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TOP STORIES
A conservative candidate dropped out of Iran's
presidential election on Monday to back a hard-liner, state
television reported, narrowing the field of those hoping to unseat
moderate President Hassan Rouhani. The report said Tehran Mayor
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made the decision to boost the chances of
hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, believed to be close to Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "I ask all my supporters to contribute
their full capacity and support for the success of my brother,
Ebrahim Raisi," Qalibaf said in a statement announcing his
withdrawal, according to the state TV.
Iran's Delayed Gold Rush Disillusions Voters |
AFP
The investment gold rush that was supposed to follow
Iran's nuclear deal with world powers and revitalize the economy has
not materialized, leaving many voters disillusioned ahead of Friday's
election. The figures say it all - President Hassan Rouhani wanted
$50 billion a year in foreign investment to reach his target of 8
percent growth. But since the nuclear deal came into force in January
2016, lifting some sanctions in exchange for curbs to Iran's atomic
program, only $1-2 billion worth of deals have actually been
finalized, his deputy Eshaq Jahangiri admitted to AFP this week.
As a college
student studying mechanics, Hamidreza Faraji had expected after
graduation to land a steady job with a fixed salary, a pension plan
and the occasional bonus. He envisioned coming home at 6 p.m. to his
family and vacationing at a resort on the Caspian Sea. But Mr.
Faraji, 34, has long since given up on all that. These days, he said,
the only people who lead such predictable lives are government employees.
Their jobs are well paid and offer security, but are hard to get in
part because older employees stay on well past retirement age,
limiting opportunities for the next generation. So millions of
Iranians, particularly younger ones, find themselves caught like Mr.
Faraji in a vicious cycle of hidden poverty, an exhausting hustle to
stay afloat, working multiple jobs and running moneymaking schemes
just to keep up. The youth unemployment rate is 30 percent.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran is continuing to work on ballistic missiles that
would be capable of carrying nuclear weapons over thousands of miles,
according to US Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. Coats
described the growing threat of Iran's missile program in a written
testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday.
'Iran's ballistic missiles are inherently capable of delivering WMD
[weapons of mass destruction], and Tehran already has the largest
inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East,' he wrote. 'We
judge that Tehran would choose ballistic missiles as its preferred
method of delivering nuclear weapons, if it builds them.' The
missiles could also be used by the Islamic Republic to launch a
nuclear weapon. As Coats noted: 'Iran continues to be the foremost
state sponsor of terrorism.'
Iran continues to make critical technological strides in
its efforts to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable
of delivering nuclear weapons over great distances, efforts that
violate international prohibitions, according to the director of national
intelligence, who informed Congress this week that the Islamic
Republic "would choose ballistic missiles as its preferred
method of delivering nuclear weapons." The disclosure comes just
days after Iranian leaders announced the upcoming launch of two new
domestically produced satellites. Iran has long used its space
program as cover for illicit missile work, as the know-how needed to
launch such equipment can be applied to long-range ballistic missile
technology. Daniel Coats, America's top spymaster, informed Congress
this week in an intelligence briefing that Iran's ballistic missile
work continues unimpeded and could be used by the Islamic Republic to
launch a nuclear weapon, according to unclassified testimony.
BUSINESS RISK
Iran has put on hold "almost all" of its
mining agreements with foreign investors as companies from Europe to
Asia fear additional sanctions on the Persian Gulf nation's economy,
according to the deputy minister of Iran's Ministry of Industries,
Mines and Trade. Less than $100 million of projects is moving
forward, out of the $50 billion in potential investment the
government is seeking from overseas mining companies by 2022, Mehdi
Karbasian said Monday in an interview in Tehran. "Fearing
they might get placed on a blacklist in the wake of the return of
sanctions, the companies with whom we have made these deals have
suspended almost all of the agreements and maintained a wait-and-see
attitude," he said.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani vowed Friday to continue
rebuilding ties with the world and get rid of remaining sanctions
during a fiery final debate a week ahead of the election. Rouhani,
who is seeking a second four-year term next Friday, said Tehran's
nuclear deal with world powers had ended many sanctions and brought a
windfall from renewed oil sales over the past year that could now be
invested. "We want to allocate $15 billion for investments...
and $3-5 billion for supporting the poor and needy," said Rouhani.
But he went further in his closing statement, vowing for the first
time to target the remaining US sanctions that are still hampering
trade deals and preventing foreign money from entering Iran. "I
will engage myself in lifting all the non-nuclear sanctions during
the coming four years and bring back the grandeur of Iran and the
Iranian people," he said.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin on
Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not object
to "de-escalation zones" arrangement in Syria but voiced
opposition against Iran's presence in those areas. According to
Haaretz, a senior Israeli official who wanted to remain anonymous
said that Netanyahu had warned Putin against Iran's presence in the
de-escalation zones, while stressing that they cannot serve to allow
Iran or Hezbollah to set up near the border with Israel. It came a
week after Iran, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement, urging
setting up of four de-escalation zones in the war-torn Syria in the
latest attempt to reduce violence in the country. The agreement was
signed during the fourth round of the Syria peace talks in the Kazakh
capital Astana, and two days after Moscow put forward the proposal.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
In an upmarket suburb of Senegal's seaside capital, a
branch of Iran's Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students
Shi'ite Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is
Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei hangs on his office wall. The teaching includes Iranian
culture and history, Islamic science and Iran's mother tongue, Farsi;
students receive free food and financial help. The university is a
Shi'ite outpost in a country where Sufism, a more relaxed, mystical
and apolitical form of Sunni Islam, is the norm. Two miles away, the
Islamic Preaching Association for Youth (APIJ) teaches the strand of
Islam that predominates in Iran's great religious, political and
military rival, Saudi Arabia. The APIJ funnels cash from donors in
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai and Kuwait to mosques run by Salafists -
conservative Sunni Muslims who are sworn enemies of Iran. The APIJ's
shelves are stacked with Salafist theology texts adorned with
gold-leaf Arabic inscriptions - texts its imams use to preach in some
200 mosques across Senegal.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Ahead of Iran's elections on May 19 for
president and local councils, 29 members of the European Parliament
have written a letter to Federica Mogherini, the representative of
the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy and
vice-president of the European Commission, urging the EU to call on
the Iranian government to stop the pre-election intimidation campaign
against journalists and activists and ensure a free and fair vote.
A court in Tehran court has sentenced a
35-year-old married woman to 74 to lashes and two years of washing
dead bodies in a morgue. The 35-year-old woman initially denied the
cheating charges but admitted her guilt after the prosecutors
provided proof of her adultery, according to the Iranian Students'
News Agency (ISNA). The penal code in Iran views adultery among the
highest of crimes, which may even carry capital punishment in case of
multiple offenses. Under Iran's interpretation of Islamic Sharia law
in force since its 1979 revolution, adultery is punished by the
stoning of convicted adulterers. In 2013, Iran amended its
internationally condemned law on stoning convicted adulterers to
death and now allow judges to impose different punishments as they see
fit.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Incumbent Hassan Rouhani maintains his lead in the
run-up to Iran's May 19 presidential election. Two new election
surveys show him ahead, going into the third and final nationally
televised debate and with less than a week to go before the vote. Two
new polls show incumbent Hassan Rouhani ahead of his five opponents
with less than a week to go until first-round voting in Iran's
presidential elections. A telephone survey conducted May 7-8 by
the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) had Rouhani at 42% of the
vote, cleric Ebrahim Raisi at 27%, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher
Ghalibaf at 25%, First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri at 3%, former
Culture Minister Mostafa Mirsalim at 3%, and former Mines and Industries
Minister Mostafa Hashemi-Taba at 2%. No undecided vote was reported,
nor was a sample size or margin of error. ISPA is a longtime public
opinion research agency in Tehran.
Iran's presidential election may turn on turnout.
Historically, the more Iranians who cast ballots, the greater the
chance a reformist or a moderate like incumbent President Hassan
Rouhani will be elected. However, Rouhani's bid for another four-year
term comes amid apathy and grumbling from an electorate that largely
hasn't seen the benefits of his signature nuclear deal with world
powers. As his opponents promise populist cash handouts to the poor,
Rouhani needs all the voters he can to cast ballots on May 19. But
even some of his supporters say they may stay home.
President Hassan Rouhani cast his hardline clerical
opponents as power-hungry pawns of Iran's security forces on Friday,
going far beyond the traditional bounds of Iranian political
discourse in a blistering final TV debate a week before an election.
Rouhani, first elected in a landslide four years ago on a promise to
reduce Iran's international isolation, is trying to hold on to office
by firing up reformist voters disillusioned by a stalled economy and
the slow pace of social reform. Although he has long cast himself as
an insider and pragmatist rather than a gung-ho reformer, he seems to
have shed that moderate image in recent days, seeking to energize
voters who want less confrontation abroad and more freedom at home.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has said that Friday's
presidential election will place the country at a critical juncture,
and its people must choose between peace or tension. Speaking
Saturday to tens of thousands of his supporters at Tehran's Azadi
Stadium, his biggest campaign rally thus far, Rouhani said, "We
are at the edge of a great historical decision. Our nation will
announce if it continues on the path of peacefulness or if it wants
to choose tension." "We should not let Iran become isolated
again," added Rouhani, "We want constructive communication
with the world." The election is seen largely as a referendum on
Rouhani's outreach to the rest of the world following the country's
landmark 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.
Former president Mohammad Khatami, considered the
spiritual leader of Iran's reformists, urged voters on Sunday to re-elect
President Hassan Rouhani and support his policy of seeking to end
Iran's isolation from the rest of the world. Iran's hardline security
and judicial powers, which operate separately to the presidency and
are close to Iran's ultimate authority - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei - have banned media from publishing Khatami's image or
mentioning his name. But Khatami has played a prominent role in
elections by using social media to urge voters to back pro-reform
candidates. "We have started on a path with Rouhani and we have
come half way. We have resolved some problems and bigger problems
remain for us to resolve on this difficult path with him,"
Khatami said in a video message released on social media. "It is
now your turn to renew your vote for our dear Rouhani in order to
strengthen hope for a better future," he said.
Iranian opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi, under house
arrest since 2011, will back President Hassan Rouhani's bid for a
second term in Friday's election, his family told Reuters. Rouhani, a
pragmatist who has eased Iran's international isolation and now faces
mostly hardline conservative challengers for the presidency, told
supporters he needed a stronger mandate to liberalize Iranian society
and get opposition leaders freed. Karroubi, 80, and fellow reformist
Mirhossein Mousavi ran for election in June 2009 and became
figureheads for Iranians who staged mass protests after the vote they
believed was rigged to bring back hardline President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. "My father believes in reform through the ballot
box," Karroubi's son, Mohammad Taghi Karroubi, said in a
telephone interview. "He believes people should take part in
elections to fight against those who want to turn the Islamic
Republic into an Islamic state."
The 20,000 chanting fans might have come to support Iran's
President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday but it was clear their real
heroes were the ones still locked away by the regime. "Mousavi!
Karroubi! Khatami!" they chanted at deafening volume, over and
over, at the election rally in a stadium in western Tehran. Those
first two names, drawing such passion from the crowd, belong to
reformist leaders who have not been seen in public for six years now.
Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi -- both candidates in the
controversial election of 2009 that triggered months of protests
after allegations of rigging -- were placed under house arrest in
2011, allowed out only for medical treatment. The third is Mohammad
Khatami -- president from 1997 to 2005 and spiritual head of the
reformist movement -- who is banned from travelling abroad or
appearing in any form in the media.
After a series of bruising electoral defeats, Iranian
conservatives campaigning in this week's presidential poll have
belatedly embraced social media -- a space long dominated by their
reformist rivals. Across Iran's political spectrum, posting on social
media has increasingly replaced street campaigning as the crucial way
to rally supporters and attack opponents -- even if some of the most
popular sites such as Twitter remain officially banned. Hardline
Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has used Twitter and messaging
app Telegram, which has 25 million users in Iran, to release
documents accusing his rivals of corruption. When moderate President
Hassan Rouhani, who is seeking re-election, visited the site of a
mining disaster last week, conservatives posted a video of his car
being attacked by protesters which quickly went viral.
A leading figure of Iran's minority Sunnis endorsed moderate
President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday ahead of this week's election,
despite the government's "shortcomings". Sunnis make up
around five to 10 percent of Iran's 80 million population, which is
overwhelmingly from the Shiite sect of Islam. Religious leader Molavi
Abdol Hamid said "the atmosphere for Sunnis has been a little
more relaxed" since Rouhani took power in 2013, and that most
would support him in Friday's election. Abdol Hamid repeated calls
for greater Sunni representation in local and national government,
and more action on discrimination. "The Sunni community believes
that this government, despite its problems and weaknesses, has had
more strong points, and we hope if the current government takes
office again, it will do more to resolve those problems and
shortcomings," he said in comments carried by his website.
Iran's presidential elections are typically tumultuous
affairs. Campaigns last just a few weeks, and a candidate's star can
rise or fall in a matter of days. Ruling clerics approve only a
handful of contenders for the race, which takes place every four
years. But the results are almost always a surprise, and dark-horse
candidates have been known to sweep to power at the last minute. This
year, there are five challengers to President Hassan Rouhani, a
pragmatic moderate seeking a second term in the May 19 vote. Although
polling is unreliable in Iran, two candidates recently have narrowed
Rouhani's still-wide lead: Ebrahim Raisi, a powerful conservative
cleric, and Tehran's hard-line mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Both
have used populist messaging to hit Rouhani on the economy, which
they say suffers despite sanctions relief, and have committed to
upholding the nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Major changes appear to be underway in Western policy
toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. For those who had been concerned
about the conciliatory nature of President Barack Obama's approach,
there were immediate signs of hope to be seen when the new
administration took over. Barely a week after the new administration
came in, Iran undertook another in a series of test launches of
nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, thus violating a United Nations
Security Council resolution calling upon the country to avoid such
provocative gestures in the wake of the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Whereas the previous administration had essentially swept these
illicit moves under the rug, the Trump White House responded by
putting Tehran "on notice." The relevant statement also
took aim at a number of other issues related to the Islamic
theocracy's role in the broader Middle East, including its use of
terrorist proxies as a means of imperialist intervention.
Voters in Iran will be heading to the polls on Friday to
elect a new president, in a crucial election seen by many as a
potential battleground between Reformists and Principlists. The
Reformist front-runner is incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, who
signed 2015's historic nuclear deal with world powers. The
Principlist favourite, on the other hand, is Judge Ebrahim Raisi, who
is the protegee of Ali Khamenei, Iran's powerful supreme leader. The
result of the May 19 election will undoubtedly shape Iran's domestic
politics for the coming years - but will it also effect the country's
foreign policy? Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political
analyst, offers his view on the impact the election might have on
Iran's regional policies and ambitions.
The clergy's decreasing role in Iranian politics is
becoming more visible than ever in the current presidential campaign.
Two major clerical institutions issued their candidate endorsements
much later than expected this year, and the relevance of their
advocacy is questionable. The Association of Qom Seminary Teachers, a
political organization based in the center of Shiite learning,
endorsed hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, as did the Association of Militant
Clerics in Tehran, which is supervised by Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei's Paydari Front and closely linked with powerful
conservative ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. Since 1997,
however, all of the presidential candidates endorsed by these associations
have lost, including to current incumbent Hassan Rouhani in 2013.
Furthermore, they appear to have only limited influence over the
regime's most committed hardliners, while other key religious
authorities tend to refrain from public endorsements altogether.
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