Iran

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Polling suggests that Ebrahim Raisi will likely win Iran’s presidential election. So who is he? An official Iranian point of view on Raisi goes this way: He was born in 1960 into a family of clerics claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad in the Nowghan district of Mashhad, the largest […]

Featured

If Hard Liner Raisi wins Iran’s Presidential Election, he has Trump to Thank

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – June 18 is election day in Iran. There are two main candidates for president, the arch-conservative Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s chief justice, and the centrist Abdolnaser Hemmati, an academic who served as chief of the national bank for the past three years. So it is sort of as though Chief Justice […]

Iran

Conservative hard-liner poised to be Iran’s next president – what that means for the West and the nuclear deal

The Conversation

By Nader Habibi | – ( The Conversation ) | – Iran’s conservative rulers’ effort to orchestrate the outcome of the June 18 presidential election triggered a voter boycott – but the result may still bode well for ongoing negotiations over the lapsed 2015 nuclear deal. The leading candidate is Ebrahim Raisi, chief of Iran’s […]

Iran

What NPR’s “All Things Considered” won’t Tell you about the Iran Nuclear Issue (Like that Iran is Weak and has no Nukes while Israel is advanced and Does)

John Hickman

Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – What news audiences of National Public Radio (NPR)’s All Things Considered have and have not heard about the Iranian nuclear program since the election of Joe Biden offers a neat boundary delineation of the Hallin spheres of mainstream reporting on the topic. Daniel Hallin’s classic study of […]

Iran

Israel’s Netanyahu may be ousted but his hard-line foreign policies remain

The Conversation

By David Mednicoff | (The Conversation) – After two years of repeated and inconclusive Israeli elections, the advent of a new coalition government has ended the long era of Benjamin Netanyahu’s prime ministership. Yet he leaves a legacy of hawkish policies that will likely remain intact. As a scholar of Middle Eastern politics, I think […]

Elections

Why Iranians won’t vote: new survey reveals massive political disenchantment

The Conversation

By Pooyan Tamimi Arab and Ammar Maleki | – The Islamic Republic of Iran has never organised free and fair elections since its establishment in 1979. By definition, the combination of modern totalitarianism and Iran’s Islamic theocracy, with a supreme leader, cannot allow for more than a voting spectacle, rather than elections in the normal […]

Elections

With Little Hope for Change through the Ballot Box, Iranian Civil Society Debates Strategy

Human Rights Watch

By Tara Sepehri Far | Iran Researcher | – ( Human Rights Watch) – Twenty days before Iran’s presidential election, the Guardian Council, which vets the candidates, sent shock waves through the political elite and public by disqualifying two prominent figures: the former speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, and the current vice president, Eshagh Jahangiri. […]

Elections

Disgruntled Iranians Say ‘No Way,’ Call For Boycott Of June Presidential Election

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/RL ) – Less than a month before Iran’s June 18 presidential election, there are few signs of enthusiasm about the vote. For many Iranians, voting in the Islamic republic has often been a choice between bad or worse. Elections in Iran are tightly restricted, with candidates being preselected by hard-liners on the country’s […]

Elections

Iran: The Election Trump did succeed in Spoiling

Farhang Jahanpour

Oxford, U.K (Special to Informed Comment) – Although Iran is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has regular presidential, parliamentary and local council elections, those elections are far from free and fair when judged by the standards of advanced democracies. The June, 2021 polls will be even more flawed, in large […]