Riots in Iran: Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy

Here's Borzou Daragahi's report from Tehran:

Huge swaths of the capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early morning Sunday as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second four-year term amid allegations of widespread fraud and a strident challenge of the vote results by his main challenger, who was reportedly placed under house arrest.

As Ahmadinejad promised a "bright and glorious future" for Iran in a televised address, supporters of his reformist rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi clashed with police and militiamen in riot gear and throughout Tehran in the most serious clashes in the capital since a student uprising 10 years ago.

Searing smoke and the smell of burning trash bins and tear gas filled the night sky. Protesters poured into key squares around the capital, burning tires, erecting banners and hurling stones at riot police on motorcycles, who responded with truncheons.

In the same streets and squares where young Iranians were dancing and waving green banners in support of Mousavi days ago, baton-wielding police chased and beat mobs of hundreds of demonstrators chanting, "Down with dictatorship!" and "Give me my vote back!

Official results released by the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of the incumbent president, showed Ahmadinejad with more than 63% of the vote, a surprise performance given turnout figures of 80% and city dwellers mostly opposed to Ahmadinejad massing in lines for hours. Mousavi received 35% of the vote, according to the results.

Both Mousavi and fellow reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi strongly disputed the results in public statements.

Karroubi, a former speaker of parliament, called the results "engineered" and "ridiculous."

Mousavi, after security forces prevented journalists from attending an early afternoon news conference he tried to hold, released a statement alleging a conspiracy to manipulate the vote results, which he claimed showed he was the winner. "I will not submit to this dangerous charade," he insisted.

He had submitted a long list of alleged irregularities, including thousands of his poll monitors being barred from the voting stations, the previous night. Iran allows no independent observers to monitor the vote.

As the day drew to a close, both campaigns reported that the candidates were under house arrest. The offices of Mousavi and Karroubi had been shuttered earlier, as were affiliated websites that had emerged as critical information tools in the face of the Ahmadinejad camp's sway over state-controlled broadcasting.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, ignored the dispute over Friday's vote and hailed the 80% turnout as a great victory for the nation against the plots of its enemies.

"Your epic Friday was a striking and unprecedented event, in which the political growth, determined political visage and the civic capability and potential of the Iranian nation were beautifully and splendidly displayed before the eyes of the world," he said in a speech broadcast on state television.

Even as the results were released and effusively praised, demonstrators allied with Mousavi defied Iran's restrictions on unauthorized public gatherings and began setting fire to garbage bins and assembling in rowdy protests.

Many young protesters, some wearing surgical masks to guard against tear gas attacks, set fire to garbage bins and blocked traffic along several major streets as older Iranians stood along the sidelines cheering them on, occasionally joining in the chanting.

Passing drivers honked in support. A woman with her head scarf ripped off screamed defiantly at the stunned security officers who had just beaten her. Riot police chased demonstrators and some passersby down streets, beating and bloodying those who refused to move, and running off as the demonstrators fought back with rocks.

Shopkeepers urged panicked pedestrians into their stores for protection, in one instance locking the gate as a group of black-clad truncheon-wielding riot police approached menacingly.

The blogosphere has erupted in response to the news.

Check the New York Times, "Protests Roil Tehran After Disputed Vote." And especially, Fox News, "Iran's Controversial Election Results Raises Questions Over Its Relations to U.S."

John Podhoretz discusses the implications:

For more than a decade, we’ve been hearing about the real Iran—the one whose youth is Westernized, desirous of connection with the United States, and tired of living in a theocracy. It’s too soon to know whether the protests today in Iran represent the fruition of the ideas about popular sentiment and the possibility of an uprising. But it is clear that this is a time of testing for the idea that the mullahcracy can be shaken to its foundations by an aggrieved populace. If it can’t, then the regime will prove itself stronger than some of its most heated critics say it is, and the world will have to adjust accordingly. If this is Tienanmen II, and the regime crushes it, there will be no easy approach to regime change. And there will be no pretending any longer that Iran’s regime isn’t a unified, hardline, irridentist, and enormously dangerous one.

See also the Foreign Policy blogs, especially The Cable and Passport. Wayne White writes:

I question the prudence of simply plowing ahead on engagement as if nothing has changed the potential state of play between Tehran and Washington ...

Meanwhile, while American officials* are "shocked" at the results, the administration will continue full steam ahead, "Obama Administration Officials Say Efforts to Engage Iran Will Move Forward."

* Correction appended.