Iran Open Thread

Today's big news: Iranian Guards Issue Warning as Vote Errors Are Admitted (emphasis mine).

Threatening to crush dissent, the powerful Revolutionary Guards warned protesters Monday that they would face a "revolutionary confrontation" if they returned to the streets in their challenge to the presidential election results and their defiance of the country's leadership.

The warning, on the Guards' Web site, was issued despite an admission by Iran's most senior panel of election monitors that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report two days after the country’s supreme leader pronounced the ballot to be fair.

The discrepancies, the most sweeping acknowledged so far by the authorities, could affect some three million ballots of what the government says was an 85 percent turnout numbering 40 million voters.

But the authorities insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law. The Guardian Council, charged with certifying the election, said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the result.

So, the number of votes in 50 cities surpass the number of voters, but that's no problem, because, according to the council's Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, "voter turnout of above 100% in some cities is a normal phenomenon because there is no legal limitation for people to vote for the presidential elections in another city or province to which people often travel or commute." And that doesn't violate Iranian law? Oof. (More here.)

Steve Benen also notes a few other important goings-on [trigger warning]:

The crackdown on journalists also continued yesterday, with 24 reporters and bloggers taken into custody, including Newsweek's Maziar Bahari.

And the video of "Neda," a young woman who died on a Tehran street after reportedly being shot by Iranian security forces, has quickly become an iconic image and a rallying cry for demonstrators. Time's report argues that her death "may have changed everything."

The painful video is online, but if you haven't seen it, please know that it's extremely disturbing and is most certainly not safe for work.

Please feel free to leave other notable links and info in comments.