At 3:33 p.m. ET: Iran's official news agency, IRNA, says President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad "has secured victory in Iran election," Reuters reports, although rival Mir Hossein Mousavi has also claimed victory.
Official results are not expected until tomorrow.
Voting was extended six hours, to midnight, because of the huge turnout.
Ahmadinejad 'set for Iran victory'
Mousavi claimed victory shortly after
the polls closed on Friday [AFP]
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's incumbent president, has taken a commanding lead in his bid for re-election with more than two-thirds of ballot boxes counted, Iran's interior ministry has said.
Ahmadinejad is currently ahead with 65.2 per cent of the 28 million ballots counted against 31 per cent for Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main rival, according to results released early on Saturday.
IRNA, Iran's official news agency, announced that Ahmadinejad had won re-election.
"Doctor Ahmadinejad, by getting a majority of the votes, has become the definite winner of the 10th presidential election," it reported.
Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili, reporting from Tehran, said: "The state media have declared victory for Ahmadinejad and he not only won, he blew Mousavi away."
Tehran celebrations
After the declaration, the president's supporters took to the streets of Tehran, waving Iranian flags and honking car horns.
"Where are the greens? In a mousehole," some of them said, referring to the campaign colours of Mousavi, whose supporters held mass rallies in recent weeks.
Mousavi had claimed victory just moments after polls closed on Friday.
"In line with the information we have received, I am the winner of this election by a substantial margin," he said. "We expect to celebrate with people soon."
But with the majority of votes counted according to Kamran Daneshjoo, chairman of the electoral commission at the interior ministry, the incumbent president had taken a seemingly unassailable lead.
Ahmadinejad had received 15,913,256 votes compared to 4,628,912 for Mousavi.
The two other candidates up for election, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, and Mehdi Karroubi, an ex-parliament speaker - were set to finish a distant third and fourth with 470,549 votes and 212,855 votes respectively.
Al Jazeera's Nabili said that journalists following the elections have expressed surprise at the speed of vote counting.
"It does seem remarkably quick," he said. "But the explanation they are giving is that the counting has been going on throughout the day. They kept a running tally."
Latest reports show that 80 per cent of Iran's electorate voted in Friday's elections.
'Irregularity' claims
Mousavi alleged there had been irregularities in the voting, including a shortage of ballot papers.
He also accused the authorities of blocking text messaging, which his campaign has used to reach young voters.
Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran, told Al Jazeera: "There has been fraud alleged by the losing candidates in other Iranian elections and there has been good evidence produced that [it] actually happened.
"So one can't rule it out in this case. What is more important in the early stages is people's perceptions. If people perceive they were robbed that will stir up political passion in what is still a volatile country."
Scuffles broke out between police and chanting Mousavi supporters in a Tehran square early on Saturday, witnesses said. Police said they have increased security across the capital to prevent any trouble.
Never mind, Iranian woman are hot, hot, hot. Someday, maybe, I'll tell you my TWA story from Rome to Athens.
Ahmadinejad had received 15,913,256 votes compared to 4,628,912 for Mousavi.--
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Where's Jimmah Carter?
Where's Rat, with his talk of a fair and free Iranian election?
ReplyDeleteAt 0:35, second video, she is very hot, not to be denied.
ReplyDeleteAt 0:34 Here==
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Man, wow!
Well, just go to 0:34, second video.
ReplyDeleteA woman that would do any good hearted Zoroastrian proud, if they could just get rid of islam, and go back to the better, older ways.
Man, looking at those two at 0:34, second video, brings to mind the old European saying--
ReplyDelete"The eternal feminine draws us onwards."
You have it nailed Bob, but the babe at :07 is a pretty nice contender.
ReplyDeleteJesus, deuce, I come to wonder, is heaven really made out of stuff like that?
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is Sean Connery doing in there? And the guy pissing on the Ayatollah's portrait?
ReplyDeleteIs that some kind of Persian celebratory gesture by Armani-dinnerjacket at the end? Some thing picked up watching the NBA?
A strange video.
Strange, perhaps, quirky for sure, perfect for the the EB.
ReplyDeleteI want those women at 0:34.
ReplyDeleteI want them now.
Both of them.
Now.
Sonia just wouldn't cut it in Iran.
ReplyDeleteSean is favored to play the part of the Ayatollah in a forthcoming cinema epic? The eyebrows tell.
ReplyDeleteI've always like Sean Connery. I remember him being interviewed on a TV program, and telling how he told his father he had made so much money for acting.
ReplyDeleteHis father was a coal miner.
He asked, when told the sum:
What for?
His father the coal miner could not understand, what for? what did you do?
heh, a new world
Those two women at 0:34, absolutely delicious as they are, pale by comparison with the Sioux woman, she of the wonderful hips, and the just right breasts, and the smile of God Almighty, and the murmur of her voice, like a river ever running, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, the very true definition of woman, that I saw at the airport gate there at Fargo, North Dakota, circa 1972.
ReplyDeleteDon't call me a racist.
Walt, he is dead now, my farmer friend, on that trip.
But if he was here, he would back me up with his testimony.
"The eternal feminine leads us onwards."
Walt woud say:
ReplyDelete(if he were here to say anything)
"Ja, she were very good. The best I have seen, ever."
I hope therefore, though I don't know if it is true, that the driving force of evolution is eyes meeting eyes, that is to say, beauty is at the basic driving source of all things.
ReplyDeleteI can't prove this, however.
Not yet, though there are folks working on the idea.
...pale by comparison with the Sioux woman, she of the wonderful hips, and the just right breasts, and the smile of God Almighty, and the murmur of her voice, like a river ever running...
ReplyDeleteI know just what you mean, bob. There was a beauty of my acquaintance four odd decades ago at the Univ of Nebraska...half Souix, half Scots-Irish...a volatile mix. The fantasies of unfulfilled passions that visit an old man in his dotage...ahhh...
...what could have been, but wasn't.
I am not making this up, Linear.
ReplyDeleteShe actually burned my bones, so to speak. A true breakthrough of what beauty might be.
And o how that it is not a hallucination of my own, because one year, very much later, when I helped Walt out with some truck driving, he brought it up.
So, there it is the two of us, thinking, by God, we have really seen something, the true (as far as it can be in this world) the true definition of Platonic Beauty, right here in the flesh, displaying itself right before us.
Allen, of earlier posts, and I have talked about this too.
And we wonder, what the heck?
I don't know what to make of it, than just mention it.
But, by Christ....
And so I think, there might really be something to the older way of seeing things.
That is to say, beauty leading the eyes ever further, to the vision of Beauty Itself.
How is Ahmadinejad's apparent landslide victory to be reconciled with Hezbollah getting their wings somewhat clipped in the recent Lebanese elections?
ReplyDeleteOh, and the lady @ 0:34 is definitely a looker (the one at 0:07, too). Now if someone could get her to shed some of those clothes and gyrate pleasantly like that insanely hot Latina whose YouTube clip has been posted here a couple of times ...
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