Elections in Iran

I love it when the Tehran Times prints garbage like this.

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad here on Thursday urged the regional countries to be vigilant in the face of conspiracies by the United States and be prepared to foil them.

“We should always be prepared and have a plan for foiling the U.S. movements in the region,” Ahmadinejad told visiting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem in Hamedan where he was on a provincial tour.

Great. Awesome.
This is in the wake of the Iranian Majiles (Parliament) elections, which resulted in a victory for conservatives - both Ahmadinejad's party and his conservative critics. At least the Washington Post bothered to report on it for a change.

Tehran Times suspects conspiracy!!!

I'm reproducing this article in full. It is the top headline at the Tehran Times for March 17, 2008.

U.S. biggest loser of Iran poll
Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN -- Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini declared here on Sunday that the United States is the main loser of the parliamentary election in Iran.
“Surely the biggest loser of this election was the United States, and the real winners were the people of Iran,” Hosseini told reporters at his weekly press briefing.
About 60 percent of eligible voters in Iran took part in Friday’s parliamentary elections.
The Western plot to discourage the Iranians from participating in the elections was foiled, the Foreign Ministry spokesman stated.
The U.S. put great pressure on its European allies and other countries sitting on the Security Council to approve additional sanctions against Iran prior to elections in order to discourage people from turning out for polls.

Wow. I'm currently reading The Persian Puzzle which looks at Iranian-American relations. One of the main points the author pushes is that Iranians perceive the United States to be more interested and involved in Iran than it actually is. This article I think is a perfect example of that mentality.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, covered Iran's parliamentary election by reproducing a Reuters article which called into question the legitimacy of the elections, but otherwise does not appear to have paid much attention.

Molotov Cocktail

I just want it to be known that the titles of these class notes are taken directly from my notebook, which means they were uttered or inspired by the lecture.

Today in class we talked about Infoseeking vs. Confirmation Seeking behaviors. Infoseeking describes those who legitimately are looking for more information on a given subject, whereas confirmation seekers are only tuning in to opinions and facts that reaffirm their previously held world view.
Clearly, one of these behaviors is conducive to a thoughtful approach, and the other isn't. However, confirmation seeking happens in many more circumstances than we may realize. The example brought up in class was of the campaign debates. Those people who tend to watch the debates also tend to be a certain type of people, who go to debate watch parties and follow politics closely. Those who prefer the sound bite approach to debates will wait until the next day -- when the sound bites are released.

(1) How can the populace be more engaged in the electoral process?
(2) Where do Confirmation Seekers originally get their beliefs?

In answer to (2), I believe that probably a mixture of formal and informal education contributes to the formation of schemas and biases. Parents, culture, and other experiences all contribute. So as easy as it is to criticize confirmation seekers, it is necessary to note that they are only seeking media that confirms things they know from real life. Are information seekers changing their "real" world to fit things they hear from talking heads?

Iranian perception of the satellite shootdown

Wednesday's successful shootdown of the rogue satellite provoked an interesting reaction by the Iranian press. The most viewed article on the site, the overall impression is of a deceptive Pentagon that underestimates the intelligence of the world. The article reads into the motives of the Pentagon, plainly stating:

The operation to shoot down the orbiting spacecraft was clearly designed to send a message to both Russia and China, America’s two major competitors in the race for military dominance in space.

Furthermore, the article criticizes the Pentagon's fear of leaking hydrazine from the satellite in light of its previous decision to use Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Though it would be easy to write off the comparison as ludicrous, this illustrates a peculiar aspect of Iranian-American relations. To Iran, a country of long history and memory, the actions of a government taken within 50 years constitute a continuation of policy, though no American would say that the presidencies of Johnson and Bush 43 are anywhere near so linked.
The article ends ominously:

...once you start shooting down satellites in space, for whatever reason, other countries are sure to follow, and before long, there will be mayhem and havoc in the heavens (as well as on Earth)!

This doomsday approach to the militarization of space aligns Iran more closely with Russia and China, who recently proposed a treaty to prohibit the deployment of weapons in space.

The coverage of the event in the Washington Post is a little more cautious. Noted is the relationship between the satellite take-down and the Russian/Chinese treaty, as well as the potential diplomatic strain. The article's conclusion, however, is ultimately more cynical than its Iranian counterpart. The article quotes proliferation experts as saying that the militarization of space is inevitable, largely because any tool for space defense can be turned around on the offense, as with the Aegis system (or the system successfully tested by the Chinese last year).
And of course, as it is election season (when isn't it?) the journalist inserted a quick tie to the primary candidates:

In a survey of presidential candidates by Washington's Council for a Livable World, Sen. Barack Obama backed a space code of conduct. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would constrain space weaponization "as much as possible." Republican candidates did not respond.

The political nod is sandwiched in between expert opinions. We discussed in class today the startling lack of media coverage of candidates' foreign policy. The little soundbites in this article give a little foreign policy snack to anyone interested in the issue, and ultimately, the issue probably isn't important enough for any fu

Primary Glut

Every story on the "cover" of the online Washington Post is covering the results of the Florida primary. I thought I would look around at other online news sources and pull out all the important headlines that the Post missed by gorging on primary commentary, when I realized that there are no other headlines. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Google, Yahoo, and CNN are all running the McCain win/Giuliani defeat.
Internationally? The BBC, Le Monde, Die Welt, El Pais, and PressTV Iran all succumb to election fever.

So where was McCain's face not gracing the cover? India. China. Egypt.
Tonight there were two worlds - one that is attuned to American domestic politics, and one that is not.