AFP: They may now be wearing suits, but the line-up of candidates standing in Iran’s presidential election next month includes a roll-call of the Islamic republic’s Revolutionary Guards. While members of Iran’s military are barred by the constitution from direct involvement in politics, the issue is again being debated between those advocating the need for a strong leader and detractors fearing a militarisation of the regime. Swapping fatigues for suits, ex-Guards target Iran’s presidency
AFP: They may now be wearing suits, but the line-up of candidates standing in Iran’s presidential election next month includes a roll-call of the Islamic republic’s Revolutionary Guards. While members of Iran’s military are barred by the constitution from direct involvement in politics, the issue is again being debated between those advocating the need for a strong leader and detractors fearing a militarisation of the regime. May 1st Demonstrations in Iran: Photo report
May 1st Demonstrations in Iran: Photo report
Iran’s Khamenei to US: nuclear programme is none of your business
AFP: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday in comments apparently directed at the United States that the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme was “none of your business”. In a speech carried on state television, the all-powerful Khamenei also said that the June presidential election would not bring any change to Iran’s determination to press on with
its controversial atomic actvities.
Iran ready to ignore US nuclear countdown
The Observer: Across a landscape scattered with snow, we drove along silent roads, past pitted fields, until the first gun tower came into view. A whole line of them followed the contours of the mountainside. What they’re defending lies beneath, a warren of rooms and tunnels the size of eight football pitches. It’s home to Iran’s most sensitive nuclear facility, Natanz. New airport sparks Iran-British diplomatic row
Reuters: Hardline Iranian politicians called on the government on Sunday to sever all diplomatic ties with Britain in a rapidly escalating row over the opening of a new airport serving Tehran. Britain and Canada issued warnings on Friday to travellers to avoid using the Imam Khomeini International Airport, which opened on Saturday, due to concerns the runway may be unsafe. Uranium work to restart in days
The Sunday Times: IRAN may resume work on its nuclear programme at Esfahan as early as next week, the countrys top nuclear negotiator was quoted as saying yesterday. Hassan Rohani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, reportedly said it was likely that unspecified nuclear activities related to uranium enrichment would begin again. From the ‘axis of evil’ to the axles of Rover, Iran looks to the West
The Independent on Sunday: The news that Iranian companies could be interested in buying what’s left of the collapsed MG Rover has raised plenty of eyebrows. That Iran, part of George Bush’s “axis of evil”, could be the final destination for the car maker shows how low it has sunk, was the typical response. MG Rover’s plight is indeed desperate. But it should not come as such a surprise that Iranian companies could be interested in buying it. Shias ‘infiltrated by Iran’ to control Iraqi police force
Daily Telegraph: Control of Iraq’s police force was handed to a Shia Arab party with historic links to Iran yesterday despite warnings by American intelligence that Iranian agents have infiltrated the group’s paramilitary wing. The announcement that Baqir Soulagh, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), is to be interior minister risks alienating Iraq’s Sunni Arab community whose support is needed if the insurgency is to be defeated. Iran says no to foreign election observers
AFP: Iran said on Saturday that it will not accept any foreign monitoring of its June 17 presidential elections, asserting that international observers were neither permitted nor required. “Observing the elections is a red line that no foreigner should cross,” said Gholam Hossien Elham, a spokesman for Iran’s Guardians Council — a hardline-controlled political watchdog.
