Tag Archives: Tehran

Iranians celebrate Rohani’s win, ‘a victory for moderation’

June 16, 2013 1:46 am | Leave a Comment |

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In Tehran, thousands of jubilant Iranians hit the streets to celebrate their presidential election result. It was described as ‘a victory for moderation’ by the new President Hassan Rohani.

The result was a resounding triumph for cleric Rohani and his reform-minded supporters and an emphatic defeat of Iran’s conservative hardliners.

With six candidates in the running, Rohani won more than 50 percent of the vote.

One Tehran resident said he believed that the support of former Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, as well as the withdrawal of reformist Aref from the race, contributed to Rouhani’s decisive victory.

Rohani takes the helm of an economy battered by international sanctions, the result of Iran’s bitter dispute with the West over its nuclear programme.

On foreign policy, Rohani has already struck a very different tone to that of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rohani spoke of a new chance “in the international arena” for “those who truly respect democracy and cooperation”.

Matters of national security are the domain of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so are outside the hands of the president.

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Voting ends in Iran elections

June 14, 2013 7:43 pm | Leave a Comment |

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Voting has ended in Iran’s elections. The deadline was extended on four occasions during the day. The head of Tehran elections headquarters says he estimates 70 percent of eligible voters in Tehran have cast their ballot. Media outlets have suggested the figure is more like 75 percent.

The interior ministry has said results will start to be announced by state radio and television from two o’clock local time which is 23.30 Central European time.

The ministry said it does not confirm any other figures released by other sources.

One independent pollster IPos saying 64-year-old cleric Hassan Rohani, seen as a leading moderate leading the race with around 38 percent of the vote.

One source in the US has claimed the Interior Minister has told reporters that early results indicate Rohani is leading with Mohammad Ghalibaf second and Saeed Jalili third.

Candidates’ representatives have said in a joint statement that no one will claim victory before the announcement of the official results.

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Iran’s Qalibaf presidential hopeful a former general and police chief

June 14, 2013 4:26 pm | Leave a Comment |

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Presidential candidate Mohammad Qalibaf is predicted to score well in voting in Iran’s big cities. The current Mayor of Tehran has done a lot for the capital – its road systems, parks, public transport and improving communities on the outskirts. His popularity is high.

He ran for president in 2005, when he was just starting out in politics. He had just got out of military uniform, that he’d worn since he was 18, when he went to fight in Iran’s war against Iraq.

But it was the Mayor of Tehran at the time who won: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Qalibaf, who ran as an independent, came in fourth. He hopes now that he’s paid his dues in the voters’ eyes.

Qalibaf’s reputation then wasn’t good. He became a general quite young, which meant he was put in charge of the crackdown on student unrest in 1999. The year after that, the Supreme Leader appointed him chief of police, a post he held till 2004. He reformed the force on the one hand, while arresting intellectuals on the other.

When his bid for the presidency failed in 2005, he consoled himself by running Tehran instead, and Ahmadinejad criticised what he did, the friction between them regularly covered in the media. Recently, Qalibaf has courted both moderate conservatives and reformers.

He has based his campaign mostly on economic themes. He has repeatedly stressed his own modest origins, and promised the poor he would create jobs and bring down inflation. But he hasn’t ignored the middle class, either in cities or in rural areas.

He has stayed away from discussing the nuclear programme but has constantly criticised the Ahmadinejad administration’s foreign policy.

The 51-year-old has a Ph.D. in political geography and is also a former Islamic Republic Air Force commander.

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Khamenei leads Iranian voters to polls

June 14, 2013 6:26 am | Leave a Comment |

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Voting is well under way in Iran’s presidential election, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei casting his ballot in Tehran whilst telling the nation he “did not give a damn” about American suggestions the election was unfair.

Some 50 million voters have to choose from six candidates, all approved by the Guardian Council, and all with a similar conservative point of view.

Leading the hardliners will be Saeed Jalili, but all the men are
critics of the outgoing administration of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and have insisted they will bring change. Tehran’s outgoing Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf may do well, as he is seen as having improved life in the capital during his tenure.

Public enthusiasm for the vote appeared weak until the final hours of campaigning, when reformists, liberals and moderates threw their weight behind Hassan Rohani. This brought crowds into the streets, although not in the numbers seen in the 2009 election.

The most prominent moderate candidates from that vote, Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have been under house arrest since then.

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Iran presidential rivals attack nuclear negotiator Jalili in TV debate

June 7, 2013 11:05 pm | Leave a Comment |

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Iran’s final TV debate between next weekend’s presidential election candidates has seen the hardline nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili attacked by rivals over his record.

The fears of world powers that Tehran may be trying to build atomic bombs have seen sanctions intensified.

The former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati told Jalili:

“You haven’t advanced even one step. Sanctions have been increasing every day, and the pressure is mounting on the people. The art of diplomacy is that you ease the sanctions and stop them from increasing while preserving the nuclear rights.”

“The West are buying time so that the sanctions hit the economy more seriously. Do you call this resistance?” said former Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohsen Rezaei.

Former negotiator Hasan Rowhani questioned Iran’s nuclear priorities, calling for more focus on the economy. Nuclear technology was fine, he said, “but only when people can make ends meet, when factories and industry run smoothly”.

And there was still more criticism of Jalili from Tehran’s mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. “We need a shift in the managerial approach, and one part of this change relates to foreign policy. Diplomacy has not brought about the acceptable results we expected,” he said.

Jalili, thought to be close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, defended his stance saying the previous “soft” strategy on the nuclear issue had failed.

Although he is seen as a frontrunner he is evidently facing stiff competition.

The vote a week on Sunday is the first since President Ahmadinejad’s controversial re-election four years ago. Reformists claimed his victory was rigged and protests were repressed.

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Take two: Lavrov, Kerry working to broker redo of Syria peace conference

May 27, 2013 8:49 am | Leave a Comment |

So far, neither Russia nor the US has specified an exact date for the conference. After their previous meeting, Lavrov and Kerry announced that the conference could take place by the end of May, but that date was later pushed back to at least mid-June, according to diplomatic sources.The proposed conference would be a followup to an international meeting in Geneva last year that drafted a peace plan for Syria.Lavrov and Kerry will meet on Monday in France for the sixth time since the beginning of this year, and the Syrian crisis will once again be one of the main topics on the agenda. The main challenges are to determine the list of participants, and to ensure that representatives of the Syrian opposition join the talks.Washington and Moscow have agreed that Russia will negotiate with Damascus, Tehran and Beijing, while the US will discuss the issue with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, RIA Novosti reported.Lavrov has pointed to a second issue with the talks: Ensuring that key regional players, especially Syria’s neighbors, are present in order to broker an effective and lasting solution to the crisis.Damascus indicated that it is prepared to participate. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said on Sunday that the government always believed that “dialogue among the Syrian people is the solution to this crisis,” adding that “nobody and no force in the world that can make decisions on behalf of the Syrian people, as they alone have the right to do that.”Some Syrian opposition organizations expressed willingness to send representatives to the talks. However, various Syrian rebel factions gathered for two separate meetings in Istanbul and Madrid last week and failed to agree to take part in the negotiations without preconditions. … Read More

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Iran nuclear policy forecast not to change after June presidential elections

April 25, 2013 3:40 pm | Leave a Comment |

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reviewed his last annual military parade as head of state of Iran. That role will go to someone else on 8 June.

These occasions have, for him, always been about threatening the enemy United States and Israel. This last time, a week ago, he likened Israel’s talk about striking Iranian nuclear sites to “the harmless barking of a dog”.

A few days later, the US Defence Secretary was visiting the region, partly with a sample case, so to speak, of weapons to sell to allies, notably Israel, but also to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This was Chuck Hagel’s way of sending Tehran a very clear signal.

Neither side’s rhetoric has evolved much. Nor have talks involving the International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog. Another round of those is scheduled for mid-May. Diplomatic negotiations with the major western powers are also still in the doldrums.

And, far from putting its nuclear programme to sleep, as these powers are urging, Tehran has stirred it up. Two new uranium mines were brought online earlier this month, to supply enrichment centrifuges.

Iran’s ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog agency has not offered specifics on how Iran could move to a cooperative dialogue with the West, which has demanded concrete Iranian action to allay international concern that it is trying to develop the means to produce nuclear weapons.

The ambassador said on Tuesday that Iran will pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, exclusively for peaceful purposes and that “…hostile policies of Western countries, including sanctions-and-talks policies, are doomed to failure.”

Europe and the US have toughened oil and banking sanctions on the Islamic Republic, adding to its currency problems. Prices on imported basic foods have been affected the most, as Inflation has risen above 30 percent. But that has not made Tehran back down.

Ahmadinejad cannot run again; he has served his maximum two terms. Whoever wins will inherit an economic and diplomatic ruin. But experts say that will not much change Iran’s policy on its nuclear programme.

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