History Only Rewards Resolve

Watching the events unfolding in Iran and the cautiously crafted US position, triggers drawing parallels with George H Bush administration's position during The 1991 uprisings in Iraq.

Authorities in Iran seems to have managed to crush vigorous protests over the disputed presidential election, after a threshold reached over the weekend.

Since then less and less Iranians are taking the streets of Tehran, which yesterday was draping in silence. The tragic death of Neda Sultani of a Basij sniper bullet to her heart, came to resemble the brutality with which the Revolutionary Guard and pro-regime militias are willing to apply.

In addition foreign media has been banned, Internet IPs cracked, websites hacked and, most importantly, the leadership of the opposition has been almost entirely disconnected from its base.

The Iranian government showed resolve in setting up a special court to try detained protesters, carrying out new arrests and launching a campaign to publicly vilify those calling for a new vote.

In the mean time, the best the media found to celebrate in US position is the "dramatically toughened (...) criticism of Iran's crackdown on election protesters", President Barack Obama's "emotional tribute to slain student Neda Soltan" and declaring the U.S. "appalled and outraged" by the violence.

"No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness", Obama truly said. However, what's enough for the World -being a witness- is hardly enough for the US.

People look at Washington as the beacon of hope, change, and the vast land of "yes we can"...

Back in 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Washington was shamefully the witness on millions of Iraqis who perished when there rise in the face of Saddam Hussein was met with massive and indiscriminate force by the Iraqi regime.

America's role in igniting the revolts in southern and northern Iraq was crystal clear.

People were standing up in the face of a humiliatingly defeated dictator. Prior to the war President of the United States George H. W. Bush announced on the Voice of America radio saying:

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations

However, when the Iraqis revolted all what Washington had to offer was a non-intervention approach.

Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney referred to the events in Iraq as "internal Iraqi politics" Similarly, then U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said "we don't think that outside powers should be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."

President Bush, later, spelled the following out:

I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Obama's supporters attribute part of what is taking place in Iran to his Cairo speech. Obama is a man who believes in the power of words. And it is the words of the prominent Persian poet Omar Khayyam that I hope he reads.

Khayyam says:

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.

Hence, Obama who yesterday said, "we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out", might really get a perspective by looking back.

It is true that journalists are on a "24-hour news cycle," while the president of the United States is "not" as Obama himself noted yesterday. Hence, this is a historic moment and requires a historic approach and Obama, better than anyone else, acknowledges that on the right side of history there are just very few places for "witnesses".

U.S. contacted Iran's ayatollah before election

In an exclusive repot The Washington Times reported that US contacted Iran'e Supreme Leader before the election.

Prior to this month's disputed presidential election in Iran, the Obama administration sent a letter to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for an improvement in relations, according to interviews and the leader himself.

The paper says that Ali Khamenei onfirmed the letter toward the end of a lengthy sermon last week according to a translation by Mideastwire.com.

"On the one hand, they [the Obama administration] write a letter to us to express their respect for the Islamic Republic and for re-establishment of ties, and on the other hand they make these remarks. Which one of these remarks are we supposed to believe? Inside the country, their agents were activated. Vandalism started. Sabotaging and setting fires on the streets started. Some shops were looted. They wanted to create chaos. Public security was violated. The violators are not the public or the supporters of the candidates. They are the ill-wishers, mercenaries and agents of the Western intelligence services and the Zionists."

An Iranian news site, Ayandehnews.com, first reported on the U.S. letter on Tuesday.

It is Freedom Stupid!!

The Guardian Council, Iran's top legislative body, rejected poll annulment demand, saying that no "major polling irregularities" has been found.

Revolutionary Guards, for the first time since the beginning of the crisis, are explicitly waving with "revolutionary and strict measures" to crush the opposition if it pursued its protests.

However, protesters are set to continue their display of defiance, supported by presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi and other entities of the opposition.

Why?

When the gap between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is allegedly as vast as 11 million votes, and still people are willing to sacrifice their lives in the streets in protest of the results then we are in front of two conclusions.

Either the election (and post election investigation) was simply rigged and the people are standing up for a system lying to them; or the numbers are right and people are simply fed up with the whole system that allows only for a tightly controlled election.

In both cases it is freedom stupid.

Neda Sultani, the 27 years old woman, whom the world watched her dying from a Basij sniper bullet to her heart, and whose bloodied face has come to symbolise the face of the post-Khomeini revolution, didn't sacrifice her life for a "re-count" or "annulment" of election results, but rather for freedom.

Caspian Makan, a 37-year-old photojournalist in Tehran, who identifies himself as as the boyfriend of Neda offered an Associated Press reporter an insight at her demands:

She only ever said that she wanted one thing, she wanted democracy and freedom for the people of Iran.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a leading Iranian film maker, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian to the request of Mousavi, telling the world what is happening in Iran.

He may have never discussed with Makan the reasons why people like Neda are taking the streets, and surely never discussed her death with him. And Neda might have had no chance to read her fellow citizen's piece that was published in the last 24 hours of her short life, however the came to the same conclusion.

Makhmalbaf wrote:

That they (protesters) continue to gather shows they want something more than an election. They want freedom, and if they are not granted it we will be faced with another revolution.

Hugh Sykes report to the BBC quotes people in the streets calling namely for freedom. One man said:

We want the freedom to talk, and the freedom to think. We want freedom for our spirit, ok? That's not very much to ask

Another woman said:

The hijab is not really the problem. The real problem is that men and women are human beings - they are the same, and they should have equal freedoms.

This later speaks for a thick layer of the multiple layers of those taking the streets in Iran. "women's rights movement (...) has slowly gained strength in Iran over the past several years", observes Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post.
Neda's "martyrdom" comes as an unintended vindication of this struggle, that played a role in the electoral campaigns.
Applebaum sheds some light on that:

It is no accident that the two main challengers to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian presidential campaign promised to repeal some of the laws that discriminate against women, and it is no accident that the leading challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, used his wife, a political scientist and former university chancellor, in his campaign appearances and posters.
The Iranian clerics know that women pose a profound threat to their authority, too: As the activist Ladan Boroumand has written, the regime would not bother to brutally repress dissidents unless it feared them deeply. Nobody would have murdered a peaceful, unarmed young woman in blue jeans -- unless her mere presence on the street presented a dire threat.

If Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear, as George Orwell once said, then it is exactly this, what Iranians are experiencing in the streets of Tehran and other big cities; they said it loudly and freely: "Marg bar dictator" (death to the dictator).

Montazeri: Resisting people’s demand is religiously prohibited

More splintering among Iran’s clerics is reported by Reuters. The most senior opposition ayatollah, Hossein Ali Montazeri, distanced himself further from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared the June 12 elections valid and demanded a halt to public protests in a hard-line sermon on Friday. In a statement posted Sunday on his Web site, Ayatollah Montazeri said:

“Resisting people’s demand is religiously prohibited … I am calling for three days of national mourning from Wednesday.”

Last week the ayatollah described the election results as something that “no wise person in their right mind can believe.”

Below you could find an amateur video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday shows a mass of protesters marching and shouting what the video blogger translates as: “Have no fear, we are all together,” and then “Down with dictator.” The video is said to be of a demonstration on Sunday on Shirazi Street in Tehran.

Makhmalbaf speaks for Mousavi. And Iran

The office of Mir Hossein Mousavi has asked Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an Iranian filmmaker and spokesman for the Mousavi campaign, to tell the world what is happening in Iran.

He concludes that the Iranian people in the streest want something more than an election. They want freedom, and if they are not granted it we will be faced with another revolution.

I have been given the ­responsibility of telling the world what is happening in Iran. The office of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who the Iranian people truly want as their leader, has asked me to do so. They have asked me to tell how Mousavi's headquarters was wrecked by plainclothes police officers. To tell how the commanders of the revolutionary guard ordered him to stay silent. To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly.

The people in the streets don't want a recount of last week's vote. They want it annulled. This is a crucial moment in our history. Since the 1979 revolution Iran has had 80% dictatorship and 20% democracy. We have dictatorship because one person is in charge, the supreme leader – first Khomeini, now Khamenei. He controls the army and the clergy, the justice system and the media, as well as our oil money.

There are some examples of democracy – reformers elected to parliament, and the very fact that a person like Mousavi could stand for election. But, since the day of the election, this ­element of democracy has vanished. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won, and that whoever opposed this will be suppressed – a position he affirmed speaking today in Tehran. People wanted to have demonstrations within the law, but the authorities would not let them. This is the first time we have seen millions on the streets without the permission of the supreme leader.

Now they are gathering to mourn those who have died. The people of Iran have a culture that elevates martyrdom. In the period running up to the revolution, when people were killed at demonstrations, others would gather again in the days following the death. This cycle carried on for six months, and culminated in the revolution. Today they are gathering in Tehran for those who were shot on Tuesday, and if there are more killings, this will continue.

So why do the Iranian people not want Ahmadinejad as their leader? Because he is nothing but a loudspeaker for Khamenei. Under Ahmadinejad, economic problems have grown worse, despite $280bn of oil revenue. Social and literary freedom is much more restricted than under his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. The world views us as a terrorist nation on the lookout for war. When Khatami was president of Iran, Bush was president of the US. Now the Americans have Obama and we have our version of Bush. We need an Obama who can find solutions for Iran's problems. Although power would remain in the hands of Khamenei, a president like Mousavi could weaken the supreme leader.

Some suggest the protests will fade because nobody is leading them. All those close to Mousavi have been arrested, and his contact with the outside world has been restricted. People rely on word of mouth, because their mobile phones and the internet have been closed down. That they continue to gather shows they want something more than an election. They want freedom, and if they are not granted it we will be faced with another revolution.

Mousavi Ready For Martyrdom

In his latest sign of defiance Mir-Hossein Mousavi says he is ready for martyrdom:

He dramatically raised the stakes in the standoff with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after publishing a letter to the country's highest electoral authority in which he cited examples of electoral fraud to support his "undeniable right" to call for a re-run of the election.

Mr Mousavi made his defiant call during a speech delivered in southwest Tehran, according to an ally, who telephoned a western news agency shortly afterwards to report: "Mousavi said he was ready for martyrdom and that he would continue his path."

A witness told Reuters that Mr Mousavi had called for a national strike if he was arrested.

It was an unprecedented act in defiance of Ayatollah Khamenei, who has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of the June 12 election and on Friday ordered an end to protests by demonstrators who say Mousavi was the winner.

It came as a few thousand protesters defied threats of bloodshed from Iran's rulers and attempted to march through central Tehran - only to be beaten back by riot police. Heavily armed police and militia flooded the streets and used tear gas and batons to attack them.

Only an estimated 3,000 dared to show themselves, far fewer than the hundreds of thousands who filled the streets during the last few weeks. The two main protest leaders, Mr Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who were beaten by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the disputed poll nine days ago, had both called off their official rallies.

Earlier in the day, the pair had been offered a minor concession when the Guardian Council, which supervises elections, promised to recount 10 per cent of the votes to check for election fraud - a suggestion that had previously been dismissed by protesters as a cynical ploy to buy time.

In their first real show of force since massive street rallies erupted in central Tehran last week, the authorities deployed thousands of riot police and plainclothes Basij militiamen in the city centre. Helicopters buzzed menacingly overhead.

As protesters began to gather near the university campus, chanting "death to the dictatorship", the police set upon them with baton charges, water canons and tear gas.

"Lots of guards on motorbikes closed in on us and beat us brutally," one protester said. "As we were running away the basiji (militia) were waiting in side alleys with batons, but people opened their doors to us. Iran has become Palestine."

Another report described gunfire at a rally and at least one casualty. Separately, there were reports that a man had died in a bomb attack at the Ayatollah Khomeini shrine a few miles south of the city - likely to have been launched by one of the ethnic separatist groups that have carried out periodic attacks in Iran.

Yesterday's violence and Mr Mousavi's continued defiance came after a week of the biggest street protests seen in Iran for 30 years - and divisions between hardliners and reformists that mean the country may never be the same again.

Cordons of riot police, dressed in their military green uniforms with white stripes down the trouser legs and wearing heavy black helmets, stood in lines three deep along Enqelab (revolution) and Azadi (freedom) streets.

Together, the two roads form a long east-west highway bisecting the centre of the city and running past the main gates of Tehran University, a scene of turmoil throughout Iran's modern history.

It was along this street that millions of people surged to accompany Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when he returned from exile to usher in Islamic rule in 1979.

According to a regular participant in last week's demonstrations, the protesters yesterday hoped to form large groups in side streets before bursting onto the main highway, thwarting attempts to disperse them.

Unconfirmed video footage posted online showed groups of people charging through the streets as teargas and smoke from a burning car swirled around them. Riot police and men with sticks could be seen in the background.

Khamenei Put On The Ropes

Never, in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has the Supreme Leader been so resiliently challenged.

Just after yesterday's Ali Kamenei strongly-worded warning that street protests must stop, Iran's defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi displayed defiance:

We expect that you (the Guardian Council) accept the will of the nation by nullifying the election and holding a re-runanything other than the nullification of the election results by the Guardian Council would be a grave mistake.

In the mean time supporters of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi are planning more mass rallies today, openly challenging a ban by The Interior Ministry issued late on Friday.

Last night, opposition supporters in Tehran kept on their rooftop chants, a protest tool reminiscent to that used three decades ago during the anti-shah protests.

In a dispatch from Tehran, Borzou Daragahi offers a glimpse at that:

It starts with two young female voices, quietly at first, almost gently piercing the quiet of the night.

"Allahu akbar!" they cry out a few minutes after 10 p.m. "God is great!"

Then another voice joins in from the other side of the block. This one belongs to an older woman. "God is great!" she responds in a rasp that suggests decades of hardship and swallowed rage. "Allahu akbar!"

After a minute or two, a male voice joins in. It's as if he needed a little time to put on his slippers and clamber to the rooftop.

"Allaaaaahu akbar," he moans.

Within a few minutes a choir of voices erupts.

"Ya, Hossein!" a man with a sturdy baritone announces across the lush trees. "O Hossein!"

"Mir-Hossein!" a group of women shrieks back, every ounce of energy straining through petite voices.

"Marg bar dictator!" a voice erupts. "Death to the dictator!" And then more voices, a cacophony of anonymous anger. "Marg bar dictator. Marg bar dictator."

(...) The gesture harks back 30 years to the months before the Islamic Revolution. It was a way to reassure others that they weren't alone in feeling wronged and enraged.

Today it motivates people to attend the peaceful marches that have become the largest acts of civil disobedience in three decades.

Khamenei, dashed hopes of compromise yesterday, and many fear -now that he is put on the ropes- of bloody times to come. He simply told 14 million Iranians to "drop dead".

Civil War Looms In Iran

In his first public remarks after days of demonstrations, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , ruled out any rigging in the disputed presidential elections, saying there was a "definitive victory".

The supreme Ayatollah, however, hinted that the authorities might move in to crush the opposition-led demonstrations.
He preemptively held political leaders responsible for any bloody violence if these demonstrations continued.

I am urging them (defeated candidates) to end street protests, otherwise they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos. The result of the election comes out of the ballot boxes, not on the street and the political leaders who engaged in extremist behaviour were responsible for any post-election bloodshed.

Now, in light of the fact that foreign press has been banned from covering the developments in Iran it is widely feared that the regime in Tehran might be planning to bloodily put an end to the riots.

In a previous post I noted that Iran "is now in a state of war with itself".
In fact, Khamenei today underscored the notion that a kind of intra-system civil war is taking place by calling on the opposition to "pursue its complaints within the confines of the cleric-led ruling system".

Upheaval in Iran

Here is my latest comment on the events in Iran. In this piece I argue that,

what is at stake is nothing less than the legitimacy of the regime itself, particularly the role and status of the unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

However, I note that,

the door is still open for behind the scenes face-saving compromises.

Iran First

One of the most interesting slogans being used in Tehran's demonstrations:

نه قزه، نه لبنان، جانم فداي ايران
Neh Gaza, Neh Lubnan, Janom Feday Iran

In English this means:

No Gaza, No Lebanon, We Sacrifice Our Souls For Iran

I would call this the March 14 effect which raised the slogan Lebanon First.

They killed my bro coz he asked: Where is my vote, reads the banner held by the lady in the picture below.


The image below is being distributed on the blogs, e-mail lists and being held in some demonstrations and it resembles the Obama effect.

On Iran's Election

In his comment below titled Iran's Election Charade, Alireza Jafarzadeh offers a crispy and thoughtful look into the fog of this election.

Jafarzadeh is the author of "The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

His revelation of the nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002 triggered IAEA inspections of Iranian sites.

Today Iranians are expected to go to the polls to choose the next president in a highly orchestrated and vetted event courtesy of the ruling clerics. Four candidates have been ordained by the Guardian Council- the body of clerical elders which blesses all manners of critical decisions in the country- to run for this election: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Moussavi, Mohsen Rezai, and Mehdi Karoubi.
The first is the loud-mouthed current president, who was previously an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) commander and a teer-a-khalas (coup de grâce) specialist. The second was Tehran’s prime minister during the tumultuous war years of the 80's, under the administration of the "pragmatic" ("we only need one atomic bomb to destroy Israel") Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - he clearly does not subscribe to or understand Mutually Assured Destruction. The third is a founding member and the former chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who is on the run from the Interpol for complicity in the 1994 Argentinean Jewish community center bombing. The last, and certainly the least, is the lone certified cleric, a former speaker of the Majlis (parliament) who was an early and rabid supporter of Khomeini's call for the head of the British novelist Salman Rushdie.

Further forensics may help to clear the political fog. Much is known about the current president Ahmadinejad, so we dispense with (most) of the gore. Ahmadinejad, by his own admission, was part of the quintet of the Central Committee of the Office of the Unity which led and operationally oversaw the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He was the special operations officer in the 6th special corps of IRGC’s Qods Force, responsible for sabotage and cross-border missions. In his current hat, he oversees his government's expanding drive to perfect the nuclear fuel cycle and acquire the ultimate weapon.

Mir Hossein Moussavi is the current reincarnation of the moderate political animal in Iran. He was a founding member of the Islamic Republic Party- think of it as the mullahs' Third Reich. Among honors on his resume, he lists: 144 extraterritorial assassinations during the premiership, the massacre of nearly 30,000 political prisoners on the eve of the signing of the 1988 UN Iran-Iraq cease-fire accord, and the 1983 embassy and marine barrack bombings in Beirut.

Mohsen Rezai ranks high in the pantheon of terror. He commanded the IRGC during the disastrous war with Iraq, with ultimate responsibility for sending tens of thousands of under-aged adults to their death in the battle fronts as human mine sweepers, many of whom were shrouded in army-issued blankets to prevent their body parts from splattering. Rezai played a decisive role in coordinating and directing the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, for which he was implicated by an Argentine court and for whom, in 2007, Interpol issued an arrest warrant.

Mehdi Karoubi is the least consequential. Nevertheless, he occupies a special place among the regime hierarchy. For, he is a permanent member of the Expediency Council, chaired by former president, Rafsanjani.

So, where are we now? A bit of chronology brings us home. When faced with the hostage takings by the mullahs in the 80's, the world blinked. The Iranian regime was rewarded crucially with time; time to suppress dissent at home, and to spread its gospel of hate and warmongering in the Middle East and around the globe. When faced with its drive to build a nuclear bomb in the 90's and 00's, the West decided chiefly that it must "engage" the mullahs in dialogue. We were bombarded with group acronyms: EU-3, then EU 3+2 (referring to the big EU countries, plus China and Russia), or P5 + 1 (that is the permanent five + Germany). "Freeze for dialogue" (a pre-condition for suspending nuclear enrichment in exchange for negotiation), "freeze-for-freeze" (freezing enrichment for freezing sanctions) became mantra for the regime's calculated strategy of freezing time. It is time which it wants, and which the world has so little of.

Clearly, the mullahs are not suckered. “Bigger sticks and bigger carrots” work if (only and only if) the other side is receptive to an orderly and rational chain of events: faced with a looming threat, it responds by accepting the offer of peace. The Iranian mullahs have distinguished themselves in at least one crucially important fashion: when offered a big carrot, they counter by requiring an even bigger carrot, and then an even bigger carrot. Their rational is clear- at least to some; time is purchased and attention is deflected at the expense of a world and a Middle East in desperate need of peace and crisis resolution.

Among its many faces, the current election charade is emblematic of a constant in the regime tactics. With a strict electoral vetting process, in which "too" anything distasteful to its strategy and ambition is rejected, the Iranian regime prefers very much that the West becomes preoccupied with the absurdity of the June election process, not minding that western nations fret ad nauseam about the winners and losers of this election, while at the end, and at last, it has bought yet more time. More time to perfect how it makes the bomb and more time to repress its citizens and those of other nations.

Quick Thoughts On Lebanon's Elections

- March 14 reaffirmed a crystal clear majority, putting an end to the myth that the past 2005 majority was a virtual one. Needless to say that Hezbollah chiefNasrallah Nasrallah admitted recently that even in 2005 his party didn't abide by the quatro alliance (Amal, Hezbollah, Almustaqbal, Walid Jumblat) and his base voted for the candidates of Michel Aoun's FPM.

- Aoun lost the Christian mandate.
a In 2005 he won a landslide victory in Keserwan (Maronites King Maker district) leading his opponents by more than 11000 votes, (Jbeil is not counted here) while the numbers of yesterday's race revealed a tight race and granted Aoun the narrowest and most contentious victory. A little more than 1000 votes decided who is the winner, indicating the mood shift among the Christians from 2005.
b Zahle (Nicknamed The Capital Of Catholicism) displayed a 100% shift from March 8 to March 14.
c In Maten, Aoun lost 2 seats to March 14, while the rest of the numbers revealed a neck to neck race, indicating yet another major shift in the Christian vote. While the Armenian vote played the decisive role, March 14 was leading the Maronite votes.. (Exact Numbers to be revealed shortly)
going to March 14, and a very close race in Baabda ()
d In Baabda, Aoun secured the whole seats with the help of the turnout of more than 60% of the Shiite vote.

The Above indicates that Aoun could barely claim the representation of 30% of the Christians, compared to the proclaimed 70% of the 2005 election. It is another myth brought to an end.

- With the turnout, in some Christian districts, reaching 70%, and March 14 winning 55% of the parliament the following could be concluded:
a A multi factional majority supports the political platform of March 14
b A multi factional majority rejects the current status of Hezbollah's weapons.
c A multi factional majority dismisses integrating Lebanon in the Syro-Iranian axis, hence admitting that Lebanon endangered.
d A multi factional majority said that Hezbollah's project only speaks for "Hezbollah's Nation" and not for a diverse slice of the Lebanese.

Bottom line, Aoun ows whatever he won to Shiite and Armenian votes...

Second to Aoun, comes Speaker of The House Nabih Berri as a looser.

Berri lost the Shiite seat in West Beqaa, his party's only seat out of the southern districts. Even the seat he won in Beirut-2 could barely be counted. It is rather a grant from Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, withdrew its candidate, MP Ameen Sherri, for Berri's candidate Hani Koubaisi, in a bid to reach a compromise between Berri and Aoun in their Jezzine dispute, which in the end didn't materialise. Berri lost Jezzine for Michel Aoun.

Not only Berri's block shrunk by three members, it is now less diverse in terms of district and factional representation. It is limited to the Southern districts and holds only one Christian (MichelMusa) and one Druze (Anwar Khalil). Accordingly, Berri is in a weak position to negotiate his re-election as Speaker of the House. It is not like he is not going to be re-elected -so many variables interfere here besides the electoral results- but March 14 enjoys a vantage point to attach some conditions to his re-election.

Third in line is President Michell Suleiman. His closest candidates, Nathem Alkoury (Jbeil), Mansour Albonne (Kisrwan) and Moni Gharious (Maten), fell short of winning their races.

However, Suleiman enjoys a huge common ground with March 14. His inaugural speech is very close to March 14's platform, and the later could easily boost the president's position by adopting this speech as a platform for the coming government.