What's Going on in Iran

So I'm getting a little fed up with all of the hoopla about what is going on in Iran. The number of armchair Iranian Political Experts that seem to keep coming up out of nowhere is amazing!

Its hard to believe how many Americans are willing to get involved in this issue but can't be bothered to get involved in a political debate when it directly involves their lives, or heck, even vote here in the U.S.

Before another person who knows nothing more than what they see on the news about the issue asks me to take up arms, choose a side, join a facebook group, or become the newest myspace friend of "Iranian Democracy," take some time to do some research.

This report is courtesy of Stratfor... try it on for size just to get another point of view of what is really going on in Iran. The issue at hand is not whether or not democracy was upheld during the recent elections...

The global media, obsessively focused on the initial demonstrators — who were supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents — failed to notice that while large, the demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating. Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution.

Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops — definitely not drawn from what we might call the “Twittering classes,” would remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons. The troops had about as much sympathy for the demonstrators as a small-town boy from Alabama might have for a Harvard postdoc. Failing to understand the social tensions in Iran, the reporters deluded themselves into thinking they were witnessing a general uprising. But this was not St. Petersburg in 1917 or Bucharest in 1989 — it was Tiananmen Square.

Perhaps even more interesting that all of this is their conclusion...

We continue to believe two things: that vote fraud occurred, and that Ahmadinejad likely would have won without it. Very little direct evidence has emerged to establish vote fraud, but several things seem suspect.

So for all those people out there calling for the support of the opposition candidate, calling for revolution, calling me too many times a day, think about the possibility that the majority of the Iranian people might just have the leader they want.