An analysis of candidates for Iranian presidential election on 14 June 2013
First published by Gateway House, on 13 JUNE 2013
A shorter version published by Gateway House
http://www.gatewayhouse.in/why-the-world-should-take-the-iran-elections-seriously/
Iran’s 11th presidential election will be held on 14 June, and if no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes the second round of the election will be held on 21st June between the two candidates with the highest number of votes. The next president will take over from Iran’s controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 3rd August 2013.
There were originally eight candidates running in the race, but two of them have withdrawn. So the race is between Saeed Jalili, the secretary of the Supreme National Defence Council and chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, a hardliner; Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and current advisor to the Supreme Leader, a conservative; Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards Commander and the current mayor of Tehran, a hardliner; Mohsen Rezaei, a former supreme commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and current secretary of the Expediency Council, a moderate conservative; Mohammad Gharazi, a former minister and governor of Khuzestan during the Iran-Iraq war, a hardliner and an independent candidate; and Hassan Rohani, former secretary of the Supreme National Defence Council, a moderate-centrist. Rohani is the only cleric among the candidates. With the exception of Velayati, who was foreign minister for 16 years, most of it during the war, all other candidates fought in the war, and three of them held high positions in the Revolutionary Guards Corps. Jalili lost a leg in the war and has an artificial leg.
Four years ago, when President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was running for a second term against the reformist candidates, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the world’s attention was focused on Iran. Hundreds of foreign journalists rushed to Tehran, and the Iranian election received more attention than any other election except the previous US election that resulted in the victory of President Barack Obama. This showed Iran’s importance in regional and world affairs, and the common desire of both Iranians and many people across the world for the victory of more moderate candidates and the end of the divisive and populist rule by President Ahmadinejad. The result of that election, when Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, proved very controversial. While the supporters of the reformist Green Movement poured into the streets in their millions, demanding “Where is my vote?”, the conservatives argued that it had been a failed attempt at a “velvet revolution”, supported by the West.[1]
The unprecedented demonstrations posed the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since the revolution in 1978-79, and some pundits have argued that they also served as a model for subsequent demonstrations in several Arab countries that gave rise to the so-called Arab Spring. The protests were brutally suppressed, resulting in many deaths and injuries, and thousands of arrests. The two leaders of the Green Movement have been under house arrest ever since. With the suppression of the Green Movement, many people in the West came to the conclusion that the reformist movement had died with it. However, this assumption could not have been further from the truth.
As a result of the experiences of four years ago, there has been much less interest both at home and abroad in the current election that will be held on 14 June. Many Western analysts have dismissed the election, arguing that it would result in the victory of a rightwing candidate handpicked by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However, the election campaigns during the past few weeks have proved those assumptions wrong. Although we have not seen the same boisterous campaign rallies as in 2009, the three live television debates that produced heated exchanges between the candidates have galvanised the public and have produced a rare glimpse into the profound differences among the leading figures in the Iranian government. Consequently, the outcome of the election is wide open, and the reformists, or at least the centrists, have a good chance of victory.
The world should also take these elections seriously, because Iran is still a pivotal state in the Middle East and its conflict with the West over its nuclear program could either drag the world into another disastrous war or, if managed wisely by a reformist government and by the West, it could usher in a new era in Iran’s relations with the outside world and could even have a major bearing on many current crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, and above all in Syria and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Even the Iranians who live abroad and who are opposed to the Islamic Republic should take the election seriously, because although the Iranian elections are not fully democratic and transparent, nevertheless, Iran’s fate will be – or should be – decided at home, and not through foreign intervention. Whether the next Iranian president is another reformist like former President Mohammad Khatami or a hardliner such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would make a big difference in Iranian domestic and foreign policies.
Iran’s Flawed Democracy
Although Iran has all the trappings of democracy – universal vote by men and women, an elected parliament, an elected president (although women and members of religious minorities are excluded), political parties, etc. – Iran’s theocratic system is far from democratic. The Iranian constitution has given enormous powers to Iran’s “Supreme Leader”, who is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the moment. He is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he appoints the head of the judiciary, he can dismiss the parliament, he has to confirm the president and above all, he directly appoints six “jurists” in the Guardian Council, the body that approves the qualifications of both the presidential and parliamentary candidates. The other six members of the Guardian Council are lawyers selected by the Judiciary, whose head is again appointed by Ayatollah Khamenei. Although according to the constitution, the job of the Guardian Council is to supervise the elections, under Ayatollah Khamenei, it has also taken on the role of approving the qualifications of the candidates, which gives it veto power over the selection of the candidates.
As the person who also appoints the Friday prayer leaders in all the important cities, as well as being directly in charge of the paramilitary Basij forces that enforce “Islamic morality”, and the Quds Brigade that is in charge of foreign operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, Ayatollah Khamenei controls practically all the leading powers and organizations of the state, in addition to his spiritual position as the alleged representative of the Hidden Imam. As a result, his powers far exceed those of the former Shah of Iran.
Under Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader’s Office (Beyt-e Rahbari) has become far more organised and more powerful than Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s relatively modest establishment. Ayatollah Khamenei has set up parallel organisations to virtually all governmental ministries, and his advisors, particularly in defence, security, intelligence, foreign affairs and domestic issues, are much more powerful than the ministers appointed by the president. Indeed, he has frequently forced the president to reverse his decisions over some key government ministers and even his vice president. Ayatollah Khamenei has the final word over all major national policies, including Iran’s nuclear program. So, it is clear that in the forthcoming election, the voters are not choosing the head of state or the ultimate decision-maker, but the chief executive who has to balance his power with the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards Corps
In the past, Ayatollah Khamenei tried to remain above the day-to-day politics and act as a final arbiter between various factions. However, his clear support for Ahmadinejad’s reelection in 2009, even before the results of the election were known, has lost him the support of a large segment of the population, especially the reformists. Nevertheless, despite all these shortcomings, in all previous elections, there have been some candidates from major Iranian political factions in the presidential election, and both in 1997 and again in 2005, the outcome of Iranian elections was quite unexpected and unpredictable, and the forthcoming election may well prove just as unexpected.
The Erosion of Ayatollah Khamenei’s Power and Prestige
The recent election campaign has shown that despite his enormous powers, Ayatollah Khamenei has lost a great deal of his prestige and influence. Shortly before the election, in an important speech, he called on the heads of the government, the judiciary and the legislature to work together and not to give the impression of disunity. He even said that those who gave rise to disunity in the country under the present sensitive circumstances were guilty of treason. Nevertheless, shortly after that speech, the simmering rivalries between the heads of the three powers of the state came into the open in an unprecedented way.
Despite his frequent warnings to the Majles not to impeach government ministers during the last few remaining months in office, on 3 February 2013, the Majles decided to impeach the Labour Minister. In a speech in support of his minister, Ahmadinejad played a tape secretly recorded of a conversation between the notorious Revolutionary Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, who had been found responsible for the deaths of at least three anti-government protestors in a Tehran prison run by him, and Fazel Larijani, the brother of the Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani and the Head of the Judiciary Sadeq Larijani. In that conversation, Fazel Larijani is heard asking for a bribe in return for ensuring political support for Mortazavi both in the Majles and in the judiciary. The statement threw the session into chaos, also scuttling any chance of Ali Larijani, one of the early contenders for the presidency, from running in the presidential election. Subsequently, both the Majles Speaker and the Head of the Judiciary strongly attacked Ahmadinejad, promising retribution in the future.[2]
Disunity Among the Hardliners
The Iranian political scene on the eve of the election can be divided into four main groups: The right-wing conservatives (who call themselves principlists), the Government Circle, the Reformists and the Centrists. The principlists who are strict followers of the Islamic system and above all its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are divided into several subgroups. Chief among them are: The Principlist Faction and the Islamic Revolution Steadfastness Front. Each of those groups follows a particular ayatollah and supports a different religious organisation.
The Principlist Faction has been the main party in power during the past eight years. Their spiritual leader is Ayatollah Mahdavi-Kani, the chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is theoretically in charge of appointing or dismissing the Supreme Leader. The three prominent members of this faction, the former Majles Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, whose daughter is married to Ayatollah Khamenei’s influential son Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, the former Foreign Minister and special advisor to the Supreme Leader, and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the current mayor of Tehran, formed the so-called 2+1 Coalition and vowed that they would choose a single candidate among themselves to compete in the election. However, as the registration of the candidates started, they failed to keep their promise, and three of them declared their candidacy, although Haddad-Adel, who consistently received the lowest figures in the opinion polls out of all eight candidates, withdrew from the race on 11 June. Ali Akbar Velayati and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf are still running in the race, and one of them might go into the second round.
The Islamic Revolution Steadfastness Front is the other major principlist group, which takes its lead from the extreme right-wing cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. This faction put forward some candidates, including the former Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who fell out with President Ahmadinejad and former Health Minister Kamran Baqeri-Lankarani, but none of them was approved by the Guardian Council. The members of this faction believe that the Islamic Republic is not Islamic enough and should move closer to the implementation of the Shari’a. They advocate much stricter observance of Islamic laws on dress and morality and stress the need for resistance against the West. They could be termed the Iranian Taliban.
The Government Circle is made up of the supporters of President Ahmadinejad. Although the principlists had engineered Ahmadinejad’s victory in the 2005 and 2009 elections, and also despite the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei put his full weight behind Ahmadinejad after the 2009 election, the two of them soon fell out. The first disagreement arose over Ahmadinejad’s appointment of Esfandiar Rahim Masha’i, his long-term friend and his son’s father-in-law, as his first vice president. Ayatollah Khamenei, in a letter to Ahmadinejad, ordered him to dismiss Masha’i, an order that he ignored until it was made public, and then he immediately appointed him as his Chief of Staff.
A group of principlists had criticised Masha’i over some of his unorthodox views. For instance, in a speech, he said that the time of Islamism was over and he advocated “Iranian Islam”, which, according to him, is the most perfect form of Islam. Like Ahmadinejad, he is a believer in the imminent return of the Hidden Imam, a concept that would undercut the authority of the clerics who rule in the name of the Hidden Imam. Ahmadinejad and Masha’i used messianic language to mobilise support for their radical ideology and revitalise public fervour. Ahmadinejad’s provocative comments about Israel and the Holocaust also followed the same agenda. However, their tactic backfired and resulted in their total alienation from the ruling establishment.
During his time as the head of the Tourism Organisation, Masha’i became the object of a great deal of controversy. In the last days of 2006, various Iranian news agencies, including the hard-line Fars News Agency, reported that Masha’i had been present at a cultural ceremony in Turkey in December 2005 where women had performed a traditional dance. Conservative interpretations of Islam prohibit dancing by women. In 2008, Masha’i hosted a ceremony in Tehran in which several women played tambourines while another carried the Koran to a podium to recite verses from the Muslim holy book. Hard-liners viewed the festive mood as disrespectful to the Koran.[3] Masha’i faced even harsher criticism following his remarks about the Israeli people. Speaking at a conference on tourism in Tehran, he said: “No nation in the world is our enemy. Today, Iran is friends with the people of America and Israel and this is an honour.”[4]
Ahmadinejad’s opponents began to call Masha’i and his supporters “the Deviant Movement”, guilty of un-Islamic activities. On the last day of registration, accompanied by Ahmadinejad, Masha’i registered his candidacy, but the Guardian Council disqualified him. The snubbing of Ahmadinejad’s candidate shows that the Supreme Leader is determined to prevent him and his supporters from playing any significant role in the future. Although Khamenei has had a number of disagreements with former presidents, none of them has caused him so much grief as Ahmadinejad has done, because he and his supporters have challenged the very basis of the power of the ayatollah and the ideology of the Islamic Republic.
Ahmadinejad’s populist approach and slogans of bringing the oil money to people’s tables and adopting a strong stance against the West also began to lose favour with the public. His uncompromising stance on the nuclear issue resulted in the Iranian file being sent to the Security Council and many multilateral and unilateral sanctions being imposed on Iran. While his economic policy was initially quite popular with generous subsidies to poorer classes, his mismanagement of the economy, combined with crippling sanctions, resulted in massive unemployment and high inflation. His disagreements with the hardliners and especially with Ayatollah Khamenei sealed his fate. Consequently, his expulsion from power seems to be complete and final.
The Reformist Movement was born with the victory of President Mohammad Khatami in the 1997 election and his re-election in 2001. Although remaining faithful to the Islamic revolution and working within the constitution of the Islamic Republic, the reformists put forward a completely fresh interpretation of Islam and the Islamic revolution. President Khatami stressed the need to come to terms with the modern world and to interpret Islamic teachings in such a way that is compatible with the realities of the time. He put forward the idea of the Dialogue of Civilisations and stretched a hand of friendship towards the West. He spoke eloquently about civil society, the rights of the citizens, the equality of men and women, the rule of law, the freedom of expression and respect for the private domain of individuals. These ideas attracted the support of a large number of young and educated Iranians, and he won nearly 70 per cent of the votes against the establishment candidate Ayatollah Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri.
In the 2005 presidential election, the reformists had three main candidates who together received the majority of the votes. However, when former President Ayatollah Rafsanjani competed against Ahmadinejad in the second round, the younger candidate won, and he started a campaign of vilification against the reformists. Many reformist publications were banned, and a large number of reformist figures were jailed.
The Centrist Movement: After the 2009 election, the defeated candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were demonised as “the Seditionists” who wished to bring about a revolution against the Islamic Republic. Although many reformists were hoping that former President Khatami would be a candidate in this election, nevertheless, as a result of savage attacks on him in the right-wing media, it was clear that the Guardian Council would reject his qualifications. Therefore, Khatami and the reformists pressed Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani to run. When the latter registered his candidacy during the last few minutes of the time allocated for registration, there was an unexpected wave of support and enthusiasm for him. Many thought that he could reverse the setbacks suffered by the centrists and the reformers in the 2009 election, and many opinion polls showed that he would win an outright victory in the first round.
The repetition of the 2009 scenario terrified Khamenei and the hardliners, and quite unexpectedly, the Guardian Council rejected his qualifications. By preventing Hashemi from running, Khamenei has shown how frightened he is of dissent and of having a rival. Hashemi-Rafsanjani has been active since before the Islamic Revolution. He was closer to Khomeini than even Khamenei, and Khomeini appointed him as his representative in the Supreme Defence Council during the Iran-Iraq war. He was the one who persuaded Khomeini to accept the Security Council resolution to end the war. He served two terms as the speaker of the Majles and two terms as president. For many years, he has served as the chairman of the Expediency Council that arbitrates disputes between the Majles and the Guardian Council. Up until just a couple of years ago, he was the chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is theoretically in charge of selecting or dismissing the Supreme Leader.
Above all, he was the person who helped Khamenei to be chosen as the Supreme Leader after Khomeini’s death by saying that he had heard from Khomeini that Khamenei would make a good leader, something that nobody else had heard. Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s age (he is 78) was said to have been one reason for his disqualification, but Khamenei is only five years younger than Hashemi. When Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran and led the revolution, he was exactly the same age as Hashemi is now. Ahmad Jannati, the secretary of the Guardian Council who disqualified Hashemi, is 87, and Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani, who is the current chairman of the Assembly of Experts, is 82. So if age is to be a bar against holding high office, then all these gentlemen should be dismissed.
The rejection of Hashemi’s qualification has produced deep rifts in the establishment. Hashemi’s daughter Fa’ezeh, who served a few terms as a Majlis deputy and who was jailed for supporting the Green Movement, said in an interview that some special envoys had been sent to the Guardian Council urging it to reject the qualifications of her father, and that some members of the Council had left the meeting in protest.[5]
Zahra Mostafavi, one of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s daughters, and Hassan Khomeini, the late revolutionary leader’s grandson who sided with the Green Movement in the last election, have both spoken in favour of Hashemi-Rafsanjani. In an open letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Zahra Mostafavi called on him to use his position as the leader and order the Guardian Council to reinstate Hashemi-Rafsanjani. Pointedly, she wrote: “On the day when I heard the Imam’s [Khomeini’s] statement about your leadership qualities, I also heard him confirm the leadership qualities of our brother Hashemi after mentioning your name.” She expressed concern about a rift between Khamenei and Rafsanjani and pointed out that her father had said, “It would be good when the two of them are together.”[6]
In an open letter to Hashemi-Rafsanjani, referring to his disqualification by the Guardian Council, Seyyed Hassan Khomeini wrote: “The publication of this report has pained the hearts of all your friends and a large number of the friends of the illustrious Imam [Khomeini] and the honourable leader of the revolution.” He added: “However, I am not very worried about the rejection of your qualifications, but to some extent, due to the reasons that will be made clear in future, I am optimistic and I have a great deal of hope for the future, and now my hope has increased.”[7]
Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s disqualification at first gave rise to great disappointment, but two candidates picked up the banner: a reformist Mohammad Reza Aref, who had served as vice-president under Khatami, and a centrist Hassan Rohani.[8] Although a cleric, Rohani also has a university education. He received a bachelor’s degree in judicial law in 1972 from the University of Tehran. He continued his studies in the West and received his master’s degree in public law, followed by a doctorate degree from the Caledonian University in Glasgow. He is fluent in English and Arabic and has published a few books in Persian, as well as in English and Arabic.
Although a centrist, in his election campaign, Rohani has adopted many reformist slogans and has indeed gone further than most reformist figures have done in the past. Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri, the Friday prayer leader of Isfahan, was one of the few prominent clerics who openly supported Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the last election and was subsequently shunned by the rest of the establishment. He died at the beginning of June 2013, and tens of thousands of mourners took part in his funeral on 6 June. Rohani joined the funeral cortege, where the crowds openly chanted slogans in support of Mousavi.[9]
Speaking at a massive rally in Shirudi Stadium in Tehran, Rohani asked: “Why do we have political prisoners in Iran?” and the crowd chanted: “Political prisoners should be freed”. He then said: “I will never hide behind the fighters, the martyrs and the glorious name of those who sacrificed themselves for the country”, and more pointedly, he continued, “nor will I hide behind an old man.” The crowd shouted: “We do not want a government that acts under orders.”[10] In another gathering, he said that this time it will be different and the suppressions that followed the 2009 election will not be repeated. In most of his public addresses, he has spoken favourably of the leaders of the Green Movement. His outspoken remarks have worried the hardliners to such an extent that some news agencies reported that the approval of his qualifications would be revoked, but the spokesman of the Guardian Council later denied those reports.
The live presidential debates have further exposed the rift among the principlists. Many analysts had regarded Jalili as Ayatollah Khamenei’s favourite candidate, but in the debates, he was savaged both by Ali Akbar Velayati, Ayatollah Khamenei’s special advisor, and by Qalibaf, another candidate close to the principlists. Another interesting aspect of the debates was that it showed that, contrary to expectations, Khamenei is not solely in charge of the nuclear file. Velayati criticised Jalili’s negotiation techniques, accusing him of having missed many opportunities. He told Jalili: “You want to take three steps and you expect the other side to take 100 steps, this means that you don’t want to make progress. This is not diplomacy…. We can’t expect everything and give nothing.”[11]
When Jalili angrily dismissed those charges, saying that he had won all the debates with the P5+1, Velayati contemptuously gave him a lesson in diplomacy. “Well, Dr Jalili, speaking of diplomacy, it’s not a philosophy class to say that our logic was strong,” said Velayati. “You have been in charge of the nuclear issue; we have not made a step forward, and the [sanctions] pressure has been exerted on the people.” Velayati further admonished Jalili: “Being conservative does not mean being inflexible and stubborn.” Diplomacy, he added, does not mean to just “give a sermon to other countries,” hold press conferences, and “sit at the [negotiating] table and say something without doing anything else.”
Velayati also made some revelations that had so far remained secret. He said that he had held an unannounced, hour-long conversation in Paris with the then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and they had agreed on several centrifuges and continued but limited Iranian enrichment. That deal fell through, along with another one that had brought Russian President Vladimir Putin to Tehran in 2007, which had become “somehow tarnished,” said Velayati. He alleged that after his talks in Paris, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs under President Ahmadinejad had said that Velayati did not represent the Iranian government’s views. He also said that Ali Larijani had reached an agreement with the then EU’s chief negotiator, Javier Solana, enabling Iran to retain some centrifuges, but that deal also fell through when Ahmadinejad replaced Larijani with Jalili. Speaking about where the current government went wrong, Hassan Rohani said: “All of our problems stem from this – that we didn’t make the utmost effort to prevent the [nuclear] dossier from going to the UN Security Council.” He added: “It’s good to have centrifuges running, provided that people’s lives and sustenance are also spinning.”
The interesting point is that all principlist candidates who shared the government’s philosophy and who were instrumental in Ahmadinejad’s two election victories openly attacked the economic and foreign policy record of the government. Hearing all those criticisms from his former allies, Ahmadinejad called on the state media to give him the right of reply, but he has been turned down.
In order to prevent the splitting of the reformist vote, on 11th June, Aref, the reformist candidate, withdrew his candidacy in favour of the centrist candidate Rohani. Although many reformists would have preferred the US-educated scientist Mohammad Reza Aref, who was the first vice-president in Khatami’s government, to have been their first choice, Rohani has many clear advantages over Aref. During the debates and the electoral campaign, he has shown that he is very brave, articulate, intelligent and aware of the domestic and international political realities. As a cleric and as Khamenei’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, he is more acceptable to the traditionalists whose votes will count in the election, and less open to criticism by them as a radical antiregime reformer if he wins. As a centrist, he can open a dialogue with both the clerical establishment and the conservatives, as well as with the reformists.
Because of the violent campaign against the reformists in the last election, it seems that they have decided to opt for a more moderate and centrist position, rather than an all-out confrontation with the hardliners. As a vice president in the reformist government who adopted some clear and strong positions during the campaign, Aref would have been open to intense suspicion and opposition by the hardliners. On the other hand, as a former nuclear negotiator who had reached an agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend enrichment for two years, Rohani is regarded as a safe pair of hands by moderate Iranians, as well as a viable interlocutor for the West who could reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.
Judging by all the opinion polls, Rohani has a good chance of success even in the first round, if the reformists who intended to support Hashemi-Rafsanjani or Aref cast their votes for him. His election would bring a modicum of calm and moderation in the country and would help heal the rift with the West, especially on the nuclear issue.
It remains to be seen whether this time, Ayatollah Khamenei and the hardliners would allow people’s votes to stand or whether again they decide to opt for someone whom they regard to be a faithful servant of the Supreme Leader. The wave of pro-democracy movements in the Arab world and now in Turkey shows that any attempt to hold on to absolute power is bound to fail.
.
Footnotes
[1] For controversy regarding the 2009 election, see the following links: http://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/109081 http://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/twt/archive/view/169439 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/note29jun2009.pdf http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/iran-s-stolen-election-and-what-comes-next http://www.payvand.com/news/09/jun/1267.html
[2] See “Iran’s President, Speaker Clash in Parliament”, Payvand News, http://www.payvand.com/news/13/feb/1029.html
[3] Here is a video of the ceremony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf3_5ZdiDg&feature=related
[4] See Tabnak News Agency, “Lets All Hold Hands With Iran”, Patriot Missive, 12 August 2008, http://patriotmissive.com/tag/esfandiar-rahim-mashai/
[5] See the report in BBC in Persian, http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2013/06/130609_ir92_5_daysto.shtml
[6] See: Mehdi Khalaji, “Winners and Losers in Iran’s Presidential Election,” The Washington Institute, May 24, 2013, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policyanalysis/view/winners-and-losers-in-irans-presidential-election
[7] ibid
[8] On Rowhani see: Farhang Jahanpour, “Iran’s Presidential Election Heats up as Reformist Rowhani Enters Race”, Informed Comment, http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/presidential-reformist-jahanpour.html#comments
[9] 9 See BBC report of his funeral on http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/interactivity/2013/06/130604_uservideo_taheri_isfahan. shtml
[10] See the BBC report of the rally, http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/interactivity/2013/06/130609_uservideo_shiroudi_roh ani_campaign.shtml
[11] See the BBC report of the rally, http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/interactivity/2013/06/130609_uservideo_shiroudi_roh ani_campaign.shtml
F Jahanpour 