The Iranian Elections are obviously top of the news today but we need to take a deep breath and ask what is actually going on here.

Business interests and political consultants hyped up the prospects for reform, mobilised and financed a volatile student population and the frustrated middle classes and yet could not deliver the goods on the day. The Western media were collusive in this and they are now embarrassed.

Western leaders were also collusive and are worse than disappointed – they are having to rewrite their scripts. We certainly called it right on the Iranian Elections in advising caution about accepting at face value the soft power machine trying to create momentum for the reformers.

The strategy of driving reformist votes to the margin at 49%, then claiming fraud, failed abysmally. Could it be that Ahmedinejad is actually the Leader that most Iranians want? Or are we being too harsh on the ‘green revolution’?

Sentiment Is Not Analysis

It is quite possible that there was some rigging of elections but the evidence for it (so far) comes largely from tainted sources and some very doubtful statistical analyses.

It is equally possible that the mass of the population were not persuaded by the arguments coming from the activist class and that they voted against Tehran’s frustrated middle. It is presumptuous to assume that the clerical establishment has colluded in undermining a constitution in which they have a stake.

Just as pictures of pretty girls on Western front pages (which have been leaching back into the country via the web) only tell us that soft power management of events was a player in this particular game, so the pictures of rioting students have suited the agenda of the Western media.

The visiting media, long courted by Embassy officials with their customary dossiers and 'introductions', gave an impression (partly because they were not so welcome in the ‘red’ camp) of 'green' dynamism and revolution that may have been an illusion from the beginning.

Liberals tend to speak unto liberals. In fact, we are now talking about riots by only a few thousands in a country of millions of voters. The commentary of the frustrated English-language bloggers must not be assumed to speak for a nation.

Indeed, it might prove that this was not a revolution but an attempted ‘coup’ and that the clerical establishment might be justified in thinking it was intended, by a few, to be, in effect, an organised revolt (with students rather than soldiers as the mobilized force) against the Islamic Revolution.

Whether you believe this to be a good thing or not, there should be no surprise that a State at threat will, and perhaps should, act decisively. Imagine the BNP mobilizing white workers in the streets of London in late Weimar style. How would the Crown respond?

At a human level, we have to feel deeply sorry for the students and the liberal activists and we can only hope that the Islamic elite can show compassion and understanding - but those who miscalculated must take responsibility for their actions.

Potential For Purge Or Reconciliation

We might now expect exposure of the political techniques of the Moussavi advisers. These might show links to the West that could have dangerous consequences for a ‘bourgeois’ liberalism that may be ‘proven’ to be unpatriotic in the eyes of many Iranians.

The liberal conservatives in Iran may have been damaged for a generation, at least until the youngsters who supported them have developed a position in society on their own account.

Much of the last minute pre-election coverage can be dismissed in this context as propagandistic and self-serving. The ‘we wuz robbed’ strategy is tragic because we get the strong impression that it was pre-prepared on the assumption of a tight and close result.

We saw material fairly early on in the campaign that made patently ridiculous polling claims about support for the reformists. Somewhere along the line, polls as a tool for propaganda and polls as a guide to actual policy got very confused.

Once the result came in as a not-so-tight victory for Ahmedinejad, the strategy came unstuck. Riots took place perhaps because of genuine grievance but also because the activists had been guided into a ‘faith position’ by their own leaders.

Moussavi may even have have lost control of his own campaign at some stage. We have to remember that he was Prime Minister when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in London. In other words, we might ask questions about his understanding of what his own advisory team were doing.

The question, of course, is just how real the claims of ballot-rigging are. If they are massive and proven, we may be in a revolutionary situation. The clerics will have to come to a view.

If they are claims that are propagandistic or stubborn delusions by over-enthusiastic political activists, the Iranian establishment may be minded to come down on them with full force, damaging relations with the West at a critical time.

The Oddity Of Western Restraint

As things stands though, Ahmedinejad appears to have won decisively on a high turnout and this needs explaining. The fate of the nation now lies in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He appears to have taken a very strong line in endorsing the result.

The American assumption that any Iranian cleric is a genocidal lying fascist is really not a true picture of decision-making in Iran. The system is authoritarian but self-consciously ‘patriotic’. The Moussavi challenge had turned into a challenge to the country by its closing stages.

The position of the US is pretty clear here and it adds to the problem. Any street-enforced revision of the result in favour of Moussavi will now look like a victory for the United States. To some extent, this always was false expectation.

Moussavi might be seen equally as a patriotic Left candidate who could potentially be a tough negotiator in his own right but the image of being an overseas puppet will persist in some circles. Nevertheless, what is most interesting is the restraint of Washington, London and other capitals.

This restraint in itself is odd. In the past, Western liberal leaders would have been falling over themselves to condemn any and every constitutional practice of a rogue state that came up with a wrong result.

Now, the propaganda effort in the past 24 hours has been shunted down to ex-Ambassadors and to anonymous state department officials while America’s tentative voice, British Foreign Secretary Miliband, has suddenly discovered the virtues of not commenting on the internal affairs of other state.

There are only two explanations for this restraint. The first is diplomatic – no one believes that the reformists have the critical mass to win and Ahmedinejad is the man that the West is going to have to deal with on regional issues.

So why make even more of an enemy of him and the Iranian Revolution than necessary! The second reason may just be embarrassment and fear that the coming days may tell a tale of Western arrogance in trying to mount a soft power coup that failed.

Perhaps the regime will fall (we think not). Perhaps it will engage in a bloody counter-revolution (we hope not, although Western liberals must take their share of the responsibility if it does).

The Western states involved are more concerned about the collapse of a strategy of engagement than with clerical constitutionalism. They have wanted to sell it a share of the global system but the new investors may decide now that they have been offered a stake on a false prospectus.

From today, Iran is strengthened as anti-imperialist survivor. Its own technologies of resistance may be be exported to other states allegedly threatened by the Western system. Its resistance may be further encouraged by rivals to the West.

It will effectively be saying ‘put up or shut up’ to Israel on a pre-emptive strike that could cause a conflagration of near world war proportions.

OR it could just decide to negotiate from strength and the local reformists will be thrown to the wolves by a West desperate to retain its hold over the region.

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