Reasons for skepticism in Iran

Fox News:

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But U.S. officials are skeptical of the outcome, in which the government declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner Saturday.

U.S. analysts find it "not credible" that challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote, a senior U.S. officials told FOX News.

Despite a reportedly record turnout of 85 percent, the senior official said given the "not credible" counts for Mousavi and Karoubi, the turnout clearly was questionable.

Another senior official said the Obama administration would not describe the outcome as legitimate or illegitimate or deem a victory by Mousavi as necessarily better.

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"There appears to be pretty good evidence that this is a cooked election," Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., told FOX News. "And the most depressing thing for me is we were going to see whether in fact the true leaders of this country, the religious leaders, were going to allow for a real election to have an expression of the people.

"It appears now from what we see coming in is that was not the case," he said. "That gives an indication that they did not have a real intention of really have a change."

Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., said: "This election was neither free nor fair and the world is more dangerous with Ahmadinejad as president of Iran.

He noted that Ahmadinejad has developed a close relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, "threatening the freedom, security and prosperity of the Western Hemisphere."

"Ahmadinejad's influence in the hemisphere is very troubling," said Mack, who is the top Republican on the House subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. "The United States must act now to prevent Ahmadinejad and his cronies in Latin America from destroying the hopes and dreams of the Latin American people."

The dominant view among Obama administration officials is that the regime will look so bad as a result of whipping up Iranian hopes for democracy and then squelching them that the regime may feel compelled to show some conciliatory response to Obama's gestures of engagement.

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That last quoted paragraph smells of liberal delusion. It also is inconsistent with experience with the religious bigots in Iran.

Haaretz reports that the opposition leader has been arrested.

The Sunday Times reports from the Tehran streets.