Despite the fact that Iran’s Islamist, terror-master dictators “determined who should run, disallowed a thousand contenders, and ruled out all women candidates” in this week’s “elections,” the BBC is effusing blind-eyed optimisms:

Polls have closed in Iran's unprecedented second-round presidential election, which offered voters two distinctly different future visions. …

The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says that the high number of voters reflects a sense that this election could mark a turning point in Iran.

“Two distinctly different future visions” of what? Dictatorship or dictatorship? The only choice is the Guardian Council or… the Guardian Council, which is “made up of Islamic hard-liners” who “largely determine[s] everything” (see the Christian Science Monitor).

Hot off the presses, Qatar’s The Peninsula is reporting that,

Several election observers working on behalf of moderate Iranian presidential candidate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were arrested yesterday while checking for vote fraud, a close aide to Rafsanjani said.

"Some of them were beaten up," said Gholamhossein Karbaschi…

Even Iran’s own interior ministry reported 300 complaints of election violations in Tehran alone, according to today’s Guardian. Again, the The Peninsula:

Ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani told reporters that one of the ministry's top officials, Ali Mir-Baghari, "saw violations being carried out, got into a fight with supervisory elements of one of the candidates and was arrested by the police" in southern Tehran.

He added a representative of a local governor in the western province of Lorestan had been arrested in similar circumstances.

How could the BBC, a pillar of the western world’s liberal media, believe free and fair elections are being held in Iran? Left-leaning groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) have recently released reports documenting widespread and systemic human rights abuses perpetrated by Iran’s hard-line theocracy.

HRW identified “systematic abuses against political detainees, including arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, torture to extract confessions, prolonged solitary confinement, and physical and psychological abuse.”

The watchdog group concluded Iran has a “bleak future” because of its government’s large-scale repression of its citizens, and singles out the country’s “unelected institutions,” especially the judiciary and Guardians Council, as the major culprits.

It doesn’t matter who gets “elected.” The Guardian Council, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, holds absolute veto power – has final say – over everything. They have allowed the Majlis (parliament) and President to exist as a safety valves. The religious fanatics believe they can pacify their own people by allowing them to have token elections and pseudo-democratic institutions. How condescending they are. The Iranian people are proud and intelligent. They have a long and noble history. Iranians know nonsense when they see it. If Iranians believed in their fanatical "leaders," then why have so many risked their lives in protest against that leadership?

How long can the mullah’s exercise in pretend democracy keep the people down? Are we to believe the BBC’s wishful thinking about this week’s “watershed poll?” Probably not. The Christian Science Monitor sums up the election through clearer lenses:

…the widespread evidence of youthful discontent during this presidential election campaign, and the clear expression of the desire for change, can be of little comfort to the stern men who hold Iran in thrall. As the reformist Tehran newspaper Shargh editorialized during the campaign, even conservative candidates knew they had to mouth the reformist language of "democracy, a free economy [and] the participation of women and young people." This is dangerous stuff for an Iranian regime that seeks to turn back the clock, or at least cause time to stand still, in an Islamic world caught up in debate about freedom and modernization.