TO the likes of the ultra-hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and legions of his admirers among the American neocons — there couldn’t be a more gratifying spectacle than Iran consumed in crisis and chaos.

President Ahmadinejad’s re-election has apparently stirred a hornet’s nest in Iran, if one goes by the highly selective camera footage of western television networks in the aftermath of what had been billed in a wishful West as the most important election in Iran’s 30 years of the revolution that toppled the western-friendly Shah.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the western world was evincing an infinitely deeper interest in the Iranian presidential election of June 12 than perhaps the people of Iran themselves. All because of Ahmadinejad, the man singled out as an inveterate ‘enemy’ of Israel, a Holocaust-denier and one bent on wiping out Israel from the face of the earth. That has been held, consistently over the past four years since Ahmadinejad shot to prominence as president, as evidence of Iran being a promoter of ‘international terrorism’ and, thus, fully deserving of its pariah status.

A similar hype was in abundant supply, too, about the elections in Lebanon, a week earlier than Iran’s. There, the focus was riveted on Hezbollah, which in the western punditry is an acolyte of Iran and, as such, as much a ‘terrorist’ outfit as its mentor.

The defeat of the Hamas-supported coalition in Lebanon opposed to the western-friendly coalition — whose star is Saad Hariri, the son of the slain Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri — was hailed as a harbinger of similar things to come in Iran. In their exuberance to highlight the defeat of Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah-led coalition, the western media and political gurus were completely blind-sided of the fact that Hezbollah, itself, didn’t lose an inch of its unassailable stronghold in the Lebanese politics: it retained the exact number of seats it held in the previous Lebanese Parliament.

But the outcome in Lebanon whetted the appetite of those who wanted Ahmadinejad to lose to his main challenger, former prime minister Hossein Mousavi.

Mir Mousavi was given star billing in the western coverage of the Iranian electoral landscape, not so much because of his own distinguished past as the man who led Iran through the entire 8 years of that bloody war that Saddam Hussein had inflicted on it to oblige his western mentors, foremost among them the Americans. Instead, Mousavi was given all the benefit of the animus that the western media have worn on their sleeves like a badge of honour against Ahmadinejad.

So the suave and adroit Mousavi was presented in the colours of an Obama — someone putting an accent on the much-hyped hankering of the Iranian youth for a more open society and setting their hopes on an elliptical course.

Mousavi’s erudite and highly sophisticated wife, Zahra Rahnavard, was toasted as the nearest thing to Michelle Obama. In fact, she was quoted as quipping, when compared with the American First Lady, that Michelle Obama was the nearest thing to an American Zahra Rahnavard. Mrs. Mousavi, in her own right, is a woman of great intellectual dimensions. She is an educationist who served as an adviser to President Mohammad Khatami on women’s rights, and is also an accomplished sculptor whose sculptures are on display at a number of public places in Tehran.

But what sent the western media’s infatuation with Team Mousavi soaring into stratosphere was Mrs. Mousavi’s campaigning alongside her husband — something unprecedented in the post-revolution conservative Iran. That set the western tongues wagging in hyperbolic praise because it was evidence galore, in their self-serving imaginations, of Iranian politics and campaigning taking on the colours of US. Mousavi was portrayed as the favourite — just as Obama was in the last US presidential race — and Ahmadinejad as an under-dog that deserved no sympathy and destined for the dustbin of history.

Even the most charitable of western pundits, gazing jubilantly into their crystal balls, weren’t ready to concede the possibility of Ahmadinejad eking a victory out of the jaws of what to them was certain defeat. At best, it was going to be a close race with Mousavi coming out on top in the end. But where these savvy, mealy-mouthed, pundits went wrong was in their appalling ignorance of the ground realities of the Iranian politics.

Granted that Ahmadinejad is not popular in the upscale and trendy northern suburb of Shamiran in Tehran, where most of those claiming expertise on Iran accost western-oriented youth to get their views on Iranian politics. It’s also true that 60% of Iranians are those who were born after the revolution of 1979 and have never known what life was like under the oppressive Shah. But how many of these past-ignorant youths live in Tehran or Shiraz or Asfahan?

The reality that western gurus are either woefully ignorant of, or deliberately ignoring, is that 80 per cent of Iranian population still lives in rural areas — villages and small towns — where Ahmadinejad is still immensely popular. The outspoken, simple-living and down-to-earth Ahmadinejad is a hero to the rural inhabitants of Iran because he comes across to them as one of their own. He speaks their idiom, lives like them, eats like them, bunks on the floor like them.

What a pity that the Washington Post has seen it fit only now to reveal what it had found out three weeks prior to the election date through a public opinion poll it had commissioned in Iran that Ahmadinejad was going to trounce Mousavi 2 to 1 at the polls. This finding was even more optimistic in Ahmadinejad’s favour than what actually transpired at the ballot box, with Ahmadinejad winning 67 per cent to Mousavi’s 32 per cent.

However, the massive protest mounted by Mousavi’s faithfuls, and the ham-fisted response of the security personnel on the streets of Tehran does pose a serious question to not only the credibility of the electoral process but also to the system of clergy-centred checks on the democratic process. Mousavi is not alone in doubting the heavy mandate the official result has landed in Ahmadinejad’s corner. The fact that in addition to Mousavi the two other contenders — Mehdi Kharoubi and Mohsin Rezai — have also cried foul points to a tainted verdict. That former President, Mohammad Khatami, has also come out publicly in support of the losing candidates accords a further moral dimension to their grouse against the establishment.

Taking full measure of the gravity of the situation, the Council of Guardians has taken the pragmatic way out. Declaring the outcome as still ‘provisional’ the Council has given itself some wiggle room. It has also ordered a review of balloting in some areas and given the reviewers ten days to complete the exercise.

The guardians of an esoteric democratic dispensation in Iran are obviously playing for time and hoping that the agitation on the streets will run out of steam in this interregnum. But even if the youthful votaries could somehow keep the flame burning in all this period, it’s highly doubtful that they would be able to dent the state apparatus of which an efficient and, at times merciless, security cordon is the backbone.

It shouldn’t be lost on any serious observer of the Iranian scene that its Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei — who is more equal than others in his pre-eminent status in the scheme of things devised to keep the clerical control unassailable under any situation — has already bestowed his blessings on Ahmadinejad. Therefore, it would be naïve of anyone to think that he would eat his words and reverse the outcome of the election. No serious pundit is counting on a fresh ballot to satisfy the agitators.

Ahmadinejad, himself, has added weight to this conclusion by going away on a visit to Moscow to attend the gathering of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, in the teeth of Tehran witnessing daily protest rallies. That’s a measure of his confidence in the power of Khamenei to shield and protect him against those calling for his head. But in any case those day-dreamers in the West counting on this post-election flare-up to ignite another revolution in Iran are doing precisely that: day-dreaming.

The focus of the current agitation is not on overturning the revolution; it’s merely aimed at relaxing the system in favour of admitting and allowing more individual freedoms. The revolution of 30 years ago isn’t at stake; has never been in all these years. The simmering discontent of the younger generation of Iranians is pegged, very largely, on the issue of personal freedoms and greater access to the outside world. Nobody in Iran wants to go back to the draconian era of the Shah.

Not surprisingly an erudite and hands-on Barack Obama has got it right. Commenting on the stand-off between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, Obama frankly admitted that he didn’t see much difference in the policies of the two and was prepared to deal and talk with an unfriendly — hostile in his terminology — Iran, irrespective of who its president was. Obama has the foresight to appreciate and understand that issues of real sensitivity and importance in Iran’s foreign relations remain in the domain of the supreme leaders and the clerics close to him. Therefore, Iran’s relations with the US as well as the controversial nuclear issue will not take a new course without Khamenei being fully on board. The buck in Iran stops at the door of Khamenei. Obama knows it, and because of it his perception of present-day Iran has fewer cobwebs than the gurus hogging the intelligentsia’s terrain and the news media. They are desperately seeking to portray the ongoing agitation in Tehran as 1979-redux. But the reality is pointing in another direction: Iran has learned a lot in the past 30 years to ride out a tempest like this without losing its composure and dignity.