 June 15 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian leaders will probably take decisive action to quell opposition protests against President Mahmoud AhmadinejadÂ’s re-election, said Richard Bulliet, an Iran expert at Columbia University.
Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated today in downtown Tehran at a rally led by AhmadinejadÂ’s defeated opponent, Mir Houssein Mousavi, who charges widespread fraud in the June 12 vote. A pro-government militia fired at opposition protesters, killing at least one person, the Associated Press reported, citing one of its photographers, who was a witness. There was no immediate confirmation. The rally took place in defiance of an official ban on public protests.
“The regime will quell the discontent,” Bulliet, a professor of history at Columbia’s Middle East Institute, said by phone today from New York. “It will be dampened down and the U.S. and foreign governments will have to resign themselves to dealing with the Ahmadinejad regime.”
| No, we don't have to 'resign' ourselves: we can declare Short Round and Khamenei to be illegitimate and the election to be a fraud. That would align ourselves both with our best values and with the truth. |
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who endorsed Ahmadinejad’s election June 13, calling it a “glittering event,” has ordered an investigation into allegations of irregularities. Bulliet predicted that the Guardian Council, the election’s supervisory body, with the authority to review the results, will still endorse the outcome within the next week.
| Because they have no choice; if they throw out the election they endanger their own rule. |
If the protests continue after then, “Khamenei could respond to street unrest by declaring martial law and imposing curfews,” he said.
| And also by working to disappear a lot of protesters. |
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