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Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Iran Syria-Lebanon-Iran 20050711  

International-UN-NGOs
Behind the scenes of the Nobel Peace Prize
2023-10-08
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Text taken from the Live Journal post of Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin. Commentary by Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] Interesting details about the new “Nobel laureate”.

Intelligence services, drugs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Behind the scenes of the Nobel Peace Prize

In 2003, Nargiz Mohammadi joined the Center for Human Rights, founded in 2000 by Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. He holds the position Vice President of the Human Rights Defense Center (DHRC).

***

DHRC was established in Tehran in 2001.

Ebadi received the Nobel Prize and Mohammadi got a job with her.

The peculiarity is that Ebadi was an activist in the campaign to strengthen the legal status of women and this played a key role in the presidential elections in May 1997, which was won by reformist Mohammad Khatami and appointed Ali Shamkhani as Minister of Defense. Ebadi's human rights activities were aimed at demonstrating the cruelty of Khatami's conservative opponents in eliminating dissident intellectuals.

Ali Khamenei pointed to the enemies of Iran, others specifically to the Israeli intelligence services, and Ebadi to the liquidation team from the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS).

So Said Emami, adviser to the Minister of Intelligence, was arrested and, under strange circumstances, passed away, hiding almost all traces.

However, the story of the murder of Iranian-Kurdish dissidents in a Greek restaurant in Berlin (09/17/1992), the details of which were reported to German investigators by Abolghassem Mesbahi, a former Iranian intelligence officer who fled the country with the assistance of Emami, led to an arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, an influential minister intelligence from 1989 to 1997 under Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

So Khatami, having become the president of Iran (when Bill Clinton began his second presidential term, replacing Secretary of State Christopher with Madeleine Albright, a protégé of Zbigniew Brzezinski), immediately weakened the position of his predecessors. Emami was Fallahian's deputy at MOIS and became an advisor to his successor Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi.

The investigation into the “chain of murders” with the participation of Shirin Ebadi led not only to the liquidation of Emami, but also to the resignation of Dorri-Najafabadi.

Only then (in February 1999) did Khatami have his own intelligence minister, Ali Younesi, who later served as adviser to President Hassan Rouhani on political and security issues.

So, Shirin Ebadi is a very special human rights activist.

When it created its center in Tehran, Ahmadinejad was the mayor.

But what could he do against Khatami's will?

And so in 2003, Nargiz Mohammadi, born in Zanjan, got a job with Ebadi.
Perhaps then the game of Ahmadinejad or Khamenei began to introduce “their human rights activist” closer to the “alien” Ebadi (who has been living in exile in London since 2009, because she called for the cancellation of the election results in which Ahmadinejad was re-elected).

Or Mohammadi, like Ebadi, represents the Khatami/Shamkhani network.

This interpretation is also possible.

Once again: the flow of opium from Baluchistan goes by land from Iran through Armenia to Georgia, and then by sea to Odessa; the scheme strengthens the elites of southern Iran, but the influence of the Azerbaijani provinces in the West (West and East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan) decreases.

More recently, Ali Shamkhani was getting closer with the NKR and was in conflict with Azerbaijan.

The Nobel Committee, at the request of unnamed VIPs, confirmed that the influence of the Azerbaijani provinces has weakened and those who criticize the excesses of the regime are winning?

And then the multifaceted regime sent the advanced Ahmadinejad to Guatemala. First delayed due to security issues. And then he left with a beautiful woman without a hijab on the plane (maybe they were waiting for her?). Show that Azerbaijani provinces can respond brightly. Exactly in the same special field.

Almost simultaneously with Ahmadinejad's detention at the airport, some media in Colombia reported that former President Alvaro Uribe would stand trial and could receive 12 years in prison. Uribe, who has ties to Medellin and the local cartel, is on the opposite side of President Gustavo Petro's stance on drug policy splicing.

The author is transparently trying to hint that the Iranian special services continue to play Zubatovism with “special human rights activists” since the late 80s, using them as a tool to control the human rights agenda and internal squabbles. The version, of course, has only indirect confirmation, but it has a right to exist, although the very fact of working for another “Nobel laureate”, who was supervised by Iranian intelligence services, does not yet prove that the new “laureate” also worked for them.

Well, regarding drugs, the United States tried to separate Balochistan from Iranian territory as part of the 2007 “Greater Middle East” plan, which would allow them to control drug production in Balochistan, complementing other important drug countries that are under US control - Colombia , Afghanistan (until recently), Kosovo, etc. Baluchistan, if the Americans managed to destroy Iran, would be an excellent addition to this strategy of controlling the main flows of drug trafficking.Official Iran officially scolded the award of this prize, calling it an example of Western interventionism and its interference in the internal affairs of Iran.

More from RIA Novosti
Biography of Nargiz Mohammadi

Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi was born on April 21, 1972 in Zanjan (Iran).

She graduated from Imam Khomeini International University with a degree in physics. She worked as an engineer.

While at university, she co-founded an organization called the Enlightened Students Group and was arrested twice.

As a journalist, she wrote for various reformist magazines, including Payam-e Hajar. This publication was later banned. Mohammadi is also the author of political essays "Reforms, Strategy and Tactics" in Persian.

In 2003, Nargiz Mohammadi joined the Center for Human Rights, founded in 2000 by Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. He holds the position of Vice President of the Human Rights Center (DHRC).

In 2008, she was elected president of the executive committee of the National Peace Council of Iran, a coalition against war and for human rights.

Nargis Mohammadi was first arrested in 1998 for criticizing the Iranian government. Her most recent arrest occurred in November 2021, just a year after her October 2020 release . She was released on health grounds in February 2022 but was arrested again seven weeks later.

In total, Nargis Mohammadi was arrested 13 times, convicted five times and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

Nargiz Mohammadi has received many awards and honors for her human rights activities. Among them are the International Alexander Langer Prize ( 2009 ); Per Anger Prize - an international award from the Swedish government in the field of human rights ( 2011 ); Prize of the Italian Foundation "Galileo 2000" ( 2015 ); City of Paris Award from the Mayor of Paris and Reporters Without Borders (RSF, 2016 ); Human Rights Award from the German City of Weimar (2016); Andrei Sakharov Award from the American Physical Society ( 2018 ); Reporters Without Borders Award borders" ( 2022 ).

In 2023, she was awarded the UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize together with Nilufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi.

On October 6, 2023, Nargis Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for her struggle against the oppression of women in Iran and for promoting human rights and freedom for all."

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Former Iranian president Rafsanjani’s son freed after seven years in jail
2023-01-20
[IsraelTimes] Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani
... the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until he was eased out in 2011 He continues, for the moment, as Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council. In 2005 he ran for a third term as president, ultimately losing to rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was in Khamenei's graces back then. In 1980 Rafsanjani survived an assassination attempt, during which he was seriously injured. He has been described as a centrist and a pragmatic conservative without all that much reason. He is currently being eased out of any position of actual influence or power and may be dead by the end of 2012...
, 53, was convicted in 2015 of fraud, embezzlement and undermining national security, charges that he has previously denounced as ’politically motivated’.

A son of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been sprung after serving more than seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for fraud, Iranian media reported Wednesday.

Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, 53, left Tehran’s Evin Prison late Tuesday, his lawyer Vahid Abolmaali said, quoted by the ISNA news agency.

State prosecutors said his release was "conditional," ISNA reported.

Hashemi Rafsanjani was convicted of fraud, embezzlement and undermining national security in August 2015, charges he had previously denounced as "politically motivated."

He had served as a bigwig in Iran’s oil sector in the mid-2000s, a period when Norway’s Statoil and French energy company Total were suspected of paying bribes to obtain access to the Islamic Theocratic Republic’s hydrocarbon reserves.

In 2018, a Gay Paree criminal court found Total guilty of "corruption of a foreign public agent" for payments made to Hashemi Rafsanjani for help in securing rights to the huge South Pars offshore gas field which Iran
...The nation is noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence...
shares with Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
 in the Gulf.

In 2009, Hashemi Rafsanjani aroused the anger of conservatives by forming a "vote protection committee" for that year’s presidential election.

He actively supported reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose allegations of large-scale fraud in favor of populist incumbent Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad prompted mass protests.

Mehdi’s father, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, served as president from 1989 to 1997 and was regarded as a moderate who supported improving ties with the West.

Earlier this month, Rafsanjani’s daughter Faezeh Hashemi was sentenced to five years in prison for "collusion against the security of the country."

She was arrested in September and convicted of inciting Tehran residents to join protests over the death in jug of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.
Related:
Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani: 2015-03-16 Rafsanjani's son gets 15 year sentence
Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani: 2009-12-09 Probe urged into Hashemis corruption charges
Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani: 2004-04-22 Iran’s Islamic Economy Is Set Up to Benefit the Privileged Few
Related:
Evin Prison: 2023-01-05 Iran frees prominent actress who was jailed for backing protests
Evin Prison: 2022-11-14 Iran sends German-Iranian activist on medical leave back to prison
Evin Prison: 2022-10-24 Iran releases footage from blaze at notorious Evin prison, raising more questions
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran's senior cleric Ayatollah Shahroudi passes away
2018-12-25
[PRESSTV] Head of Iran’s Expediency Council, Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, has passed away at the age of 70 after months of suffering acute ill health.

The prominent religious and political figure succumbed to renal and intestinal malfunctions at Tehran's Khatam al-Anbiya Hospital on Monday.

During his lifetime, Ayatollah Shahroudi served in many other crucial positions in the Islamic Theocratic Republic.

He was born in 1948 in the Iraqi city of Najaf, which has hosted many Moslem scholars.

In Iraq, Ayatollah Shahroudi attended classes held by the late founder of the Islamic Theocratic Republic, Imam Khomeini.

He fought against the dictatorial rule of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and was locked away
You have the right to remain silent...
 and tortured by his forces.

Ayatollah Shahroudi traveled to Iran after the victory of the Islamic Revolution to serve as an intermediary between Imam Khomeini and Iraqi scholars and leaders.

He took the helm of the Expediency Council in 2017 to succeed late Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The Expediency Council is mainly responsible for arbitrating between the Iranian Parliament and the Guardian Council, which itself supervises the Parliament.

Ayatollah Shahroudi also served as the head of Iran’s Judiciary for 10 years. His attempts for speeding up due processes and establishing close contact with the ordinary people were among the achievements the late holy man was credited for.

Top Iranian cleric Shahroudi dies who oversaw 2,000 executions

[Jpost] Shahroudi, 70, was a close ally of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and had been seen by analysts as a possible successor to him.

Shahroudi, 70, was a close ally of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and had been seen by analysts as a possible successor to him.

He cut short a visit to Germany for treatment in January when activists referred him to German prosecutors, citing his record of passing death sentences which they said amounted to a crime against humanity.
So the real cause of death is complications due to moral indignation.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Rafsanjani dead alright
2017-01-09
More from the brief notice yesterday. You may commence ululating...
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died in hospital on Sunday after suffering a heart attack, the ISNA and Fars news agencies reported.

Rafsanjani, who was 82, was a pivotal figure in the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. He had been admitted to the Shohadaa Hospital in northern Tehran, one of his relatives, Hossein Marashi, was quoted as saying by the agencies.
Was it AIDS, sushi poisoning or a sucking chest wound?
Rafsanjani served as president twice between 1989 and 1997.

He was badly beaten in the 2005 presidential election by much more hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a conservative backlash. But rather than retreating from public view because of that humiliation, he remained in the limelight, emerging as a supposedly moderate counter-figure to the ultra-hardliners clustered around Ahmadinejad, under whom Iran's relations with the West plummeted.
He was NEVER a "moderate."
In recent years, his influence within state institutions had waned.

In 2013, his candidacy for the presidential election was rejected because of his advanced age. The next year, he delivered crucial support for the eventual winner, Hassan Rouhani, a supposed moderate with whom he has a warm rapport.

He held the chairmanship of Iran's main political arbitration body, the Expediency Council, since 1990, when he was appointed by the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Which means he was one of the major, if not the major, political figures in the collective dictatorship. And never a moderate.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
"Reform" candidates win all parliament seats for Tehran
2016-02-29
Allies of Iran's allegedly reformist President Hassan Rouhani have won a landslide victory in Tehran, in the first parliamentary vote since Iran signed a nuclear deal with world powers.
The BBC, like all other western papers, think Rouhani is more of a reformer than Ted Cruz...
With 90% of the votes counted, the pro-Rouhani List of Hope is set to take all 30 parliamentary seats in the capital. The leading conservative candidate Gholamali Haddad-Adel is in 31st place.

Millions voted on Friday to elect the 290-seat parliament as well as members of the Assembly of Experts. The 88-member assembly appoints Iran's Supreme Leader and might end up choosing a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 76 and has suffered ill-health.

Early results gave former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate conservative, and Mr Rouhani the most votes for the assembly, which is composed of mostly doddering elder and senior clerics.
Most of whom would be quite at home with North Korea's geriatric leaders...
This stunning election result will make a difference in Iran's engagement with the wider world.
In what way? More terrorism? A freer hand for Rouhani to fund Hamas and Hezbollah? More snookering of western newspapers?
President Rouhani's hand has been strengthened in parliament to help open his country to greater trade and investment. That will help him, and others in his reformist camp, to deepen the dialogue with the West, which began with negotiations on a landmark nuclear deal.
Yes, more trade, all the while completing their efforts to get nuclear weapons and ICBM delivery systems. A good deal for them...
The parliamentary result in Tehran is significant because lawmakers from the capital usually determine the political direction of the house, analysts say. However, reformists look to have done less well in constituencies outside the capital.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Early Results: Rouhani, Moderates Make Big Gains In Iran Polls
2016-02-28
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earned an emphatic vote of confidence and reformist partners secured surprise gains in parliament in early results from elections that could accelerate the Islamic Republic's emergence from years of isolation.

While gains by moderates and reformists in Friday's polls were most evident in the capital, Tehran, the sheer scale of the advances there suggests a legislature more friendly to the pragmatist Rouhani has emerged as a distinct possibility.

A loosening of control by the anti-Western hardliners who currently dominate the 290-seat parliament could strengthen his hand to open Iran further to foreign trade and investment following last year's breakthrough nuclear deal.

"The people showed their power once again and gave more credibility and strength to their elected government," Rouhani said, adding he would work with anyone who won election to build a future for the industrialized, oil-exporting country.

The polls were seen by analysts as a potential turning point for Iran, where nearly 60 percent of its 80 million population is under 30 and eager to engage with the world following the lifting of most sanctions.

Millions crowded polling stations on Friday to vote for parliament and the Assembly of Experts, which selects the country's highest authority, the supreme leader. Both bodies have been in the hands of hardliners for years.

Supporters of Rouhani, who promoted the nuclear deal, were pitted against hardliners close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who are wary of detente with Western countries.

ACUMEN

Rouhani and key ally and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were leading the race for the Assembly of Experts with most votes counted, and appeared to be sure of winning seats, early results released on Saturday showed.

Until now, the contest for this seat of clerical power was an unremarkable event, but not this time. Because of Khamenei’s health and age, 76, the new assembly members who serve eight-year terms are likely to choose his successor. The next leader could well be among those elected this week.

Rafsanjani is among the founders of the Islamic Republic and was its president from 1989-1997. Nearly always at the center of Iran's intricate webs of power, the arch-fixer is famous for his pragmatism and political acumen.

Two prominent hardliners were on course to be elected with lesser scores in the experts assembly race: Ahmad Jannati was in 11th place and the assembly's current chairman, Mohammad Yazdi, was 15th. Arch-conservative Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi appeared unlikely to win a seat, according to partial results.

The results were initially announced as final in an official statement. A later statement said the results were partial and a final tally would be announced in due course.

INFLUENCE

A Reuters tally, based on official results published so far, suggested the pro-Rouhani camp and allied independents were leading in the parliamentary vote. Some moderate conservatives, including current speaker Ali Larijani, support Rouhani.

A breakdown of the results had independents on 44, reformists on 79, and hardliners on 106, the tally showed. A number of seats will be decided in run-offs in late April because no candidate won the required 25 percent of votes cast. Eight of the initial winners were women.

Analyst say the large number of independents may be significant as they could cooperate across ideological lines with Rouhani's government.

Whatever the outcome, Iran's political system places much power in the hands of the conservative Islamic establishment including the Guardian Council, which vets all laws passed by parliament.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Khomeini Grandson Disqualified in Elections
2016-02-16
Seyyed Hassan Khomeini lost his appeal of the Guardian Council’s decision to bar him from running for a seat in the Assembly of Experts. A grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he is widely considered the heir apparent of the late revolutionary leader’s legacy. The young Khomeini’s long-anticipated entrance into politics could have important consequences. The 86-member Assembly of Experts, which will increase its membership to 88 this election, is the only constitutional body with the authority to appoint, supervise and dismiss the supreme leader. The group of clerics has historically served as a rubber stamp organization that has never seriously questioned the actions of Iran’s previous or current supreme leader. But the stakes are higher for the February 2016 election. The next assembly may be faced with the question of what to do should the 76-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pass away due to illness or old age.

Khomeini would likely have been popular with voters. He has spoken out against extremism and supported the nuclear deal, which was broadly welcomed by the Iranian public. At age 43, Khomeini is significantly younger than the mostly elderly members of the Assembly of Experts. The youth vote is increasingly important in Iran, where more than 60 percent of its 80 million people are under 30 years old. In addition to Khomeini’s revered pedigree, his family is connected to prominent reformists through marriage. His cousin, Zahra Eshraghi is married to former deputy speaker of parliament Reza Khatami, brother of former President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005). Khomeini also has the support of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who chairs the Expediency Council. In August 2015, Rafsanjani said it was Khomeini’s turn to come forward to “protect the revolution.”

Khomeini kept a relatively low profile until 2002, when a university professor was sentenced to death for insulting Islam. Professor Hashem Aghajari argued that each generation should be able to interpret Islam on its own. Khomeini reportedly protested the sentence with about 1,000 students in November 2002. Khomeini has spoken out against military interference in politics. He also criticized the disqualification of nearly 2,000 candidates from running for parliament in 2008. Most of them were reformists. Khomeini’s comments prompted a harsh reaction from conservatives, who accused him of corruption.

Khomeini reportedly supported reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in 2009. Khomeini reportedly went on a trip outside Iran before Ahmadinejad’s August 2009 inauguration ceremony. Conservative publications criticized Khomeini’s move and interpreted his absence as opposition to the election results. Khomeini also met with political prisoners Alireza Beheshti and Mohammadreza Jalaeipour shortly after their release in 2009, which also suggested sympathies with the reformist camp.

In June 2010, Khomeini spoke at a ceremony marking his grandfather’s death. But his speech was cut short by hardliners chanting “Death to Mousavi!” and shouting slogans in support of Iran’s current supreme leader. The incident may have been the first time a Khomeini family member had been insulted in a public venue.
Link


Caribbean-Latin America
Argentina Court Throws Out Case Against Kirchner Again
2015-04-22
[AnNahar] An Argentine prosecutor on Monday again rejected a case against President Cristina Kirchner for allegedly protecting Iranian officials accused of orchestrating a deadly 1994 bombing.

Prosecutors had been seeking to relaunch the case that was being brought by their late colleague Alberto Nisman, who died mysteriously on January 18 as he prepared to publicly accuse Kirchner of shielding high-ranking Iranians suspected of ordering the attack on a Buenos Aires Jewish center.

Investigators have not confirmed if his death was a suicide or a homicide, as his family has claimed.

The case set out by Nisman has been brought to several different courts.

Prosecutor Javier de Luca on Monday ruled that it was impossible to move the case forward since many of the matters referred to "are not crimes," according to a statement.

An appeal to the Supreme Court is the only possible remaining legal step, though one has not been filed.

The long-unsolved bombing at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association killed 85 people and wounded 300.

Nisman had accused Iran of ordering the attack via Hizbullah.

Four days before his death, he filed a report accusing Kirchner, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and other figures close to the government of protecting Iranian officials, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in exchange for oil and trade benefits.

Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment of a gunshot wound to the head on the eve of congressional hearings where he was due to present his allegations.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
What else is Iran hiding?
2015-03-31
By Ali Alfoneh and Reuel Marc Gerecht
Key bit:
[WashingtonPost] The unfinished North Korean-designed reactor that was destroyed by Israeli planes on Sept. 6, 2007, at Deir al-Zour in Syria was in all likelihood an Iranian project, perhaps one meant to serve as a backup site for Iran’s own nuclear plants. We draw this conclusion because of the timing and the close connection between the two regimes: Deir al-Zour was started around the time Iran’s nuclear facilities were disclosed by an Iranian opposition group in 2002, and the relationship between Shiite-ruled Syria and Shiite Iran has been exceptionally tight since Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000. We also know — because Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president and majordomo of the political clergy, proudly tells us in his multivolume autobiography — that sensitive Iranian-North Korean military cooperation began in 1989. Rafsanjani’s commentary leaves little doubt that the Iranian-North Korean nexus revolved around two items: ballistic missiles and nuclear-weapons technology.

In his memoirs, the bulk of which is composed of journal entries, Rafsanjani openly discusses Iran’s arms and missile procurement from North Korea. However, from 1989 forward, his entries on Pyongyang become more opaque — a change, we believe, indicating emerging nuclear cooperation. By 1991, Rafsanjani discusses “special and sensitive issues” related to North Korea in entries that are notably different from his candid commentary on tactical ballistic missiles. Rafsanjani mentions summoning Majid Abbaspour, who was the president’s technical adviser on “chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear industries,” into the discussions. Rafsanjani expresses his interest in importing a “special commodity” from the North Koreans in return for oil shipments to Pyongyang. He insists that Iran gain unspecified “technical know-how.”
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Hassan Rouhani has the momentum in Iran Prez Election
2013-06-14
Since 21 May, when the guardian council announced the eight approved presidential candidates – excluding two prominent figures, the former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a close ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the campaign had appeared to rouse little public interest.

According to a journalist in Tehran, that has changed in the capital. "You will not believe the election buzz in Tehran today. Everyone is talking about elections and who to vote for and everyone is advocating for [Hassan] Rouhani and trying to convince people to vote for him."

The campaign of the relatively moderate Rouhani, who served as chief nuclear negotiator under the reformist former president Mohammad Khatami, received a boost on Tuesday when Mohammad Reza Aref, Khatami's senior vice-president, bowed out of the race. Later in the day Rouhani received explicit endorsements from both Khatami and Rafsanjani.

Of the popular mood swing that followed, the Tehran journalist said, "I never saw this coming. Everyone was so without hope and talking about not ever voting again, and this morning things have changed 180 degrees. It's like someone put something in the water last night and this morning people are just different."
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran Arrests 7 Election Campaigners
2013-06-03
DUBAI -- Iranian authorities have arrested at least seven people who attended a campaign meeting for a reform-leaning presidential candidate, an exile-based Iranian opposition website reported Sunday. Kaleme.com says police made the arrests at a gathering to support candidate Hasan Rowhani in northern Tehran on Saturday.

It said the arrests were made after many participants chanted slogans calling for the release of Mir Hossein Mousavi, an opposition leader and candidate in Iran's disputed 2009 elections who has been under house arrest for more than two years.

Rowhani is one of eight candidates cleared by the Islamic Republic's constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, to run in this year's June 14 elections.

Most other approved candidates were hard-liners, while their most charismatic challengers were disqualified.
What a coincidence...
Meanwhile, a council of advisors to influential former reformist president Mohammad Khatami has urged Rowhani to unite with the other major reform-leaning candidate. The statement, carried on Khatami's personal website, expressed hope that Rowhani and Mohamed Reza Aref could form a "united front" to field a single nominee.

Aref's star has been rising since his performance in a Friday debate, restoring some energy to the movement after their main candidate, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was disqualified by the Guardian Council.
If you think Rafsanjani is a 'moderate'...
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran’s Bogus “Election” Process
2013-05-24
Iranian authorities on Tuesday announced the approval of eight candidates who will be allowed to compete in the June 14 presidential election. The Guardian Council, which vetted the candidates, made sure that Iran’s next president will be a pliable servant of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The regime hopes to repair its sagging popular legitimacy and avoid a rerun of the disastrous 2009 presidential election, which provoked widespread protests against vote-rigging when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was awarded a second term. This time the authorities eliminated all candidates even remotely connected to the opposition Green Movement and approved only 8 of the almost 700 declared contenders.

Among those eliminated was former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pillar of the 1979 revolution who had criticized the 2009 crackdown, and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a protégé of current President Ahmadinejad, who is barred from seeking a third term. Both candidates were considered threats to the power of hard-liners backed by Khamenei.

Six of the eight remaining presidential candidates are closely linked to the Supreme Leader. The frontrunner appears to be Saeed Jalili, a longtime adviser to Khamenei who now serves as Iran’s negotiator on the nuclear issue. Jalili is an uncompromising revolutionary who lost a leg in the Iran–Iraq war. A western diplomat noted that Jalili “specializes in monologue”—not dialogue.

Other prominent hard-line candidates include Tehran Mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, and former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai.

Two centrists were also allowed to run: Hassan Rowhani, an ally of Rafsanjani, and Mohammad Reza Aref, who served as vice president under former President Mohammad Khatami. Both of them will be sure to mute their criticism of the hard-line establishment candidates. After all, Mir Hossain Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, reformist candidates who protested the 2009 rigged elections, are still under house arrest.
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