Overview: According to the document released by the Iranian government, a polling station for the presidential elections in Iran was located near me in Tucson, Arizona at the Southern Arizona Association for Visually Impaired (SAAVI). I drove there around 9am and the receptionist confirmed that, indeed, voting would be from 3pm-7pm. I arrived back on the scene around 4pm with my camera and notepad in hand and entered the polling station. After a brief look around, I asked the man in charge, the “poll monitor,” if I could interview him about the polling process, telling him that I am a freelance journalist.

We sat down and talked for nearly an hour and a half. He took me as young, naive, and impressionable, and because of it, he elaborated greatly on his bizarre political ideology and personal defense of the Islamic Republic. I have no doubt in my mind that this man is an ideologue connected to the regime and an eloquent propagandist. Following is what he told me, along with my impressions and a few pictures of the polling station.

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His name is Mojtaba Agha, a self-proclaimed human rights activist and poll monitor for both this one and our own presidential election in November. One of his “many” NGOs is Interfaithful.org, where you can read his full bio. He has taught at California State University in Hayward, the University of Phoenix, and is now a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona.

Demographics: According to Mojtaba, there are approximately 2500-3000 Iranian expatriates in Tucson, 1500 of which are of voting age. At the time I arrived at 4pm, with an hour gone by and three left to vote, only 15 people had voted. Mojtaba was hoping for at least 60, but when I left around 5:30, only 25 had done so. The favorite among the Iranian-Americans was Moin by a landslide, but needless to say, it was a slow day.

Polling Procedure: There were several men present at the poll, one of which was the president of the organization, another the vice-president, and two of them secretaries (including Mojtaba, who is also the poll monitor). When a person entered the polling station, one of the men would check the person’s Iranian birth certificate or passport to affirm citizenship and date of birth over the age of 16. Afterward, the person would fill out an instant voter registration card, which is connected to the ballot. The person would then use an inkpad to place their fingerprints on the card, and one of the men would use an official stamp the mark the card, at which point, the person would pick their candidate and cast their ballot into the box.

Voting would end at 7pm, and the next two hours (though he admitted it would only take 15 minutes) would be used to clean up and report the results to Tehran. They actually open up the ballot box and count the number of votes and for whom, phone in the results to Tehran on a “special line,” and then mail the ballots in the box to the Iranian dispatch at the Pakistani consulate in Washington D.C. I was assured that the box had been shaken to prevent pre-stuffing, but in the end, it doesn’t matter as it seems that they can do as they like given the lack of independent supervision.

Mojtaba also made several jokes about the informality of the procedure, saying that just like in the U.S., the voters coming in are all stupid and have no idea what they are doing.

Politics: This is the most interesting part, where Mojtaba offered some bizarre explanations for the state of Iran and that of the United States.

He said that he expected turnout in Iran to be extremely high, “even more than predicted,” and that certain groups were trying to “sabotage the Republic through boycotting” The reason he gave for this was that President Bush’s words the day before the election had inflamed people who would otherwise not vote to do so. He said that he was not going to vote because of the barring of female candidate, but he said that President Bush’s words and foreign policy “undermine Iran” so much that he felt compelled. His step second cousin, as well, voted only in the last hour because of this. Of course, it cannot be confirmed and is inconsistent with incoming reports out of Iran.

I asked him who he voted for, and he said Moin. The reason he gave was that he did not want to undermine the reform movement, though he admitted, “What Iran probably needs is a wiley candidate like Rafsanjani. And believe me, Rafsanjani is wiley!”

I pressed him on the issue of the barring of female candidates, along with the other some 1000 people who registered. He said that it can be justified, as the “decision reflects the reality of society.” As for the many hundreds of male candidates that registered, he denounced some as jokers and the others as mentally ill.

I asked him then how a society could be democratic when the Guardian Council can veto anything that the elected president does, and he responded that the existence of the Guardian Council also reflects the state of society. He said that a president without the full powers of one represents a transition period in democracy. He also said that the only reason the revolution against the despotic Shah took an Islamic face is because the only venue that the Shah did not repress was the mosque.

On that note, I asked him about his thoughts on the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI). He called it a one-man show based out of Texas, that man being a narcissist at that. He also said that those who support the SMCCDI are supporters of the Shah and want to see his son return to the monarchy. He said that this is why he supports the Republic, because all of the “fake talk” about a referendum is just to have the monarchy reinstalled. To do this, they coordinate with the administration and the Pentagon in particular.

I then asked him about the accusations by the SMCCDI that the polling stations across the U.S. are illegal based on the fact that an Iranian government agent must supervise each polling station, and such agents are not allowed outside a certain radius of D.C. or the UN. He insisted that each person present was a local volunteer, though he did not elaborate on their connections to the Iranian government. In this case, they are either breaking Iranian law, or they are breaking U.S. law. Most likely, it is the latter, given that they have access to a “special” phone line directly to the Iranian Interior Ministry.

Right? Got that? Right.

Now comes his views of U.S. foreign policy, which can only be termed as delusional at best. He began by telling me to read 1984, and called American policy “Orwellian” since World War II. He said that President Bush uses religion to keep people stupid, and that the U.S. government must essentially do what the government in 1984 did — that is, find external enemies to justify their own power. He said that our government must keep us stupid and afraid so that we could have an eventual police state.

He said that now that the Cold War is over, and since we aren’t fighting the “Ohhhh evil commies! Scary!” anymore, we had to find a new enemy, that being Muslims and “terrorists.” He believes that the recent bombings in Khuzestan and Tehran were covert operations by U.S. forces. He said that our foreign policy was specifically designed so that it would only create more terrorists, so that we would have a perpetual reason to be at war and invade other countries.

On this note, we talked about the nuclear issue. He insisted that Iran is solely trying to develop nuclear power for its own use, and that the United States is trying to make Iran dependent on foreign sources for energy. He says that Iran does not want to develop a nuclear bomb, and insisted that Khamenei issued a fatwa last year declaring their development a sin. According to him, the fact that Iran’s Islamic government can declare nuclear bombs a sin and Southern Baptists cannot is “telling.”

At one point he seemed to make fun of the fact that I called myself a journalist because of my youth. He said that the media is the fourth pillar that props up and acts as the propaganda mouthpiece of the Bush admininstration, and that I’m a part of it. He also said that it is essentially our foreign policy that causes things like September 11 to happen.

That’s right, it is essentially our fault for September 11.

Apparently, the United States also orchestrated the coup that put Saddam Hussein into power specifically so he could attack Iran. Oh, and both he and Osama bin Laden are CIA agents. I’m not joking. He said that.

Conclusion: The interview lasted for an hour and a half, and it was one of the most bizarre conversations I have ever had. Mojtaba took me on first look as a very naive person, and since I just nodded to everything he said, he simply rambled on. He used the word “democracy” a lot to describe the developing situation in Iran, though every single accusation he made against American government establishing a police state seemed to, in reality, reflect that of Iran. This is very typical of a propagandist.

Perhaps one of the most important things we have to remember here is that this man is part of our higher education infrastructure. He has taught in American universities for several years, and is a visiting scholar here locally at the University of Arizona. This man has the ability to influence dozens, hundreds of young minds, something he himself tried to do to me. Instead, he has been revealed just for what he is. There is an old saying for those who visit the former Soviet Union, “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” This was, by far, the most useful advice I was able to apply to this interview.

Additional Reporting: Will Franklin visited the polling station in Houston and was almost arrested. Here are all of the videos here. Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit checked out the one in St. Louis and noted that it was underwhelming. The SMCCDI also reports on the shutdown of the only polling station in LA after a confrontation between activists and regime thugs.

Photos: You can click on any image for a full resolution shot.

Voting, this way!

The registration cards:

The group photos are as listed from left to right: Mojtaba Agha (monitor), Ata Ghasemi (secretary), David Najari (vice president). It is a picture of them behind the ballot boxes, holding up their ink-stained fingers. Mojtaba said he “liked the ink” so he didn’t wash it off.