And the winner is...

Why is everyone getting hot under the collar about the election results in Iran? Ahmadinejad is obviously wildly popular with his people, who are themselves such enthusiastic voters that in two provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, more votes were actually cast than there were eligible voters. You don’t get that kind of voter enthusiasm in the UK.

He is in fact now so fantastically popular that his reformist rival Mehdi Karrubi who polled 55.5% in 2005 in his home province of Lorestan, polled only 4.6% this time amongst his own tribal ethnic group. And Mehdi has the nerve to question this...

The hard line Ahmadinejad not only took all the new votes cast in the surprisingly large turnout but also apparently took all the ‘moderate’ votes from the 2005 election and even managed to persuade 47.5% of the ‘reformist’ voters who had in 2005 despised him. What a man! What charisma! What a beige jacket!

I find it hard to understand how people can describe the Iranian election and the counting of votes as in any way corrupt or flawed.
On the contrary Ahmadinejad was informed within two hours of the polls closing that he had won. How can that be seen as anything other than just being really, really, really efficient. I mean I couldn’t see that many millions of votes being counted that quickly here in the UK or US. In fact I don’t think the results are in yet for Bush v Gore from Florida 2000...