Don’t You Skip Your Logic Class
As major media pull out of the Iran news concentrating on the Jackson hype, one has to look for the news elsewhere. In the end, it’s healthy – you get more opinion, less bias, and the news that you are able to find usually come from Middle East experts. Unfortunately, what arrives doesn’t carry much hope for stabilization and a peaceful resolution of the Iranian crisis.
Mr. Reza Aslani suspected that the Assembly of Experts, a body with a power to dismiss the Supreme Leader, was negotiating a deal in which a run-off election between Ahmedinejad and Mousavi would be announced. Mr. Aslani suggested that in such case there would be a softening of tone during the yesterday’s Khamenei’s sermon. Al-Jazeera points out that in fact the opposite happened. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami was quoted saying:
We ask that the judiciary confront the leaders of the protests, leaders of the violations, and those who are supported by the United States and Israel strongly, and without mercy to provide a lesson for all.
The same text quotes the Guardian Council again defending the cleanness of the elections. The funny part though is:
We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had.
If this is the cleanest election, it implies that there were dirtier ones, contradicting the first part of the sentence. This is a generic example of the government language: even if one was inclined to believe it, it carries an inherent contradiction making it impossible to be true. Why not admit to the fraud and let the people decide in a run-off? If the Guardian Council is so confident that Ahmedinejad won, why not let him repeat it? The more they negate the fraud the more it becomes doubtful that the result was not rigged. Interestingly, they oppose to Mousavi so vehemently that it really seems that he is some sort of a contra revolutionist and not a close ally of Imam Khomeini.
(Photo by The Guardian)
