Who had motives to cheat in the Iranian elections?

Was it Ahmadinejad or his supporters?
Simple answer: No

Esam Al-Amin had “A Hard Look at the Numbers”, and he concluded that not only the western sponsored survey done by an institute connected to ABC news and the BBC, but also most inner-Iranian pre-election polls predicted that President Ahmadinejad would win the elections by a large margin.
The Ahmadinejad government and those who support it, would have known that. They would have known that there was no reason for cheating even if they had any opportunity to rig the votes on a vast scale.
Cheating is always risky, you could get caught. A certain winner and his supporters would never risk cheating, it would risk their legitimacy, a legitimacy they would gain easily by not cheating.

The opposition, however, would have known that, too.  Even most of their polls showed that they would probably not win.
But besides being a bad sports and bad losers,the opposition hated the government for other reasons as well.

Ahmadinejad is a true believer, not a diplomat. He believes that an Islamic society must show higher ethics than a non-Islamic society. He conceives that those higher ethics are honesty and justice. He has stated so in many of his public speeches.

“Honesty” for him means non-corruption, and ” justice” means improvements of the life-conditions of the poor.
When you follow the discussions in the Iranian Parliament, as they are presented in the English speaking Iranian media like “Iran Daily”, you see, that Ahmadinejad had during his last term been in a constant battle to defend his economic programs which benefited the lower sectors of the Iranian society and limited the privileges of the rich. When oil-prizes went down the Ahmadinejad-government cut subsidies for producers to counter inflation and smuggling. The money saved, was then turned into direct social and economic programs benefiting the poor. Some economic stimulus programs were for instance cheap loans for families and small upstart companies in rural areas.

When the Iranian constitution mandated the privatization of publicly owned companies his government made sure that at least part of this public property would not end up in the hands of those already rich, but be distributed in the form of “justice-shares” widely among the lower sectors of the Iranian population. (B.t.w. it was in 2004 under the predecessor government of the so-called “reformers”, when the Iranian constitution was amended to allow the privatization of 80% of public property)
The privileged among the Iranians didn´t like Ahmadinejad´s countering their attempt to get hold of all the countries´wealth. So, just like the privileged classes of Venezuela, part of the Iranian business class sabotaged the economy by stashing food and other products to force higher prizes.
To further discredit the government´s policies, the opposition also blamed all the economic problems caused by the international sanctions on the Ahmadinejad government mishandling of the economy .
(Billions of Iranian assets are frozen abroad and trade is made unnecessary difficult by restrictions. Iran is on the same list as Iceland was put on, after the banking crash. The Icelandic economy was brought to it´s knees within 3 weeks, and with that the Icelandic government was ready to surrender the country´s rights and sovereignty. The Iranian economy can´t be that bad, if  after years of boycott, the country is still independent.)
Statistics actually show, that the economy of the last years, although only growing slowly, is still growing more than under the preceding governments. In recent years the economy also was diversifying more from oil-products than it did in earlier times.
It´s true however, youth unemployment is indeed high. But even there we´ve got to take into consideration, that now is also the time, where the Iranian baby-boomer generation, born during the Iran-Iraq-war, is coming of age and enters the labor market, which is only adjusting slowly. Birth rates have fallen considerably in the last decade though,so youth-unemployment will most likely go down pretty soon.

Ahmadinejad has accused the opposition and the rich business class to obstruct the government´s attempts for more social justice. And the rich didn´t like it.
But when  he publicly accused them of wide-spread corruption and declared, that he could back up those claims, he most likely became enemy number one for them.
Sure, the opposition made it widely known, that they would sue Ahmadinejad in court for defamation. But he seemed quite confident that he could prove his case in open court with documented evidence. If this is true, a lot of rich people would loose a lot of money. And some might even go to jail.

The Iranian secular and religious opposition, supported by the Iranian financial elite, obviously has quite a few motives to cheat, when it cannot possibly win the popular vote.

But the Iranian election procedure, with its paper ballots and election monitors from all parties, doesn´t lend itself easily to large scale vote-rigging (a few election-officials can possibly be bought to mis-count votes or for ballot-box stuffing, but not all of them).
However, proclaiming victory before the votes are counted and before even first preliminary numbers are being released, is a fail-safe method to convince the opposition´s supporters of their victory and fullfilment of all hopes. When the real numbers come out, they feel cheated, become angry and make a nice picture on western TV-sets of the “voice of the Iranian people” being repressed.
The opposition will now find willing accomplices in western media outlets. Our financial and “intellectuell” elites hate Ahmadinejad with a vengance, and would love to instigate trouble in Iran, no matter who rules there. In this way a  legitimate victory of a re-elected government has now become somehow questionable. If this government subsequently tries to go after any financial corruption among the supporters of the opposition, they will cry “foul” and call it “political prosecution”.

Cui bono?

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