Daily Telegraph: This week’s Iranian presidential election might have new features such as internet campaigning and focus groups, but there is little new about the most likely winner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In an eight-strong field that includes hard-liners and reformers, civilians and former officers, Mr Rafsanjani, a two-term president whose career stretches back three decades, is expected to prevail.
Rafsanjani ahead in poll that holds the key to Iran’s nuclear ambitions
Struggling Iranian cleric offers cash handouts
AFP: One of Iran’s struggling presidential candidates has come up with a novel way to get votes: buy them — openly. Mehdi Karoubi, a mid-ranking cleric and political moderate, has promised that if elected he will start paying everyone over the age of 18 the sum of 500,000 rials (55 dollars) every month — no questions asked.
West backs old rival to end nuclear stand-off
The Times: A machiavellian figure with little concept of human rights, civil liberties or demo-cracy is the default darling among Western diplomats to win the Iranian presidential election on Friday. They see Hojatoleslam Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70, a former President and the front-runner this time, as the only chance to halt Irans nuclear programme.
UN’s ElBaradei demands access to Iran military site
Reuters: The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog urged Iran on Tuesday to allow a team of experts to return to a military site called Parchin, which they inspected once but have since been barred from visiting. “I would … ask Iran to support the agency’s efforts to pursue further its investigation of the Lavizan-Shian and Parchin sites,” Mohamed ElBaradei said, adding that his inspectors wanted to visit “areas of interest” at Parchin.
Iran’s Ruling Clerics Feeling Pressure
AP: To understand the true significance of Iran’s presidential elections look no further than a collection of modest brick buildings decorated with slogans from the Islamic Revolution. Here sits the country’s real power a power that will ride out any outcome Friday: the clerical regime that considers itself answerable only to God.
Trapped in the city of Iran’s ‘desert vampires’
AFP: Fear, pollution and poverty stalk the Iranian industrial city of Pakdasht where the inhabitants have lost faith in successive governments and feel trapped in a hand-to-mouth existence. Just 50 kilometres (30 miles) outside the capital on the desert highway to Afghanistan, Pakdasht is choked with pollution from industrial plants and notorious as the site of some of the worst serial killings in Iran’s modern history.
Iran has failed to provide crucial nuclear information – ElBaradei
AFP: The UN atomic agency’s investigation of Iran will continue as Tehran has failed to provide sufficient information on crucial questions about uranium-enriching centrifuges and nuclear smuggling, the agency’s chief said. Mohamed ElBaradei, who was named Monday to a third-four year term as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, outlined the world’s …
Iran presidential candidate hints at bombings being insider job
Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 14 One of the eight candidates bidding to become president in the upcoming election said that the recent spate of pre-election bombings in Iran were not the work of the main Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK). Members of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation could not be blamed for the bombings, Mostafa Moin told an election rally in the central town of Khomein.
Iran presidential candidate hints at bombings being insider job
Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 14 One of the eight candidates bidding to become president in the upcoming election said that the recent spate of pre-election bombings in Iran were not the work of the main Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK). Members of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation could not be blamed for the bombings, Mostafa Moin told an election rally in the central town of Khomein.
Iran: conservative candidate denies any intention of quitting race
Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 14 – Ali Larijani, one of the eight candidates in Irans upcoming presidential elections, announced today that he had no intention of withdrawing from the race amid speculation that members of the ultra-conservative faction were scrambling to introduce a single candidate.
