Impressionnés par la ferveur des partisans de Mir Hossein Moussavi à Téhéran, les journalistes et spécialistes occidentaux de l'Iran ont oublié que ce pays ne se résumait pas à sa capitale, et encore moins à ses quartiers riches. C'est du moins l'avis d'Abbas Barzegar, qui signe cet article dans le quotidien britannique The Guardian d'où est tirée la citation coiffant ce billet. Selon lui, les Occidentaux ont notamment du mal à comprendre le rôle majeur que la religion continue à jouer en Iran. Je cite dans le texte un passage de son article :
For over a week the same social impulses of anti-corruption, populism, and religious piety that led to the revolution have been on the streets available to anyone who wanted to report on them. Ahmedinejad, for most in the country, embodies those ideals. Since he came into office he has refused to wear a suit, refused to move out of the home he inherited from his father, and has refused to tone down the rhetoric he uses against those he accuses of betraying the nation. When he openly accused his towering rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanji, a lion of the revolution himself, of parasitical corruption and compared his betrayal to the alleged deception against the Prophet Muhammad that led to the Sunni-Shia split 1,400 years ago, he unleashed a popular impulse that has held the imagination of the masses here for generations. That Rafsanji defended himself through Mousavi's newspaper meant the end for the reformists.
Barzegar n'écarte pas la possibilité de fraudes électorales mais il ne cache pas son scepticisme face à un tel scénario.