Iran's sham election points to serious trouble ahead

By Aussiegirl

Jack Kelly, writing in today's Toledo Blade, lays out the chilling reality behind Iran's recent so-called elections. Sobering news indeed, as it appears that Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, are being sheltered there under the protection of the government, and that the "election" of an open radical means that Iran now surely has a nuclear weapon or is almost there.

The prospect of a nuclear-armed Osama Bin Laden is not one guaranteed to make us sleep easily at night, plus the fact that the election of such a ruthless suppressor of dissident opinion (see Captain's Quarters, for background on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), is bound to put the screws to any nascent pro-democracy, pro-western forces in that country.

The only hope that we had of containing a hostile and nuclear-armed Iran was to support internal pro-democracy forces in order to foment an internal revolution and change in power. The vast majority of the Iranian population, especially the young, despise the mullahs and love America. For some unknown reason, however, the United States appears to have not undertaken a major effort to support internal regime change preceding these last elections, which were heavily boycotted. All the experts that I have heard speaking on the radio and other venues recently have lamented the apparent lack of a United States Iran policy.

If true, and if the hardliners have indeed taken over Iran, then this will potentially be an intelligence failure that will make 9/11 look like child's play. The dissidents in Iran who had been emboldened to take action and to come out will now be ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated and the last best hope we had of regime change in Iran will be gone.

According to the Iranian government, former secret policeman Mahmoud Ahmadeinejad defeated former president Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, 62 percent to 37 percent, in a runoff for the presidency on June 24. Turnout was 60 percent, the government said.

The Associated Press reported the government's figures as if they were true, even though there was a boycott of the election (photographs taken throughout the day showed polling places in urban areas virtually empty), and Mr. Rafsanjani claimed massive ballot box stuffing.

. . . The blatant manipulation of an already sham election to install a hard-line reactionary as president suggests that the Ayatollah Khameini, chief of the Guardian Council, no longer sees a need to put a "reformist" face on the regime.

That suggests to me that Iran is very close to - or already possesses - a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it.

That Iran's nuclear program is more advanced than most in the West realize is the subject of two recently published books, Countdown to Terror by U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Countdown to Crisis, by investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman.
Mr. Weldon's book consists mostly of memoranda from "Ali," an Iranian exile in Paris, who runs an anti-regime intelligence network.

Mr. Weldon published the memos out of frustration with the CIA's refusal to take Ali seriously, even though intelligence he provided uncovered a 2003 al-Qaeda plot to hijack an airplane in Canada and fly it into the nuclear power plant in Seabrook, N.H.

Why would Iranians have detailed knowledge of an al-Qaeda plot? Perhaps because so much of al-Qaeda's leadership has taken refuge in Iran.

Two of Osama bin Laden's sons and al-Qaeda's former military chief, Saif al Adel, are among 20-25 al-Qaeda leaders living in villas near the town of Chalous on the Caspian sea, reported NBC investigative producer Robert Windrem June 24.

. . . Osama bin Laden himself has been in Iran since a meeting late last year in which he met with Iranian leaders to plan attacks on the United States, Mr. Timmerman's source said.

If bin Laden is under Iranian protection, it would explain why he has yet to be captured, even though CIA Director Porter Goss told Time magazine last month he has "an excellent idea" where bin Laden is.

The CIA has described this defector as "a fabricator of monumental proportions." But Mr. Timmerman says this is because the defector warned the CIA in July, 2001, that a "massive attack on America" was planned for Sept. 11.

Conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh spent nearly a month in Tehran before the attacks, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reported in July of last year.

If al-Qaeda and the mullahs are in cahoots, then al-Qaeda may get the bomb when Iran does. The war on terror could be about to heat up in a very, very big way.

In the meantime, now that the mullahs have discarded their "moderate" mask, there likely will be a bloody crackdown on dissidents.

"It's only a matter of time now before the liberal forces inside of Iran are cut off at the knees and shot in the head," warned Robert Mayer of Publius Pundit. "This election alone has determined the future of hundreds of thousands of families. Make no mistake. Mr. Ahmadeinejad was not selected by accident."