Ahmadinejad Heads for Win in Iran Presidential Vote  

June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who heightened tensions with the West during his first four years in power, was set for a second term after he took an insurmountable lead in election vote counting.
Ahmadinejad, 52, took 64 percent of the vote in yesterday’s presidential poll, compared with 32.6 percent for his main rival, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, with 78 percent of the votes counted, state television cited the Interior Ministry as saying. Shortly after polling closed Mousavi, 67, claimed he was the winner and warned that he would “follow up” to investigate any fraudulent voting.
An Ahmadinejad victory over rivals who favored warmer relations with the U.S. will hinder efforts by President Barack Obama to resolve the West’s dispute with the Persian Gulf nation over its nuclear program. The U.S. and several major allies including Israel say the program is a cover for the development of a weapon. The government in Tehran denies the charge, insisting the program is peaceful and designed to generate electricity.
Ahmadinejad’s re-election is “a major obstacle to U.S.- Iran confidence building,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“He pushes the worst possible buttons; his diatribes toward Israel and his Holocaust denial make it far more difficult for any U.S. administration to acquiesce on enrichment of uranium” in Iran, Sadjadpour said.
Tehran Clashes
Police clashed today with Mousavi supporters in Tehran, Agence France-Presse reported. “They have ruined the country and they want to ruin it more over the next four years,” shouted the crowd as policemen beat protesters with batons outside Mousavi’s campaign office, the news wire reported.
Mohammad Sahadatfar, a spokesman for Ahmadinejad’s campaign office in Tehran, said in a telephone interview he was not surprised by the vote.
“We had expected these results,” Sahadatfar said. Ahmadinejad’s last address on state television on June 10 “was instrumental in securing the votes. He stated all the facts clearly and countered accusations of lies that opponents had made against him.”
‘Certainly Victorious’
The other two candidates in the race made little impression, according to the official results. Former Parliamentary Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, 71, got 0.9 percent of the vote, while 2.5 percent voted for Mohsen Rezai, 54, a former Revolutionary Guards commander who appealed to many of the same voters Ahmadinejad was courting.
About 35 million of the 46.2 million eligible voters cast their ballots yesterday, the Interior Ministry said. The incumbent needed more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round run-off. There were no international monitors.
In a news conference held in Tehran after polls closed and before results were known, Mousavi’s campaign aides said he expected to capture 25 million votes.
“Based on reports from provinces, Mousavi will certainly be victorious with a large lead in this very first round,” Abolfazl Fateh, Mousavi’s campaign manager, said.
Iran is under three sets of United Nations sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can generate fuel for a nuclear power reactor or a weapon. The country increased uranium production during the last three months and continued to stonewall inspectors investigating whether it is concealing a weapons program, the UN’s nuclear agency said on June 5.
Israel Tensions
Ahmadinejad has further worsened Iran’s relations with the West by questioning Israel’s right to exist and the extent of the Holocaust. His speech attacking Israel at an April 20 United Nations conference in Geneva prompted European delegates to walk out.
The government in Tehran has supported militant Islamist movements such as the Gaza Strip-based Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The U.S. also accused Iran of arming militant groups in neighboring Iraq that have killed American soldiers.
During the campaign, Karrubi and Mousavi accused Ahmadinejad of squandering years of rising crude oil prices through mismanagement that fueled an inflation rate that reached 24 percent in January and unemployment of 10.5 percent.
All three of Ahmadinejad’s challengers said that his flaunting of the country’s nuclear program and his confrontational rhetoric with the West backfired, with Iran starved of investment to boost crude oil production by U.S. and UN sanctions imposed because of its refusal to halt its nuclear work.
‘Nuclear Peaks’
Ahmadinejad made his defense of the nuclear program against international pressure one of the cornerstones of his campaign.
“The Iranian nation has reached the nuclear peaks,” Ahmadinejad said in a campaign rally in Tehran on May 22. “It has broken the chains of sanctions. In these four years, despite international pressure, the Iranian nation proved that it can progress. The path of the future is this very one.”
Ahmadinejad focused his campaign on buttressing support in the more religiously inclined rural areas where about a third of Iran’s 70 million people live. It was a constituency that helped secure his surprise victory four years ago on a promise to redistribute oil wealth. Since taking office in 2005, he has visited each of Iran’s 30 provinces twice.
The former Tehran mayor had expanded handouts to Iranians as the price of oil jumped from $60 a barrel to a high of $147 last July. Spending on subsidized products such as sugar, wheat and cooking oils rose more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2007.
Young People, Women
With oil now down to $72 a barrel, Iran -- holder of the second-largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia -- faces widening budget deficits, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
Mousavi, who is respected by many Iranians for steering the economy through the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war as prime minister, appealed mainly to the urban middle-class, young people and women. He was endorsed during the campaign by former President Ali Khatami, who dropped out of the contest to avoid taking votes away from Mousavi.
The former prime minister said he was open to talks with the U.S. that would ease three decades of hostility between the countries. He promised unspecified confidence-building measures to allay international concerns about the atomic program, though the nuclear effort would be continued.
‘New Possibilities’
President Obama had underlined yesterday his ambition to secure better relations with Iran.
“You’re seeing people looking at new possibilities,” Obama said in response to a question at the White House. “Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there’s been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways.”
Ahmadinejad had the implicit backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 69. On May 18 Khamenei, who has the final say on all affairs of state, urged voters to shun candidates who might yield to “bullying Western powers.” Ahmadinejad supporters cited Khamenei’s call for a president who “understands the people’s woes.”
State institutions were deployed to silence critics. Several anti-Ahmadinejad newspapers were closed and bloggers arrested. On May 23, Iran temporarily blocked social networking. On May 23, Iran temporarily blocked social networking Web sites Facebook and Twitter, used in their campaigns by Mousavi and Karrubi.
A Mousavi presidency would have made “it easier from a public relations side for Obama,” said Alex Vatanka, a U.S- based expert on global security at Jane’s Information Group. “From the U.S. point of view, it is hard to stomach someone such as Ahmadinejad with his baggage and rhetoric on the Holocaust.”