More Updates on the Fallout from Iran's Election

There continues to be a wealth of information pouring in from various sources about the election results in Iran. Here is Laura Secor of the New Yorker:

There can be no question that the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential election was stolen. Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of President Ahmadinejad and is responsible for the mechanics of the polling and counting of votes, have reportedly issued an open letter saying as much. Government polls (one conducted by the Revolutionary Guards, the other by the state broadcasting company) that were leaked to the campaigns allegedly showed ten- to twenty-point leads for Mousavi a week before the election; earlier polls had them neck and neck, with Mousavi leading by one per cent, and Karroubi just behind. Historically, low turnout has always favored conservatives in Iranian elections, while high turnout favors reformers. That’s because Iran’s most reliable voters are those who believe in the system; those who are critical tend to be reluctant to participate. For this reason, in the last three elections, sixty-five per cent of voters have come from traditional, rural villages, which house just thirty-five per cent of the populace. If the current figures are to be believed, urban Iranians who voted for the reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001 have defected to Ahmadinejad in droves.

All this while foreign media outlets are complaining that Iran is blocking their reports from getting out of the country:

The editors in chief of German public television channels ZDF and ARD sent a letter to the Iranian ambassador in Berlin accusing Iranian authorities of barring their reporters from doing their work.

ARD correspondent Peter Mezger can no longer leave his hotel while ZDF journalist Halim Hosny and his colleagues have not been allowed to report on the events, their chief editors wrote.

“We see a breach of freedom of the press and democratic principles,” their editors said in their letter.

Iranian authorities had already barred the journalists from filming and broadcasting their images in recent days, the editors said.

ARD and ZDF insisted that they would “continue to report on the events in Iran” in a “critical, fair and independent” manner.

Video of the police crackdown is also now being posted:



and according to this article, translated by a reader on Andrew Sullivan's blog, the Ayatollah is even dissenting:

Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate and cooperating with his government against Islam. There are strong rumors that his house and office are surrounded by the police and his website is filtered. He had previously issued a fatwa, against rigging of the elections in any form or shape, calling it a mortal sin.

Image can be found here.