Iran Exploding?

The official re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite massive voter turnout for the opposition candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi, has sparked massive riots and demonstrations in Iran. There are reports that Mousavi was arrested, and that Tehran is being isolated from the rest of Iran (no phone calls, etc).

While it is still early and therefore difficult to separate the truth from the rumors, it is clear that there are obvious irregularities in the voting. Iranians, including Mousavi, claim that the vote was clearly rigged in favor of Ahmadinejad, citing numerous exclusion tactics and outright fabrication of votes.

While I can't confirm the accuracy of these numbers, Tehran Bureau has some interesting analysis of the voting results. Apparently the official count of votes consistently maintained a certain balance, with Ahmadinejad receiving twice as many votes as Mousavi, to within 99.95 percent accuracy. This means that as millions of people voted, Ahmadinejad always maintained precisely twice as many votes as Mousavi. Clearly, the results of a real election would be much less orderly and predictable -- there should be substantial changes in the ratio of votes as results come in.

There are also many videos and pictures showing up on the internet of the riots. I found this one to be the most impressive in terms of sheer numbers. Of course the Iranian government is responding very forcefully, attempting to crush the dissenters. It is hard to predict how serious these demonstrations could get -- they are already the largest since the massive student demonstrations 10 years ago.