If you are looking at the news, you may note that there is rioting all over Iran now, especially in Tehran, Shiraz and some other places. Mirhoseyn Mousavi was the guy handpicked by US imperialism and International Zionism to overthrow Ahmadinejad, who has gotten the ire of the West, since his regime and Syria are the last two Arab or Islamic regimes who are standing up to Zionism. For an overview of why the steadfast Iranian regime is so hated by the West and Israel, see my overview here.
Juan Cole lays out the arguments for why the election must have been stolen, including the excellent showing of Ahmadinejad in Iranian Azerbaijan, where Mousavi hails.
However, there was a poll done shortly before the election by a Western firm, apparently an anti-Iranian regime firm at that (its name is Terror Free Tomorrow, so I assume they are pro-West and anti-Iranian regime). The poll (poll link here) showed Ahmadinejad winning by 2.4-1 over Mousavi. In Iranian Azerbaijan, he was winning by 2-1. The poll actually overpredicted Ahmadinejad’s support, yet the poll results line up quite well with the approximately 2-1 victory for Ahmadinejad.
The West has been lying to you about this election. This was just another Western “color revolution” like the ones in Georgia and Ukraine. This one was colored green instead of rose or orange.
Even Al Jazeera, keep in mind, is run by Sunnis from the Gulf who absolutely despise the Shia. This is why Al Jazeera showed us nothing but nonstop Mousavi Green in the run-up to the election. All of the news reports from the West, along with Arab TV, focused on relatively wealthy and middle class areas of Iran.
They completely ignored the poor and the countryside. No one went to South Tehran, where almost everyone supports Ahmadinejad. However, the evidence seems to be that the poor poured out overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad.
The characters you see rioting in the streets of Tehran are young people. They are also largely bourgeois. The rich and middle classes hate Ahmadinejad, because Iran has suffered economic problems under his rule. However, most of these problems are due to Western sanctions.
The Western media has failed to point out that Ahmadinejad is a populist. Indeed, he is a bit of a socialist. He has significantly improved the lives of poor and rural Iranians, and he has also significantly reduced the dramatic income inequality in Iran. For this, the bourgeois types hate him, but the man in the street loves him.
The election seems to have been fair. What the young hate is clerical rule. That’s understandable, but the problem is that the cleric-haters are probably 1/3 of the country and the cleric-supporters are about 2/3 of the country.
The Iranian people are much more conservative than the photos of the chic young upper middle classes of Tehran would have you believe. A recent poll showed that only 15% of Iranians want the regime to further liberalize social mores in Iran. Much larger numbers thought the clerical social policing was fine, and big numbers even wanted an even more conservative society enforced.