Iran Live Coverage: Please Vote (P.S. --- We Did Not Rig the Last Election)

0530 GMT: On Tuesday, five months before the Presidential election, the regime launched its Bring Out the Vote campaign. The Supreme Leader himself took the stage to declare that Iranians must participate to defeat the country's enemies, who had tried to interfere in the 2009 Presidential election.

But what about the claim --- the one that brought hundreds of thousands of his Iranians onto the streets --- that it was the regime that interfered by ensuring a victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The Supreme Leader assured:

It is evident and clear that elections should be free. Were more than the 30 elections in the last three decades not free? In which country are elections freer than Iran?

The Supreme Leader's representatives bolstered the message. Ali Saeedi, his liaison with the Revolutionary Guards, said that --- as the Americans were waging a "proxy war" against the Islamic Republic --- it was the duty of the Guards to "engineer the election".

Oops.

The Revolutonary Guards put out a clarifying statement. By "engineer", Saeedi meant "providing security" for the vote. Unfortunately, some Iranian media, "regardless of their professional responsibility" to counter the foreign challenge, had distorted his words.

from EA WorldView: EA Iran

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