[Itse]

That election is not an obvious fraud because of when the results were declared, it's an obvious fraud because the voting percentage was more than 100% in some areas, because the end result is not even remotely close to what the polls suggested (a tight race), and because the results in general don't make any sense.

According to the official results, there were counties where Ahmadijenad got something like of 100% of the conservative votes, 100% of new voters and 44% of previous liberal votes. That simply makes no sense.

Among other irregularities, the voting percentage was suddenly up 75% (which is of course theoretically possible, although not likely) and the traditionally huge differences between different areas (cities voting liberal, countryside voting conservative, much like everywhere else in the world) just disappeared overnight, even though they were stronger than ever in the polls.

Just a badly rigged election. They could have easily claimed a comfortable 53 to 47 percent win and gotten away with it. (It's even possible Ahmadinejad could have won it playing fair too.) Instead they got greedy and wanted to claim a massive landslide, which is simply not credible.

EDIT: Also, I cringe when loonies like that writer make the connection that monetary support for a political cause is a terrible underhand tactic. There's nothing that strange about it. Democratic victories need money, and the money has to come from somewhere. Foreign support for political parties is nothing new. It was done in South Africa in the Apartheid era, for example. It's been done in Finland too, although it's questionable if it really had much effect.

What the money is buying is election propaganda, the same stuff that's shoveled at us before every election. If that propaganda gets a required amount of votes, that's democracy. If the opposing propaganda turns enough heads, that's democracy too.

It's just how the world works. There's nothing wrong with handing out money to causes that are "good" by someones own standards. (Taking that money might sometimes be illegal though, but that's a more complex issue.) Because of obvious political reasons, the west can't back the Iranian liberals openly, but that doesn't mean that backing them discreetely is somehow evil.

"Support" does not equal "orchestrated". That's just typical US megalomaniacs talking. It's simply not possible for the CIA to "orchestrate" a revolution in a country like Iran, otherwise they would have done it long ago. They might be able to help the guys the US thinks should be helped, but whether or not someone receives CIA support is not a basis on which to judge someone to be wrong or right.