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Anti-Iran Bill in House Makes Claims With No Basis in Fact
by Jeremy R. Hammond
Representative Jim Costa (CA) sponsored a bill introduced
into the U.S. Congress on Tuesday "Expressing the sense
of the House of Representatives on the one-year anniversary
of the Government of Iran's fraudulent manipulation of
Iranian elections, the Government of Iran's continued
denial of human rights and democracy to the people of
Iran, and the Government of Iran's continued pursuit of a
nuclear weapons capability."
The bill, H.R. 1457, was referred to the House Committee
on Foreign Affairs and was cosponsored by Gary L. Ackerman
(NY), Howard L. Berman (CA), Dan Burton (IN), Ron Klein
(FL), Mike Pence (IN), Ted Poe (TX), and Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen (FL).
The bill claims that "vote counts in the June 12, 2009,
election were inconsistent with Iranian demographics and
political trends, including provinces in which more votes
were allegedly cast than the number of registered voters
and vote counts that indicated unusual pro-Ahmadinejad
voting patterns by traditionally anti-Ahmadinejad
constituencies".
It also refers to what it calls "the Government of Iran's
unrealistic vote count and fraudulent announcement of
election results".
Additionally, the bill "condemns the Government of Iran's
continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability".
The claim that the 2009 election results "were inconsistent
with Iranian demographics and political trends" is based
upon the claim that there was a "swing" to Ahmadinejad,
but is contested by both past voting trends and numerous
public opinion surveys conducted both before and after the
election.
When Ahmadinejad won in a run-off election in 2005, he
did so with 61.7 percent of the vote, comparable to his
63 percent margin of victory in 2009.
Just prior to the 2009 vote, a public opinion survey
conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow, the New America
Foundation, and KA Europe SPRL found that Ahmadinejad
was the preferred candidate by a margin of more than
2 to 1.
In that survey, 34 percent of respondents said they would
vote for Ahmadinejad, while just 14 percent said they
planned on voting for the incumbent's leading contender,
Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Eight University of Tehran polls all found that Ahmadinejad
was the frontrunner for the election.
A World Public Opinion survey conducted after the election,
in September 2009, found that 55 percent of the 87 percent
of respondents who said they voted in the election said
that they voted for Ahmadinejad, while only 14 percent
said they voted for Mousavi.
That survey also found that, asked who they would vote for
if the election were to be held again, 49 percent said they
would vote for Ahmadinejad, while only 8 percent would
vote for Mousavi.
The poll also found that "81 percent of Iranians consider
Ahmadinejad to be Iran's legitimate president", with only
10 percent who disagreed.
A GlobeScan poll following the election similarly found
that a majority had voted for Ahmadinejad, with 76 percent
of respondents saying they believed the election was fair
and only 16 percent who believed it was "not very fair or
not at all fair".
Two further polls conducted by the University of Tehran
similarly found that a majority of Iranians voted for
Ahmadinejad.
Walter Mebane, a political scientist, statistician, and
expert on electoral fraud, conducted an analysis of the
results and found that "there's no solid evidence of
fraud."
A World Public Opinion analysis in February, 2010 found
that there was "little evidence to support" the conclusion
that the Ahmadinejad had won by fraud.
The argument that more votes being cast in some provinces
than the number of registered voters has been a leading
argument put forth by those claiming fraud.
The most often-cited source cited for this claim is a
Chatham House and Institute of Iranian Studies report
entitled "Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures
in Iran?s 2009 Presidential Election", which argued
that a turnout of more than 100 percent in Mazandaran
and Yazd provinces was evidence of fraud.
That report acknowledged the fact that Iranian voters may
cast their ballots anywhere in the country, and not only
in their home province, but argued that the number of
people who would have done so was not significant.
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However, that analysis, principally authored by avowed
expert on Iran, Professor Ali Ansari, fails to point out
that the election occurred on a Friday, which is the
Islamic day of prayer, and also the weekend in Iran.
Iran's Guardian Council, in response to the allegations
of fraud, put out a report that noted that people "journey
to nicer geographic areas with better weather at weekends",
that students vote in cities where they go to school rather
than their home districts, that members of the military
similarly vote in the places they are based, and that
cities attract workers who commute from elsewhere.
That report also observed that a similar phenomenon had
occurred in the previous, uncontested, election and was
"quite normal and inevitable".
"In many areas the number of voters was significantly
higher than the number of eligible voters in the area",
the Guardian Council report stated.
In one case, in Shemiranat, the voter count was at 800
percent the number of eligible voters, far higher than
any single case in the 2009 election.
The claim of "fraudulent announcement of election results"
contained within the bill is presumably based upon the
fact that the Iranian government announced the results
early.
However, typically omitted from accounts arguing that this
is evidence of fraud is the fact that this was prompted by
the Mousavi campaign's announcement even before the first
vote counts were released that he was "definitely the
winner" based on "all indications from all over Iran."
Mousavi told a news conference on the day of the election,
"I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large
margin."
The state news agency responded an hour later by reporting
than Ahmadinejad had actually won.
Political analysts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this month that the reason
"so many got it wrong" on the Iranian election was because
of "willfully bad journalism and analysis, motivated in at
least some cases by writers' personal political agendas."
"From literally the morning after the election," they
observed, "the vast majority of Western journalists and
U.S.-based Iran 'experts' rushed to judgment that the
outcome had to have been the result of fraud."
But, they added, "there has never been a shred of hard
evidence offered to back up the assertion of electoral
fraud."
They also pointed out that "Mousavi failed to produce
evidence substantiating his public claims".
The claim in the draft bill that Iran continues to pursue
"a nuclear weapons capability" is also not supported by
the available evidence.
In 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons
program in parallel to its civilian one.
In September 2009, Newsweek reported that the intelligence
community was still standing by that assessment.
The 2007 NIE had claimed that Iran had had a weapons
program until 2003, but the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) issued a statement in September 2009 saying,
"the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that
there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran"
(emphasis added).
The IAEA, which is actively monitoring Iran's nuclear
program, has consistently reported that there has been
no diversion of nuclear material to any military aspect
of the program.
The former Director General of the IAEA, Mohammed
ElBaradei, had repeatedly pointed out that there
was no evidence Iran had a weapons program.
His successor, Yukiya Amano, also said just prior to taking
over the office, "I don't see any evidence in IAEA official
documents about this", in response to a question about
whether Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Since that time, the U.S. has continued to fail to offer
any proof of its claims, such as contained in this new
draft bill, that Iran is seeking the nuclear bomb.
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