As Iran Votes, Talk of a Sea Change
NY Times / ROBERT F. WORTH
11-Jun-2009

Less than two months ago, it was widely assumed here and in the West that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hard-line president, would coast to another victory in the elections on Friday. Many of the reformists who sat out the vote in 2005 seemed dejected and unlikely to raise a strong challenge. That picture has been transformed. A vast opposition movement has arisen, flooding the streets of Iran’s major cities with cheering, green-clad supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading challenger. Mr. Ahmadinejad, seemingly on the defensive, has hurled extraordinary accusations at some of the Islamic republic’s founding figures, but the tactic has served to unify a diverse and passionate body of opponents of his populist economic policies and confrontational approach to the West.

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