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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
 The Guardian: How much power will the new president have?
Mr Ahmadinejad is subordinate to supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Under the Islamic republic's system of velayat-e faqih (leadership of the supreme jurist), Mr Khamenei, with the constitutional watchdog, the guardian council, has final say in crucial fields, such as foreign policy, the armed forces, intelligence, the judiciary, and police. |
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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
 The Guardian: Ali Shah is the disrespectful nickname Iranians have in recent years bestowed on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme religious leader of the Islamic republic. It captures what they see as the monarchial aspirations and the clear limitations of the man who took over the function of "guiding" the republic from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 18 years ago and who now, after an election that has put his man in as president, controls all the major institutions of the Iranian state. |
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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
 The Guardian - Leader Article: Conservatives and moderates in the Iranian political system, the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, has said, are like the wings of a bird. Both must beat if the bird is to stay aloft. It is an image with which many outside observers of Iranian politics, who have for years seen the two tendencies as cooperating and sometimes colluding with one another, would concur. But it does not hold at all today, after the victory in the presidential elections of, a victory which means that the hardliners now have power in every branch of Iran's government. |
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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
 Washington Times - Editorial: Rarely has more misinformation been written or stated on one subject than is the case with Friday's runoff election in Iran. |
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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
 The Times - Leading Article: Elections in Iran are windows through which the regime’s internal struggles can be glimpsed; they are not open democratic contests. The vote is given to all; but the choice offered to voters is much more rigidly circumscribed than outsiders tend to realise. Would-be candidates must first pass muster with the powerful Council of Guardians; and in this year’s presidential elections, it barred some 1,000 hopefuls, including all women with the temerity to apply, from running. |
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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
 AFP: After eight years of often conciliatory diplomacy and an presidential election where resuming ties with the United States was floated as a real possibility, Mahmood Ahmadinejad's victory has abruptly slammed the door on any immediate chance of making up with Washington, analysts say. |
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Saturday, 25 June 2005 |
 AFP: Having spent a quarter of a century at the nexus of Iran's theocracy, a bitter Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faces an uncertain future after losing his greatest, and possibly last, political gamble. A former two-term president, parliament speaker and confidant of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, it is hard to imagine the Islamic republic without one of Iran's most recognisable figures. |
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Saturday, 25 June 2005 |
 New York Times: Even before Iranians went to the polls in their presidential election, the Bush administration declared the process rigged, saying that no matter what the outcome, Iran would be truly ruled by men who "spread terror across the world." Yet almost no one in Washington expected the landslide victory of the conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran's next president. |
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Thursday, 23 June 2005 |
 Boston Globe - GLOBE EDITORIAL: Iran's presidential elections, which are scheduled to culminate in a decisive second round of voting tomorrow, are being denounced by some of the candidates themselves as a travesty of electoral politics. The manipulations attributed to hardline forces in the military and the clerical establishment reflect a determined drive by those archconservatives to monopolize all power centers in Iran. |
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Thursday, 23 June 2005 |
 Boston Globe: As Iran prepares to hold a runoff to its presidential elections, much of the international media are focused on the two remaining candidates, the pragmatist
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his archconservative rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, the façade of elections conceals the remarkable changes that Iran has undergone in the past few years. |
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Thursday, 23 June 2005 |
 Baltimore Sun: Three years ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a relative political unknown in Iran. But now, the 49-year-old hard-liner - a former commander in Iran's universally feared clerical army, the Pasdaran, and more recently the mayor of Tehran - has become one of the Islamic Republic's most recognizable faces. |
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Thursday, 23 June 2005 |
 Washington Post - Editorial: It has become a truism among those who promote and observe the development of new democracies that elections alone do not make democracy. Without other characteristics of democracy -- free press, free speech, the right to form political parties -- elections can even be counterproductive, since they give spurious legitimacy to "winners." |
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Wednesday, 22 June 2005 |
 Washington Times: The world has been shocked, shocked to learn that Iran's presidential elections, of which the first round took place on June 17, were a sham. Did anyone really, seriously believe they would be anything but? Real power in Iran resides with the Mullahs, who did not hesitate to use that power to ensure that whoever is the next president of Iran, it
will not be someone who attempts to challenge them.
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Wednesday, 22 June 2005 |
 Rocky Mountain News - Opinion: While blasting President Bush for questioning the honesty of last Friday's elections, Iran's ruling clerics were busily trying to fix the outcome of this Friday's runoff. On the eve of last Friday's ballot, Bush issued a statement saying, accurately, that power in Iran "is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy." |
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Wednesday, 22 June 2005 |
 New York Times - Editorial: What a surprise: in the race for the mostly meaningless position of president of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the conservative hard-line mayor of Tehran, came in second place, and will be in a runoff on Friday with Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former two-term president. Mehdi Karroubi, the former speaker of Parliament who was the closest thing to a reformist in Iranian politics, accused hard-liners of rigging the election. |
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Tuesday, 21 June 2005 |
 The Wall Street Journal - GLOBAL VIEW: Whoever wins an electoral runoff and becomes Iran's new president, the news won't be good, either for Iranians or Americans and Europeans disturbed about the regime's quest for nuclear weaponry. The country's ruling mullahs blatantly displayed their muscle, and vote-rigging skills, in last Friday's initial vote. That suggests that
they are no longer interested in creating even the illusion of
political moderation. |
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Tuesday, 21 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Jun. 21 - A 49-year-old former commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards catapulted to super-politician status by the unexpected results of Friday’s presidential elections in Iran found himself at the centre of a growing controversy over allegations
of vote fraud, his own shadowy past, and speculations over a crafty scheme by the top leaders of the clerical regime to lure voters to the polling booths. |
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Monday, 20 June 2005 |
 The Wall Street Journal - Review & Outlook: The most astonishing aspect of Friday's presidential vote in Iran is not that the elections will go into a second round but that Tehran managed to convince so many in the West that this is a real demonstration of democracy. All power is held by Supreme Leader Ali Khameni, his Council of Guardians and the small clique of military officers and businessmen around him. |
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Saturday, 18 June 2005 |
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Boston Globe - GLOBE EDITORIAL: The presidential election staged yesterday in Iran embodies a paradox. Because the candidates were selected by an unelected Guardians Council of a dozen theocrats beholden to the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- after the council had eliminated more than a thousand other would-be candidates -- the election is devoid of genuine democratic content. |
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Friday, 17 June 2005 |
 New York Times - Editorial: Today's presidential election in Iran is an affront to true democracy, just as the past record of the front-running contender, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is an affront to true moderation. As President Bush rightly noted, the voting was effectively rigged in advance by the council of unelected clerics that decided who would and who wouldn't be allowed to run. |
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Friday, 17 June 2005 |
 UPI: President Bush's denouncing of Iran's electoral system a day before the Islamic Republic went to the polls to choose a new president was seen by Iranian opposition groups as a sign of encouragement and support. Vowing that "America would support those seeking freedom," Bush called the Islamic Republic's electoral system "undemocratic." |
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Thursday, 16 June 2005 |
 New York Times: If the polls and pundits can be believed, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will move a step closer to regaining the presidency of Iran in tomorrow's national elections.
And while the Iranian people will view the results with a mixture of resignation and boredom (turnout is unlikely to top 30 percent), Mr. Rafsanjani's rehabilitation will be welcomed in Paris, London, Berlin and, most unfortunately, Washington. |
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Thursday, 16 June 2005 |
 American Foreign Policy Council: Tomorrow, when Iranians go to the polls to elect a new president, all eyes will be on the Islamic Republic. The outcome of Iran’s presidential race will undoubtedly be important for the legitimacy of the country’s current clerical regime, now embroiled in a thorny diplomatic dispute with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program. But it will be even more decisive for the Iranian people, whose urge for democracy is poised to take a giant step backward.
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Thursday, 16 June 2005 |
 Washington Times: While Iran continues to play an ongoing nuclear ping-pong match with the European Union, risking the nuclear stability of the Middle East and a possible showdown with the West, it is also eagerly preparing for its upcoming elections Friday. Carrying the flag of Islamic democracy, the "rule of law," progress and change, Iran is attempting to compete in two worlds simultaneously as it hopes to emerge victorious in both. |
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Thursday, 16 June 2005 |
 Washington Times - Editorial: As Iranian voters get ready to go to the polls tomorrow in the first round of presidential elections, the avalanche of breathless media hype has already begun. We've been treated to plenty of pontificating over the supposed "liberals" (the enlightened ones who tell us what we want to hear about women's rights and political freedom). |
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Thursday, 16 June 2005 |
 The Globe and Mail: Better that voters stay home than endorse the country's democratic facade, say freedom monitors: Iranian student leader Akbar Atri recently declared that "reform is dead" in his country. His pessimism is understandable. After eight years of futile attempts at democratic reform by the once popular President Mohammad Khatami, Iranians face a political moment as dark as any encountered during their
country's 26 years of theocratic dictatorship.
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Wednesday, 15 June 2005 |
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The Wall Street Journal: As Iranians go to the polls on Friday to elect a successor to Mohammad Khatami, the high hopes for reform that brought him to power in 1997 have given way to fear that the hardliners will use this election to consolidate their power and reach an accommodation with the West. Eight years ago, Iranians hoped the election of a reformist would lead to political change, respect for human rights, and the rule of law. |
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Wednesday, 15 June 2005 |
 U.S. Alliance for Democratic Iran: Iran will hold a presidential election on Friday, June 17.
There are some fundamental facts about the nature and purpose of elections held under theocratic regime in Iran. They help to better understand the current political scene there.
These are the top ten facts about the June 17 election, compiled by the US Alliance for Democratic Iran, for your information. |
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Wednesday, 15 June 2005 |
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Front-Page Magazine: Amid intense calls by Iran’s democratic opposition for the boycott of the upcoming June 17 presidential elections and Tehran’s worried rush to showcase the sham as a sign of its popular legitimacy, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is reported to be the front-runner. |
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Wednesday, 15 June 2005 |
 Daily Telegraph: This week's Iranian presidential election might have new features such as internet campaigning and focus groups, but there is little new about the most likely winner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In an eight-strong field that includes hard-liners and reformers, civilians and former officers, Mr Rafsanjani, a two-term president whose career stretches back three decades, is expected to prevail. |
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