Archive for the 'AP Iran' Category
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
Islamist spokesmen and leaders of the revived Islamist mainstream are bending over backwards to give reassurances that they will promote a peaceful, pluralistic and tolerant version of Islam. The rights of women and religious and ethnic minorities will be respected, they say, and the people’s democratic verdict will be accepted if they lose elections.
Whatever their doubts, most democrats in the Arab world reckon that Islamists who say they will abide peacefully by the rules of the game must be allowed—indeed encouraged—to participate in mainstream politics: far better than forcing them into a violent, conspiratorial underground. All the same, the well of mistrust on both sides runs deep.
Many liberals still think the Islamists, however mild they sound today, are bent on taking over in the long run, would abandon democracy once they got into power and would use every sort of chicanery and violence to achieve their goal.
Two articles on the relationship between Islam and democracy in light of the 2011 “Arab Spring”
Posted in AP Introductory Materials, AP Iran, AP Nigeria | No Comments »
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
Perhaps Iranian political culture would be less fixated on conspiracies if certain nations would not secretly invade Iranian airspace.
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Monday, July 18th, 2011
Few outside countries have more at stake in the evolution of Iran’s political situation than the United States, which has been in a state of open enmity with the Islamic Republic for more than three decades. Threats of Iran-backed terrorism, Tehran’s apparent nuclear ambitions, and its evident aim of destabilizing American allies—chiefly Israel—are perpetually high on the list of US concerns in the region. Why is Iran so important to the US? What explains the enduring animosity between the two countries? Answers to these and other questions about the United States’ position in the region today can be found by looking back to the Cold War.
Read more about US Cold War Policy in Iran (4 pages)
Posted in AP Iran, USH: Cold War, World Civ-Cold War in East | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
A note on checks and balances in Iran (Aug 2009)
Insight: Checks and balances for Iranian re-elected president – CCTV 080909
Zakaria & Guests discuss how Iran will weather the Arab Uprisings of 2011
IRAN / KARIM SAJADPOUR+HOOMAN MAJD / FAREED ZAKARIA !
Zakaria & Soros discuss Iran 2011
GEORGE SOROS on FAREED ZAKARIA GPS, CNN. February 20, 2011
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Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Mr Rafsanjani had chaired the Assembly of Experts, which selects the supreme leader and supervises his activities, for the past four years. But he was criticised by hardliners for being close to the opposition.
Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani was selected to replace him, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Mr Rafsanjani said that for the sake of keeping the country united, he would not stand against Mr Kani.
“If he was ready and accepted responsibility, I would certainly not nominate myself, so that we could eliminate the differences and this sacred institution would not be damaged by my side,” he said.
He warned that divisiveness was becoming “very serious” and said the country should be “vigilant to keep people united”.
Mr Rafsanjani had chaired the Assembly – an elected body of clerics which has the theoretical power to dismiss the supreme leader – since 2007.
But he was stripped of his role as a leader of Friday prayers after criticising a crackdown on opposition protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 re-election.
Mr Rafsanjani remains the chairman of the Expediency Council, a committee which arbitrates disputes over legislation among state bodies.
Posted in AP Iran | No Comments »
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
THE president of Iran is a powerful communicator. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke live to the nation last month, he managed to combine seductive reasoning, patriotic appeals and more than a hint of menace. For once, though, he left even his most fervent supporters unmoved, for he was announcing the beginning of the end of subsidies on which millions of them depend. These measures are the gamble of his presidency—and may be the most important economic reform in the Islamic Republic’s three-decade history.
Read more about Iran’s [latest] struggle
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Thursday, February 24th, 2011
Steve Inskeep talks to Dr. Abbas Milani about how events in Egypt compare to the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Milani is the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and has just finished a biography of the Iranian monarch called The Shah.
Posted in AP Iran | No Comments »
Monday, October 4th, 2010
In the summer of 2009 Iran’s divided conservatives came together to save the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after his disputed re-election provoked huge street protests by the reformist Green Movement. To have lost Mr Ahmadinejad to a liberal “plot” would, they judged, have imperilled the Islamic Republic which succours them all.
All the same, many conservatives are far from enamoured of Iran’s president. Challenging him, however, is turning out to be a different matter.
More on the power struggle from The Economist
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Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
The Green Movement’s bloody street protests may not have toppled Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but they will.
An argument worth reading (from Newsweek)
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Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
A conundrum: the Islamic Republic of Iran, no friend of Western-style liberty, somehow nurtured (well, permitted) the great humanist cinema of the 90s. We’ll let the political scientists explain that one, and just note that men like Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami have directed on their own, and encouraged in others, films whose stripped-down, but never simple, artistry touches souls around the world. The stories are often about children —poor ones, blind or lame ones —who fight long odds not to triumph but simply to survive.
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