Iran’s revolution through our own eyes

The recent election and following controversy in Iran has not so much as provided insight into a complex society struggling to connect modern thinking with traditional values, as revealed a simplistic media, struggling to find stories that reflect our own parochial hopes.

Undoubtedly, the recent election is important to a young democracy – if we can still label it as such.

However, the British press greeted the tumultuous events with the same platitudinous heralds following the Orange and Rose Revolutions. Good triumphs over evil again.

Cut backs at foreign news desks have forced a greater reliance on news wires and 24-hour news channels, resulting in a uniformity of analysis and a pre-packaged “one-size-fits-all” approach at looking at other nations.

The same explanations are pulled out: The anti-Western tyrant is besieged by a pro-Western people that he tries to suppress. The anti-us baddies are oppressing the pro-us goodies.

In Iran, we have persuaded ourselves that Mahmouhd Ahmadinejad has rigged an election, and the losing opposition have vehemently denounced its legitimacy. The Western press, viewing the underdogs using the only method available to the powerless - street protest – and swallowed their argument. We approve of the opposition, and we disapprove of establishment, and we allow this position to seep into our “objective observations.”

Firstly, there is no reason to suppose that the election has been fixed. The chief reason for reaching this conclusion is a list of circumstantial evidence, and, of course, a stolen vote corroborates our good vs. evil narrative. Our attention was drawn to this issue by the opposition that immediately accused Ahmadinejad of dodgy practice. In an unsophisticated yah-boo campaign between competing personalities, this knee-jerk response was hardly surprising. But the British media has not even attempted to confirm the substance of these allegations. Speedy vote counting and higher than expected performance in supposed opposition strongholds is not proof of a fixed election.

Secondly, there is no reason to suppose that Mir Hossein Mousavi would be any better (read: “pro-us”). During his eight year spell as prime minister, he advocated the taking of Americans as hostage by Iranian militants to “further the revolution”. Indeed, there has been very little reporting on the substantive difference between the presidential candidates. Rather, we prefer to force current affairs to correspond to our pre-programmed ideas of good and evil.

I am not condoning the election, or how it was run. I do not doubt the possibility that the people re-elected a president, who enjoyed high polls prior to voting day, who has repeatedly stood up for his small nation against a perceived threatening superpower.

I do, however, object to the shoddy reporting, and the speed to which we revert to a thin narrative of unfolding events. In a country where unelected clerics vet candidates and non-Muslims are forbidden from voting, it seems more likely that hardline people are backing hardline candidates, and whether it will exchange one group of hardliners for another remains to be seen.