Iran's Exiles
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
NEW YORK — First Negar Azizmoradi contacted me and then I read about Mohammed Reza Heydari: two Iranians, two exiles, one truth of a people defrauded and denied.
I’ll take Heydari first. He’s the brave Iranian diplomat in Norway who defected, having been asked to change the vote tally he’d certified: 650 votes cast at the Oslo embassy, of which 540 (or 83 percent) were for the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, a result consistent with cable traffic he saw from other embassies.
“The will of the people was clear” Heydari told The Wall Street Journal’s Margaret Coker. I believe it was. Change this number, change that number — and soon enough you can pluck President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fantastical 62.63 percent from the air.
Three days after that result in Iran’s June 12 election was announced, I met Negar for a few minutes. She was beside me by chance on the avenue between Enghelab (Revolution) Square and Azadi (Freedom) Square in central Tehran. Side by side we walked in a crowd later estimated at over two million people, an Iran that had arisen to protest the theft of ballots.
(More here.)
NYT
NEW YORK — First Negar Azizmoradi contacted me and then I read about Mohammed Reza Heydari: two Iranians, two exiles, one truth of a people defrauded and denied.
I’ll take Heydari first. He’s the brave Iranian diplomat in Norway who defected, having been asked to change the vote tally he’d certified: 650 votes cast at the Oslo embassy, of which 540 (or 83 percent) were for the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, a result consistent with cable traffic he saw from other embassies.
“The will of the people was clear” Heydari told The Wall Street Journal’s Margaret Coker. I believe it was. Change this number, change that number — and soon enough you can pluck President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fantastical 62.63 percent from the air.
Three days after that result in Iran’s June 12 election was announced, I met Negar for a few minutes. She was beside me by chance on the avenue between Enghelab (Revolution) Square and Azadi (Freedom) Square in central Tehran. Side by side we walked in a crowd later estimated at over two million people, an Iran that had arisen to protest the theft of ballots.
(More here.)
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