Mullahs ‘rigged poll’ in fear of Barack Obama effect

Sarah Baxter, Washington
PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s hopes of halting Iran’s nuclear programme have been dealt a blow by the election result but the policy of the “outstretched hand” will continue.
“The Iran election seriously complicates Obama’s game plan in the region,” said Steven Clemons, of the New America Foundation, a left-of-centre Washington think tank. “But if Ahmadinejad is sworn in and the situation gets relatively stable, nothing at all has changed in the equation that Obama set out during the campaign: we have to deal with our enemies – we must engage.”
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said last night America hoped the outcome of the election reflected “the genuine will and desire of Iranian citizens”.
There had been high hopes of an “Obama effect” in Iran, similar to the victory for a pro-western coalition in Lebanese elections this month in which Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed “party of God”, was defeated. Obama had said that what had been true in Lebanon could be true in Iran as well – “you’re looking at people seeing new possibilities”.
Tehran drew a different lesson from Hezbollah’s defeat, according to Lawrence Korb, of the Center for American Progress, who was a foreign policy adviser to Obama during his election campaign. “The mullahs were afraid that if they went 2-0 down, the United States and Europe would have taken a tougher line with them on the nuclear issue,” he said.
Korb argued that the regime had rigged the vote in response to Obama’s success in reaching out to Muslims on a visit to the Middle East this month. “It shows how concerned the regime is about his popularity in the Muslim world. They didn’t have to fake the results of the previous election.”
In a speech in Cairo, Obama signalled that while he supported human rights, he was willing to deal with autocrats. Iran’s foreign policy remains under the control of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. LinkHere

Analyst: Iran election 'not credible'

Washington – American officials are casting doubt over the results of Iran's election, in which the government declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner Saturday, FOX News reported.
Fox News quoted a senior US official as saying that analysts find it "not credible" that challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote. LinkHere