For those of us with little deep knowledge of Iranian politics or culture, it’s pretty difficult to come to any independent analysis supporting the proposition that the election was stolen. We can go with — Ahmadinejad bad guy, Mousavi good guy, and with all those rallies and excitement, how could Mousavi have lost? But clearly we need some more searching analysis to sustain the claim that the thing was rigged.
And Juan Cole seems to provide it here.
According to Cole, many of the election results — not so much looking at the national totals, but who won and by how much in certain provinces and regions — simply are not credible. Cole even puts together some informed conjecture on how the theft went down. This is absolutely must-read stuff as, I suspect, will be many of his posts over the coming days.
