Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

Iran presidential elections: everything you need to know – The Guardian

An image of Irans current president, Hassan Rouhani, looms over cheering supporters at a re-election rally in Tehran. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

Iran goes to the polls on 19 May in the countrys first presidential elections since the landmark nuclear agreement in 2015, when Tehran agreed to roll back its nuclear programme in exchange for the removal of sanctions. The fate of that deal has been thrown in doubt since Donald Trump took the helm at the White House, but despite his increasingly belligerent rhetoric, the US president has so far not taken any serious steps to scrap the accord.

Irans interaction with the international community is at stake. The incumbent president, Hassan Rouhani, brought Iran in from the cold, even holding direct talks with the US under Trumps predecessor, something that was a taboo for more than three decades. The trajectory of Irans foreign policy changed dramatically under Rouhani, a moderate cleric, but that approach could shift under a new president.

Internally, a Rouhani defeat would deal a blow to the countrys reformists and bring hardliners back in power.

The election comes at a critical time in Iran: in recent years, particularly since 2014 when the countrys supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, underwent prostate surgery, speculation about his potential successor has grown.

Khamenei has the final say in all state matters in Iran, but in the event of his death the president can have a crucial role in the appointment of the next leader, even though it is not up to him to choose one. Khamenei was himself president in the 1980s when Ayatollah Khomeini, the then supreme leader and founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, died. He was then promoted by the council of experts, the body in charge of choosing Irans supreme leaders, to succeed Khomeini.

Rouhanis main challenger, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, is believed to have bigger ambitions than just the presidency. Over the past year, he has been touted as a frontrunner to succeed Khamenei. While it is true that Khameneis authority outstretches that of the president as long as he is alive, a new president could significantly change the political landscape at home.

Resolving the stalemate over the countrys nuclear programme was Rouhanis main campaign promise in the 2013 elections and on this metric he has succeeded.

But the elections are also seen as a referendum on how he has performed economically under the terms of the nuclear agreement. Rouhani has stabilised the Iranian economy and brought down inflation but unemployment is high and his opponents have questioned whether his administration has done enough to bring tangible economic benefits.

Raisi has portrayed himself as the candidate of the poor and is running a campaign focused on economic priorities, called work and dignity.

Almost any adult of Iranian origin and with Iranian nationality can take his or her identity card, a few passport-sized photos and the necessary documents to the interior ministry in Tehrans Fatemi Street to register as a candidate. But not everyone is allowed to actually take part. The guardian council, a powerful body of six clergymen and six jurists, vets each candidacy. Political competence and loyalty to the fundamental principles of the Islamic republic and its religion are among the main issues considered by the council.

This year, out of more than 1,600 who applied to run, only six candidates were accepted. More than 100 women also registered, but none made it past the vetting process. Apart from Rouhani, the five remaining candidates were Eshaq Jahangiri, who is Rouhanis first vice-president, the Tehran mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, hardliner Raisi, and the relatively low-profile politicians Mostafa Agha Mirsalim and Mostafa Hashemi-Taba. Among those barred from running was the former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ghalibaf dropped out in favour of Raisi on Monday. Jahangiri is also expected to step aside in favour of Rouhani at some point this week.

The campaign period, which started in late April following the announcement of the list of approved candidates by the guardian council, will continue until Wednesday 17 May before the election on Friday 19 May.

If an overall majority is not achieved in the first round, the two candidates with the most votes will compete in a runoff. Elections are held and results announced under the supervision of an administrative council in the interior ministry. The voting age is 18, and an estimated 55 million Iranians are eligible to vote.

Hassan Rouhani, 68, the reformist-backed moderate incumbent, is a former chief Iranian nuclear negotiator who served as the secretary of Irans supreme national security council for 16 years. Under the former president Mohammad Khatamis presidency, Rouhani was responsible for negotiating with the west over Tehrans nuclear dossier. Under Rouhani, Iran halted its enrichment of uranium and showed more cooperation with the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. For many years, Rouhani was a close ally of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the relative reformer who died in January.

Rouhani is most often described as a moderate rather than a reformist. But he is also a senior cleric with impeccable revolutionary credentials who has been an adviser to the supreme leader, Khamenei, and held highly sensitive posts in parliament and the establishment. Born in 1948 in Sorkheh, a small town in Semnan province, Rouhani was the eldest of five children in what he called a religious and revolutionary family who lived in a modest home surrounded by vines and pomegranates. His father owned a grocery. His mother, Sakineh, remembers him as a calm boy who excelled at school, read the Quran and enjoyed swimming and climbing.

He was educated in Qom, the Canterbury of the Shia Muslim world, and changed his family name which originally was Feridoun as a security measure to avoid the attention of the Savak secret police when preaching against theShah (Rouhani means cleric in Persian). Unusually for a cleric before the revolution, he studied law at Tehran University. In the 1990s, he was awarded a PhD by Glasgow Caledonian University for a thesis on the flexibility of sharia law with reference to the Iranian experience. Rouhani spent time in Paris with the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini and Rafsanjani and entered parliament after the revolution. During the war with Iraq in the 1980s, he commanded national air defence. In 1986, as deputy speaker in parliament, he took part in secret talks with US officials as part of what became known as the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages affair.

In 1989, the year Khomeini died and Rafsanjani became president, he was appointed secretary of the supreme national security council. In 2003, with the region in turmoil after the US invasion of Iraq, he became Irans chief nuclear negotiator, agreeing voluntarily in talks with the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) to suspend uranium enrichment temporarily.

Ebrahim Raisi, 56, is allied with Irans conservatives. He is custodian of Astan Quds Razavi, the wealthiest charity in the Muslim world and the organisation in charge of Irans holiest shrine, Imam Reza, in Mashhad in eastern Iran. Over the past year, Raisi has been touted as a frontrunner to become Khameneis successor, a higher position than that of the president. Some analysts suggest he is being groomed for a possible succession and a win in presidential elections would pave the way for him. A defeat would scupper his chances of succeeding Khamenei.

He wears a black turban, indicating he is a seyed a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad, in Shia Islam. Raisi had barely reached adulthood by the 1979 Islamic revolution, but rose quickly through the ranks. In the summer of 1988, he was one of the four sharia judges behind the mass execution of leftists and dissidents.

More recently he was Irans prosecutor general and still holds an important division within the judiciary as the head of the court that prosecutes troublemaking clerics. He is married to the daughter of a hardline ayatollah who is the representative of Khamenei in the eastern province of Khorasan-Razavi, home to the Imam Reza shrine.

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Iran presidential elections: everything you need to know - The Guardian

‘Fake’ Iranian refugees reportedly allowed to stay in Australia – 9news.com.au

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. (AAP)

Six Iranian refugees who were caught travelling back to the country where they claimed their lives were in danger have reportedly been allowed to stay in Australia.

The group have been accused of lying on their visa applications after voluntarily returning to Iran on holiday despite having obtained protection visas based on fears for their lives, News Corp reports.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is considering what he will do in response to the reports, 9NEWS understands.

All six refugees' protection visas were reportedlycancelled after it was discovered they were travelling between Iran and Australia.

They were set to be deported, but after successfully appealing to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal they were allowed to stay in Australia.

One man reportedly made three trips to Iran despite earlier claiming he could face execution if he returned.

A couple also reportedly travelled to and from Iran using their Iranian passports after claiming persecution.

Mr Dutton has the power to set aside decisions made by the tribunal, and is understood to beconsidering the reports on a case-by-case basis.

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Iran changes course of road to Mediterranean coast to avoid US forces – The Guardian

US forces, accompanied by Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) fighters, driving near the northern Syrian village of Darbasiyah. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images

Iran has changed the course of a land corridor that it aims to carve to the Mediterranean coast after officials in Iraq and Tehran feared a growing US military presence in north-eastern Syria had made its original path unviable.

The new corridor has been moved 140 miles south to avoid a buildup of US forces that has been assembled to fight Islamic State (Isis). It will now use the Isis-occupied town of Mayadin as a hub in eastern Syria, avoiding the Kurdish north-east, which had earlier been mooted by Iranian leaders as a crucial access route.

The changes have been ordered by Maj Gen Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds force, and Haidar al-Ameri, the leader of the Popular Mobilisation Front in Iraq, whose Shia-dominated forces have edged closer to the Iraqi town of Baaj, a key link in the planned route and where the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is known to have been based for much of the past three years.

Throughout the war with the terror group, and for several years earlier, Iran has been attempting to carve out areas of influence across Iraq and Syria that it and its proxies control. But as the project has taken shape, the evolving Syrian conflict has added new and unpredictable dimensions that have made securing such a corridor increasingly difficult.

The US buildup in north-eastern Syria has alarmed officials in Baghdad and Tehran. Senior Iraqi sources have told the Guardian that Iranian leaders believe the stepped-up presence aims to deter Tehrans ambitions.

In response they are doing all they can to make this corridor happen as quickly as they can, said a senior Iraqi official. That means finishing off Baaj as quickly as they can, then kicking out Isis from Mayadin and Deir Azzour. They want to do this before the Americans get there.

Baaj has become an especially potent prize as the war against Isis in Iraq enters a final phase. As Iraqi police and military units continue to squeeze Mosul, Shia militias who have been stationed for the past seven months in Tel Afar, northwest of Iraqs second city, began a push over the weekend that has taken them to within three kilometres of Baajs outskirts.

Observers said Isis was fighting fiercely to defend the town, which has remained a hotbed of salafi jihadi fighters since the US-led invasion of Iraq 14 years ago. Intelligence officials in the region believe that Baghdadi was in the town for much of March and numerous reports placed him there in February and for much of the battle to retake Mosul.

The fall of Baaj would be devastating to Isiss shrinking presence in Iraq, leaving parts of Anbar province as the its last remaining stronghold in the place where it all began for the terror group more than a decade ago.

As Isis has rapidly lost ground in Iraq, attention has been diverting to the next and possibly final phase of the war, the push to take its last strongholds in Syria, which include Raqqa and Deir Azzour. The makeup of the force that will be sent to take both cities has yet to be finalised, with the US continuing to support Syrian Kurdish groups to the chagrin of its ally Turkey who is robustly pushing for Arab units that it backs to do the job.

The political jostling has made the battlefield in Syria even more complex, forcing Iran to change course on one of its most important long-term goals, just as its progress had seemed assured.

The corridor had been marked out in Syria with minimal disruption, crossing from the Iranian border into Jalawla, in Diyala province, across the south of Mosul to Shawqat, then north to Tel Afar. The pivot to the west, bypassing Sinjar, has now pitched Iranian-backed forces into direct combat with Isis, serving the twofold goal of taking an increased role in the war and laying a cornerstone along the new course.

The plan has been driven by Shia militias under Iranian direction and has empowered minority communities to secure legs along the way. Kurdish PKK fighters, who had travelled from Turkey, had been central to securing a leg from Mt Sinjar to the Syrian border, but the change in course has taken the corridor to the south.

Iraqi officials say that the newly chosen route is from Deir Azzour to Sukhna to Palmyra, then Damascus, and towards the Lebanese border, where the central goal of emboldening Hezbollah could partially be achieved through demographic swaps. From there, a path to Latakia and the Mediterranean Sea has also been envisaged, giving Iran a supply line that avoids the heavily patrolled Persian Gulf waters.

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Iran changes course of road to Mediterranean coast to avoid US forces - The Guardian

What Drives Anti-Iranian Militant Group ‘Army of Justice?’ – Voice of America

WASHINGTON

Tehran has warned Islamabad that it would hit bases inside Pakistan if the government does not confront Sunni militants who carry out cross-border attacks.

An anti-Iran Sunni Muslim militant group called Jaish-ul-Adl (JA), which calls itself the Army of Justice, took credit for an April 26 ambush in which 10 border guards were killed in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Tehran said the militants crossed into Iran from neighboring Baluchistan province in Pakistan.

Here's what is known about the group:

What is Jaish-ul-Adl?

Jaish-ul-Adl known as JA is a Sunni insurgent group in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province and fights Iranian security forces in the region.

The group was founded in April 2012 by Abdul Rahim Mollazehi, a Baluch militant, after the Iranian regime captured and executed Abdul Malek Rigi, former leader of the insurgent Jundullah group that claimed to be fighting for "equal rights of Sunni Muslims in Iran," in June 2010.

JA was first comprised of members of a weakened Jundullah. JA's first attack killed at least 10 members of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Forces (IRGC), days after the group formed.

Where is JA based?

JA operates primarily in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, but it also operates from bases in neighboring Baluchistan province in Pakistan where it gets support from local Baluch tribes.

"Most militant groups in Baluchistan are based on tribal connections," said Abdullah Haqyar, who told VOA he is a former JA member. "These tribes have a tradition of helping and harboring members of allied tribes. Many tribes in Pakistani Baluchistan support their oppressed brothers in Iran."

Local tribes control large swaths of the region and neither Iranian nor Pakistani security forces have a permanent presence in the region.

What does JA fight for?

The group describes itself as a "political-military" movement and claims to be fighting to achieve justice for the "oppressed Sunni Baluch" people.

Sistan-Baluchistan, which is home to many Sunni Baluch and Sistani Persians, is one of the most underdeveloped and poverty-stricken areas in the country. The minority Sunnis in Iran are highly underprivileged and have been deprived of political and economic opportunities.

According to Iranian lawmaker Hamid Reza Pashang, over 70 percent of the province population lives in "absolute poverty."

JA says it must fight the Shi'ite-dominated regime in Iran because it persecutes the Sunni minority.

"Since this regime only uses the language of force and humiliation, we have no other means but to fight back," JA said in a video statement in late 2012.

JA also said it opposes Iran's military involvement in Syria where elite Iranian forces and the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah are supporting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war.

Who are JA fighters?

According to a statement on the group's website, JA is "composed of young Iranian Sunnis who have come together to defend the oppressed to the divine command."

The exact number of JA members is unknown, but according to some reports, it has over 500 members and followers. The number of active fighters is said to be over 100. Some of its fighters are seasonal, including some from Pakistan, who are called upon for occasional operations against Iranian security forces.

How many attacks has JA conducted?

Since 2012, JA has claimed responsibility for conducting more than 200 attacks and killing and abducting more than 150 Iranian security forces members.

In its attacks, JA has taken credit for shooting down a military helicopter and destroying dozens of army vehicles. Iranian authorities have confirmed some of the JA claims.

In addition to the April 26 ambush, which killed 10 border guards, JA claimed responsibility for attacks that killed eight border guards in April 2015 and 14 in October 2013 near the Pakistani border.

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What Drives Anti-Iranian Militant Group 'Army of Justice?' - Voice of America

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