Word: mousavi
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...while it's the ultimate journalistic cliché to quote a cabdriver, I can't resist this one: on the Saturday before the election, I attended a large and metaphoric Mousavi rally - someone had cut the electricity, so the candidate couldn't speak - in the city of Kharaj, about an hour west of Tehran. The cabbie who drove us back to Tehran said his parents were divided on the election. "My mother supports Mousavi, and my father supports Ahmadinejad," he said. "I was uncertain until I saw them debate. Ahmadinejad seemed stronger. I don't think I would want Mousavi...
...phantasmic Ahmadinejad landslide. In the days before the election, reformers and principalists - including several Ahmadinejad advisers - told me that negotiations with the U.S. were likely, regardless of who won. "But it might be easier for the Supreme Leader to proceed if the tough guy is re-elected than if Mousavi is," said Mohebbian, the prominent principalist. "The negotiating team will be jointly decided by the Supreme Leader and the President. The Leader, who has great doubts about proceeding, will want a tough bargainer...
...unyielding as Ahmadinejad, if more politely so, when it came to discussing what Iran would be willing to concede in negotiations with the U.S. They were adamant on Iran's nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted for peaceful purposes under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. None of them, except Mousavi, was willing to acknowledge that weaponization of uranium might be in the works and therefore be a subject for negotiation. (Mousavi told me that if such a program existed, it would be negotiable, but he didn't say, and may not know, that it actually exists.) The reformers were unanimous...
...after the election, two crowds gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior - Mousavi and Ahmadinejad supporters, several hundred of each, separated by the police. They chanted their slogans back and forth, and I was reminded of the wonderful street debates I'd seen several nights earlier. But suddenly the police, on motorcycles and on foot, dressed like starship troopers in body armor and brandishing billy clubs, charged into the Mousavi crowd. People began to run; some were knocked down; bodies were flying. And the Ahmadinejad crowd began to cheer...
...aftermath appear to have surprised all the major players, forcing them to improvise their responses to a fast-changing situation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei appear to have been taken aback by the surge in support for the pragmatic conservative candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The decision to hastily announce what many say was an improbable landslide victory for Ahmadinejad touched off an unprecedented wave of protests that have rocked Khamenei, who has since backtracked by ordering an investigation into claims of voter fraud. Despite violent attacks on demonstrators and arrests of political figures, security forces have...