Who Really Won Iran's Election?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will continue to be the President of Iran. The interior ministry reports that Ahmadinejad won 62.6% of the vote in Friday’s election. His reformist opponent, Mousavi won less than 34%

Mousavi is alleging vote fraud. And I wouldn’t doubt it. Ahmadinejad faced plenty of concern especially with the economy and inflation. At the very least, I would have expected the results to be closer. It does look though that there were shenanigans. The Washington Post reported that:

“Mousavi's supporters charged that officials were trying to steal the election and cut off alternative sources of information. For several hours during the balloting Friday, they said, international telephone lines to Tehran were down and text messaging -- which Mousavi's supporters had used to organize street rallies -- was blocked. Members of the baseej, a paramilitary force of volunteers organized by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, reportedly seized a building in North Tehran that housed several Web sites supporting Mousavi, which were shut down.

A senior aide to another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, charged that the Interior Ministry was distorting the early vote count by providing results from the countryside and not cities. "We believe these results are void and not acceptable," said the aide, Morteza Alviri.”

Although Ahmadinejad won the election, I’m not sure there is a clear winner in all of this. There are violent riots and protests going on in Iran right now. This shows that there is quite a bit of dissatisfaction with his regime, and a feeling that perhaps the political process was twisted. Ahmadinejad may as a result have less political capital with his people.

On the other hand, it looks like Barack Obama might also be a loser in this. The mere fact that Ahmadinejad is still in power may well hurt his attempts to win concessions from the Israelis on settlements and Palestinian statehood. So long as a man who wants to wipe Israel off the map remains in power, Israelis will insist on dealing with Iran before they worry about the Palestinian question.

What is yet to be seen is how Ahmadinejad reacts to his victory. Will he feel emboldened, as I suspect he will? Or might all the protests and violence cause him to adopt a more conciliatory approach to governing and focus more on his economic problems at home, and less on bombast in the international arena?