A Bit on Confusion

Two stories are being reported on the Iranian election returns which should be kept separate. One is the fact that the official Islamic Republic News Agency is declaring Ahmadinejad the winner outright. Their source for this is simply "a statement received by IRNA," however, rather than some official.

The Interior Ministry has Ahmadinejad leading with 20% counted, presumably from rural areas that are easier to count.

For the time being, the safe course is to see the IRNA statement as an Ahmadinejad mouthpiece sounding with the same confidence as the two leading candidates. We won't have a clear picture of what's happening for a few hours yet.

UPDATE: I like this wisdom from al-Jazeera's correspondent:

"'Both sides are trying to outplay each other, trying to out manoeuvre each other in the media game,' Alireza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera's Tehran correspondent, said.

"'There has only been about 20 per cent of the votes counted and one thing I would like to attract attention to, what Mousavi has said - he has invited Iran's supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] to intervene with his wisdom and to no let wrong doing take place.

"'He is trying to refer to the possibility of governmental officials trying to take advantage of this course of events and taking everyone by surprise.'"

(Crossposted to American Footprints)