Source: Charlie Rose
With both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi declaring victory in the first few hours into the election on Friday, the incumbent's future remains uncertain, even with the endorsement of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Karim Sadjadpour describes the elections as a referendum against Ahmadinejad and the larger political implications for the movement in the support of Mousavi:
"This is very similar to the U.S. presidential election in 2004 between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Even people who were passionately supporting Mousavi, their support was much more passionately against Ahmadinejad than it was for Mousavi. They [Mousavi] have run a remarkable campaign in the sense that they've taken this man of 67 years old, not particularly well-spoken, not particularly charismatic, and they made a phenomenol movement out of it, this green movement. I think that the mood has really shifted in the last week or so. Many people believed in the past that because Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader and Iran's most powerful man, had basically unambigously endorsed Ahmadinejad, that the election would be a foregone conclusion. Mousavi has picked up tremendous steam in the last week or two and I think that if the results come out and they are very skewed in favor of Ahmadinejad, there is going to be major allegations of fraud."