Robert Fisk: Secret letter 'proves Mousavi won poll'

Source: The Independent (UK)

Robert Fisk: Secret letter 'proves Mousavi won poll'

Thursday, 18 June 2009

They were handing out the photocopies by the thousand under the plane trees in the centre of the boulevard, single sheets of paper grabbed by the opposition supporters who are now wearing black for the 15 Iranians who have been killed in Tehran – who knows how many more in the rest of the country? – since the election results gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more than 24 million votes and a return to the presidency. But for the tens of thousands marking their fifth day of protests yesterday – and for their election campaign hero, Mirhossein Mousavi, who officially picked up just 13 million votes – those photocopies were irradiated.

For the photocopy appeared to be a genuine but confidential letter from the Iranian minister of interior, Sadeq Mahsuli, to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, written on Saturday 13 June, the day after the elections, and giving both Mr Mousavi and his ally, Mehdi Karroubi, big majorities in the final results. In a highly sophisticated society like Iran, forgery is as efficient as anywhere in the West and there are reasons for both distrusting and believing this document. But it divides the final vote between Mr Mousavi and Mr Karroubi in such a way that it would have forced a second run-off vote – scarcely something Mousavi's camp would have wanted.

Headed "For the Attention of the Supreme Leader" it notes "your concerns for the 10th presidential elections" and "and your orders for Mr Ahmadinejad to be elected president", and continues "for your information only, I am telling you the actual results". Mr Mousavi has 19,075,623, Mr Karroubi 13,387,104, and Mr Ahmadinejad a mere 5,698,417.

Could this letter be a fake? Even if Mr Mousavi won so many votes, could the colourless Mr Karroubi have followed only six million votes behind him? And however incredible Mr Ahmadinejad's officially declared 63 per cent of the vote may have been, could he really – as a man who has immense support among the poor of Iran – have picked up only five-and-a-half million votes? And would a letter of such immense importance be signed only "on behalf of the minister"?

The letter may well join the thousands of documents, real and forged, that have shaped Iran's recent history, the most memorable of which were the Irish passports upon which Messers Robert McFarlane and Oliver North travelled to Iran on behalf of the US government in 1986 to offer missiles for hostages. The passports were real – and stolen – but the identities written onto the document were fake. Mr Ahmadinejad's loyalists will undoubtedly blame "foreigners" for the "letter" to Ayatollah Khamenei. But its electrifying effect on the Mousavi camp will only help to transform suspicion into the absolute conviction that their leader was quite deliberately deprived of the presidency. Marjane Satrapi, the acclaimed author and the Oscar-winning director of the black and white cartoon Persepolis, was in Brussels brandishing the same document.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-secret-letter-proves-mousavi-won-poll-1707896.html

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Renown war correspondent Robert Fisk is still able to report from Iran.

Even if only a minority believe this, its a dangerous minority to the power structure

I'm hoping the government doesn't get really violent. It could get much worse than it has been.

I mean; the story, not the letter ....

I could swear I read of this one day after the election, here in DU ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3928107

Sheeesh ....

The article basically shows why the letter must be fake.

it seems to me the facts here make it seem less like a fake

not likley to fake a report that says your candidte did not win (though I guess forcing a runoff might be promoted by supporters of the third candidate who came in second accordig to the report leaked by the allegedly murdered IT guy *Mohammad Asgari)

it's not likely that Ahmadinejad's supporters would forge a document saying that Ahmadinejad lost.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/iran-protests-crackdown

The Guradian is reporting the suspicious death of Mohammad Asgari, an IT guy ho claimed the election was rigged and who is said to have leaked the results.

Car crash.

The guy has a facebook page

but he is dead so I guess becoming his friend is out of the question now

If this is proved to be true (his death and his leak and the fact that he had access to the real results, then things in Iraq will get worse very fast.

His death reminds me of the Karl Rove IT guys death when he was supposed to testify on vote rigging machines.

Think Cheney wants a shitstorm in Iran?

Think vote rigging is only a US sport (RIP Andy)?

Think Rove and cheney et al don't still have their tentacles everywhere including Iran?

And doesn't chaos and the staying in power of that regime in Iran do damage to Obama and his standing?

If the M.O. wasn't so similar I wouldn't even have noticed.

But killing the IT guy clinched it for me.

dirty tricks

fascism, like rust, never sleeps

Duh.