American Foreign Policy Council: Tomorrow, when Iranians go to the polls to elect a new president, all eyes will be on the Islamic Republic. The outcome of Irans presidential race will undoubtedly be important for the legitimacy of the countrys current clerical regime, now embroiled in a thorny diplomatic dispute with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program. But it will be even more decisive for the Iranian people, whose urge for democracy is poised to take a giant step backward.Reading Iran’s Elections Right
American Foreign Policy Council: Tomorrow, when Iranians go to the polls to elect a new president, all eyes will be on the Islamic Republic. The outcome of Irans presidential race will undoubtedly be important for the legitimacy of the countrys current clerical regime, now embroiled in a thorny diplomatic dispute with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program. But it will be even more decisive for the Iranian people, whose urge for democracy is poised to take a giant step backward.‘May God Be Our Guide!’
The Wall Stree Journal – By AYATOLLAH MEHDI HAERI KHORSHIDI: Muslims must understand that participation in Friday’s presidential election in Iran is haram, that is, it is unclean according to religious principles and reasonable logic. Therefore it is forbidden to participate. Whoever would participate in this process would be a full partner in the destruction of Iran by the current regime, a partner in its criminal behavior in the past, in the present and in the future. Ex-French First Lady: Iran preventing rights violations from coming to light
Iran Focus: Geneva, Jun. 16 An international rights group led by the former First Lady of France held a press conference in Geneva on Tuesday to denounce what it called a conspiracyby the Iranian regime to prevent victims of its human rights abuses from presenting their cases to the United Nations.
Ex-French First Lady: Iran preventing rights violations from coming to light
Iran Focus: Geneva, Jun. 16 An international rights group led by the former First Lady of France held a press conference in Geneva on Tuesday to denounce what it called a conspiracyby the Iranian regime to prevent victims of its human rights abuses from presenting their cases to the United Nations.
Facing the Iranian elections
Washington Times: While Iran continues to play an ongoing nuclear ping-pong match with the European Union, risking the nuclear stability of the Middle East and a possible showdown with the West, it is also eagerly preparing for its upcoming elections Friday. Carrying the flag of Islamic democracy, the “rule of law,” progress and change, Iran is attempting to compete in two worlds simultaneously as it hopes to emerge victorious in both. Iran’s sham election
Washington Times – Editorial: As Iranian voters get ready to go to the polls tomorrow in the first round of presidential elections, the avalanche of breathless media hype has already begun. We’ve been treated to plenty of pontificating over the supposed “liberals” (the enlightened ones who tell us what we want to hear about women’s rights and political freedom). Iran’s election is a fraud
The Globe and Mail: Better that voters stay home than endorse the country’s democratic facade, say freedom monitors: Iranian student leader Akbar Atri recently declared that “reform is dead” in his country. His pessimism is understandable. After eight years of futile attempts at democratic reform by the once popular President Mohammad Khatami, Iranians face a political moment as dark as any encountered during their country’s 26 years of theocratic dictatorship.
Khatami warns ‘organised movement’ bent on disrupting Iran polls
AFP: Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on Thursday expressed concern that there was an “organised movement” attempting to disrupt the country’s keenly-fought presidential election. Khatami did not specify who was behind the attempts to interfere with Friday’s vote, but his comments appeared to refer to allegations of smear campaigns and physical harassment reported by candidates across the board. Iran Said to Admit Tests on Path to Atom Arms
New York Times: Iran has admitted that it conducted small-scale experiments to create plutonium, one of the pathways to building nuclear weapons, for five years beyond the date when it previously insisted it had ended all such work, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to report Thursday. In an oral statement to be delivered at a meeting of the nuclear watchdog agency’s board, the agency’s deputy director, Pierre Goldschmidt, will say Iran made the admissions after being confronted with the result of laboratory tests conducted on samples collected from an Iranian nuclear site. Political Lines Blurred for Iran Vote
Washington Post: In a profound departure from a quarter-century of politics grounded in appeals to religious duty, the presidential campaigns unfolding across Iran’s capital betray not the slightest suggestion that this is a theocratic state. Hard-line conservatives are running as reformers. Reformers, after years of being thwarted by hard-liners, are running scared. And most ordinary Iranians are holding themselves aloof — unmoved, they say, by a political transformation that manydismiss as largely cosmetic.
