect of Americans commenting on the situation in Iran so infuriating. People who don't care enough about their own democracy to even get mildly upset aren't in a position to encourage other nations to risk and scarify their lives for their own democracy.

Whether the Iranian vote was actually rigged or not, the current regime is repulsive, because it's a theocracy. I find the US right-wing protestations of the Iranian elections results repulsive and outrageously hypocritical because the GOP instigated the stealing of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 and has been trying to establish a "Christian" theocracy in the USA, in direct defiance of our basic laws and values. The American right-wing is a complete stranger to democracy and democratic values, and has no right to preach those to others, not even the mullahs.

Sen. Ensign will find Jesus and will establish a personal relationship with him, of the non-sexual kind, and everything will be fine in wingnut-land

Mohammad Mosaddeq was the Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 when he was removed from power by a coup d'état. From an aristocratic background, Mosaddeq was an author, administrator, lawyer, prominent parliamentarian, and statesman, famous for his passionate opposition to foreign intervention in Iran. He is most famous as the architect of the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), (later British Petroleum or BP), and which is thought by many to be the reason for his deposition.

Mosaddeq was removed from power in a 19 August 1953 coup supported and funded by the British and U.S. governments and led by General Fazlollah Zahedi. The American operation came to be known as Operation Ajax in America, after its CIA cryptonym, and as the 28 Mordad 1332 coup in Iran, after its date on the Iranian calendar. Mosaddeq was imprisoned for three years and subsequently put under house arrest until his death.

Among many in Iran and abroad, Mosaddeq is known as a hero of Third World anti-imperialism, and a victim of imperialist greed for Iran's oil. However, a number of scholars and historians believe that besides the direct involvement of the UK and US, a major factor in Mossadeq's overthrow was the reactionary clerical dissatisfaction with a secular government, fomented with CIA propaganda.

It's terrible that an autocrat will get another 4 years in Iran, although the real power in Iran resides with the mullahs and not with the president. Regardless, since the American people allowed the 2000 elections to be stolen while looking on with total inaction and passivity, the same kind of passivity exhibited by sheep being led to the slaughter, no American has a right to pass judgment on rigged or stolen elections in other countries.

The speed with which Ahmadinejad had been declared the winner could be an indication that Mousavi actually won. On the other hand, the large majority of Iranians don't live in teheran but in rural villages and small towns, are quite religious and traditional, and are Ahmadinejad's core constituency. We really have no way of knowing, since there is very little transparency in the Iranian electoral system. Regardless, after our own 2000 outrage, no American is entitled to whine about stolen elections anywhere, end of story.

the more they stay the same. So the Iranian Supreme Council had been determined that Ahmadinejad will be the next Iranian president, regardless of the actual vote. Totally unlike the US Supreme Court in 2000...

"By tomorrow he'll be on the phone congratualting Ahmad'jad and apologizing to him for some thing or another. What a pathetic so-called leader."

Yeah, all the US did in 1953 is instigate acoup d'état that removed the democratically elected president Dr. Mohammad Mosadegh, and replaced him with a CIA handpicked corrupt and brutal puppet, Muhammad Raza Pahlavi, aka The Shah of Iran. No doubt, if another country did it to us, you would just love it and never expect an apology, you moronic wingnut.