Iran Focus

UPI: This week's tightly controlled presidential election in Iran marks an opportunity for U.S. officials to make an evidence-based assessment of the Tehran regime and its most worrisome opposition.

Bloomberg: The best way to understand Iran’s elections this week is to think of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the regime’s supreme investment manager.

The Telegraph: To many voters casting a ballot in this week's Iranian presidential elections, there will be little real difference between the boxes marked "Saeed Jalili" and "Mohamed Qalibaf".

The Diplomat: The Iranian regime is building up to the June presidential elections, which will shape an extremely significant period in that regime's future. The incoming president will rule over a period in which disputes over Iran's nuclear program will have to come to a head.

UPI: A curious spectacle unfolded May 29 in the European Parliament, as the U.N. Envoy in Iraq Ambassador Martin Kobler testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Wall Street Journal: An eight-year investigation by an Argentine prosecutor into the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires—where 85 people died—has led to a very different conclusion about Iran's global agenda.

Bloomberg: Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must be pleased at how, within a week, the conversation has shifted from his regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons to an international peace conference on Syria’s civil war.

New York Times: Iran’s state television broadcast a live program in which passers-by were placed in a chair and asked what they would do if they were president. Suddenly, a young woman grabbed the microphone and said. “Those who really sit on this chair are only there to fill their own pockets.”