Word: rafsanjani
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...celebration in the massive shrine to Khomeini that is still under construction near the Tehran airport. The ceremony was a feel-good affair, with a marching band and schoolgirls in white chadors with pink butterfly wings. Speakers ranging from Khomeini's grandson to former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani celebrated the endurance of the world's only Islamic system of clerical and democratic rule. And each person who rose to the flower-strewn podium also used the occasion to take a swipe at the U.S., proclaim support for the Palestinian cause, or both...
...Elected President in landslide victories in 1997 and 2001. Ran on a moderate platform that focused on increased social freedom, a stronger democratic process and extensive economic reform. He was especially popular with the country's women and youth and received the endorsement of outgoing president Hashemi Rafsanjani during his first campaign...
...been questions over whether his health will allow him to run for a second term. If he does, he's likely to face a close fight from a united front of pragmatic conservatives, like current parliamentary speaker and former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and reformists like former President Mohammed Khatami. And just as it was the economy that got Ahmadinejad elected in 2005 on a populist chicken-in-every-pot platform, so could the failing economy prove his undoing. Many of Iran's glaring economic deficiencies (including inflation, youth unemployment and, ironically, fuel...
...Iranians are divided on Hillary Clinton, largely basing their views on the record in the Middle East of her husband, who Iranians expect would effectively be her senior foreign policy adviser. Mohammed Atrianfar, an adviser to former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, argues that Bill Clinton has a "peace-seeking image" among Iranians. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, now a Hillary adviser, publicly accepted American responsibility for involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran and subsequent support for the repressive regime of the Shah. Iranian diplomats complain, however, that Clinton also imposed economic sanctions on Iran...
...nothing but a continuation of the conditions that had been created, including the disqualifications. We knew even before the elections were held that about 60% of the seats would go to the conservatives," commented Mohammad Atrianfar, an advisor to technocratic forces around the likes of former President Akbar Rafsanjani. "But the situation speaks for itself," he added, pointing to the fact that the Tehran candidate with the highest votes, current Majles Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, still received a million votes less than the leading reformist candidate in the movement's electoral heyday...