Word: iran
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...five reasons to suspect Iran's election results...
...TIME's photo-essay "The Rise and Fall of the Shah of Iran...
...Everyone expected voting irregularities, she said, but not "this degree of blatant, in-your-face fraud." That Khamenei almost instantly certified the victory of his candidate, incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dashed a central assumption about his regime: that its survival and social stability are intertwined with the legitimacy of Iran's democratic institutions. "He was willing to jettison the democratic institutions and effectively cede whatever remaining legitimacy there was in a popular vote in favor of maintaining total control," Maloney said...
Khamenei's abrupt dismissal of reform candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi's supporters also suggests that he has lost touch with a central principle of the Islamic revolution, says Gary Sick, Jimmy Carter's top White House adviser on Iran during that period. Mousavi's supporters were mobilized by feelings of injustice, "that they've been dealt with contempt by their leaders," says Sick. "That sense of being wronged and betrayed is a driving feature in Iran," as powerful as the widespread anger over false arrest and torture by the Shah's secret police...
...Khamenei and his paramilitary forces, setting up a potentially dangerous collision course. Firing on crowds could stretch the regime's legitimacy to the breaking point, creating a "crisis of confidence which I don't know how they'd resolve," says Geoffrey Kemp, a National Security Council adviser on Iran to Ronald Reagan...