8 Million Votes Were Added to Ahmadinejad’s Vote Count

Rooz Online

A website close the principlists and a former Revolutionary Guards commander revealed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad intended to threaten to publish a document that would prevent the Guardians Council from disqualifying his presidential hopeful for the June elections. An hour later, the website was forced to take down the document.

Baztab, a site closely associated with former IRGC (Revolutionary Guards) commander Mohsen Rezai used the pretext that only ten days were left for the start of the official registration of presidential candidates for the June elections and the speculations about Ahmadinejad’s reaction to the disqualification of Esfandiar Rahim Mashai – the president’s leading contender – wrote about Ahmadinejad’s possession of an audio recording about the disputed 2009 presidential elections which resulted in massive and bloody unrest in the country.

Baztab website is known to have access to the state’s classified bulletins and has on a number of occasions posted news reports that either subsequently materialized or were initially denied but were later proven to be true. On Friday morning the site posted a news report that claimed that Ahmadinejad was in the possession of a recording in which officials inform him that he only had 16 million votes (which means that he and Mir-Hossein Mousavi had to go into the second round of voting) but that they intended to increase the number to 24 million.

The recording shows that Ahmadinejad repeatedly protested about this and had asked that his real vote count be announced.

Political analysts view this document to be the magna expose that Ahmadinejad has been threatening his opponents with which has raised concerns among IRGC commanders and the supreme leader forcing them to issue a number of warnings. Ahmadinejad has been threatening to reveal documents in his possession that would expose senior regime elements of corruption and scandal as a way to prevent official organizations such as the Guardians Council from disqualifying his presidential choice.

According to Baztab, the exposes that Ahmadinejad has till now revealed against the family members of the head of the country’s judiciary and legislative branches of government, and also against the head of the state expediency council, have lost their impact, forcing him to engage in other exposes or acts involving even more senior personalities of the regime.

According to the report by Baztab the conversations between Ahmadinejad and various government and state officials are on the recording and indicate that he was not in favor of announcing the fake results of the voting and that he wanted that actual 16 million to be publicly and officially announced.

The website then presents three scenarios for the recording: It does not exist altogether; there is a recording but the government is exaggerating its contents with its interpretations to show that Ahmadinejad received the highest number of votes, and lastly, there in fact is such a recording directly implicating others.

The report reminds its readers that the issue of 8 million votes that were not accounted for was initially mentioned by a current presidential hopeful Alireza Zakami who quoted Mohsen Rezai on this, making it a primary source for the 2009 presidential controversy. Speaking at Imam Sadegh University after the 2009 presidential election, Zakami who was a Majlis representative from the principlist faction then quoted Rezai to have said that 8 million votes in the election were fabricated. According to Zakami, Rezai had said that until 5pm there were only 17 million votes cast and it was not possible to believe the 21 million votes that were suddenly announced after that.