Obama and the Media's Iran Blindspot

The picture the U.S. media and Obama painted.

One has to wonder, in reference to the presidential election in Iran… how could Obama and the U.S. media have thought anything different would have happened?  Iran is a hardline theocracy and its mullahs don’t want any reform to happen there at all and will stop at nothing to prevent the people’s will from bearing fruit.

Take this supid (or naive if you choose to be polite) view from the New York Times regarding Iran’s election:

Less than two months ago, it was widely assumed here and in the West that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hard-line president, would coast to another victory in the elections on Friday. Many of the reformists who sat out the vote in 2005 seemed dejected and unlikely to raise a strong challenge.

As voters went to the polls Friday, that picture has been transformed. A vast opposition movement has arisen, flooding the streets of Iran’s major cities with cheering, green-clad supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading challenger.

Mr. Moussavi’s supporters say they remain concerned about the possibility of fraud, but a determined campaign — led in part by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential former president — has kept that issue in the public eye. Mr. Rafsanjani urged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to prevent any fraud in an extraordinary public letter on Tuesday, and on Thursday he met with the ayatollah for three hours.

For all the confidence of the opposition, it would be wrong to count Mr. Ahmadinejad out. He has the strong support of most of Iran’s rural voters, and his populist economic policies have won the loyalty of many pensioners and state employees, as well as the pious poor.

The article is titled “News Analysis.”  Great investigative work… no suggestion anywhere in the article that a hardline Islamist governmnet would ever allow any sort of reform to take place.  In fact, the article seems to compare the election and the hopes of “change” to the election that put Obama in the White House!

President Obama made a few comments about the (then upcoming) election in Iran:

“We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran,” Obama told reporters when asked about the Iranian election during an event at the White House.

“Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact there has been a robust debate hopefully will advance our ability to engage them in new ways,” he said.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threw in her two cents:

“It’s a very positive sign that the people of Iran want their voices and their votes to be heard and counted. And like many people inside and outside of Iran we are going to wait and see what the results are,” Clinton told reporters.

A senior State Department official said the United States would not be surprised if there was a run-off.

“It’s anyone’s guess what is going to transpire. If you were a betting person you would probably look at some sort of run-off,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Are these people complete rubes?  They speak from the assumption that anything which happens in Iran will be fair.  This naive belief illustrates the very problem that goes to the heart of not only Obama’s administration but also to Democratic thinking that there are not hardliners intent upon perpetuating evil.  Do Hillary Clinton and Obama truly believe that if they are honest with Iran and other theocratic regimes in the Middle East and show “compassion” and “understanding” that the ruling parties in those countries will respond in the same manner?

Obama seemed to say as much in Cairo:

Obama said he had tried to send a clear message during a speech to the Islamic world last week in Cairo that his administration sees a possibility for a change in relations.

He said while “ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide,” voters in the Middle East had shown they were looking at the possibility of a change.

The people who lead these countries do not act on the level with the U.S. or even their own people… and to assume they will is foolish and puts this country at risk as U.S. leaders “open up” to corrupt regimes who only seek to exploit any opportunity domestically or internationally for their own benefit.

I think many in the U.S. media fell in love with the Iranian election as a way to show that “hardliners” fail in the end and those who speak of “change” always win because it would validate their support of Obama:

Iranians around the world also took part in the vote. In Dubai, home to an estimated 200,000 Iranians, the streets around the polling station at the Iranian consulate were jammed with voters overwhelming favoring Mousavi.

“He is our Obama,” said Maliki Zadehamid, a 39-year-old exporter.

What really happened in Iran.

The problem with this blindspot is they all missed one of the biggest stories of the year.  The role of journalists should be one of relentless questioning… but we can clearly see this did not happen.  Unfortunately, the issue of fraud in Iran is really not that difficult to predict if you come to your conclusions based upon reality.  Reality shows that hardline Islamic leaders do not want reform which they see as a Westernization of their countries that will lead to women’s equality, gay rights, freedom, and all of the other issues they see with countries like the United States.

It’s not like the clues to fraud were not already present in articles by these major American news organizations:

In a possible complication for Mousavi’s backers, Iran’s mobile phone text messaging system was down. Many Iranians, especially young voters, frequently use text messages to spread election information quickly to friends and family.

Telecommunication ministry spokesman Davood Zareian confirmed to The Associated Press that the text message system has been down since late Wednesday.

“We are investigating,” he said.

Iran’s elections are considered generally fair, but the country does not allow international monitors. The ruling clerics, however, put their stamp on the elections from the very beginning by deciding who can run. More than 470 people sought to join the presidential race, but only Ahmadinejad and three rivals were cleared.

This “missing” of the story is, of course, a much larger issue than simply one stolen election… it goes to the core of why reaching out to these hardline nations will probably not work because the people who pull the levers in these countries will never allow anything to happen unless they approve of it so no matter how many gestures Obama makes he will not produce a change of thinking.  After all, if the voters of Iran could not produce change within their own country how is an outsider like Obama going to do anything at all?

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