Iran Focus: Hojatoleslam Mehdi Mahdavi-Karroubi, a mid-ranking cleric, is currently a member of the State Expediency Council and an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Karroubi was Majlis (parliament) Speaker from 1989 to 1992. He took up the same post again from 2000 to 2004 replacing a leading conservative, Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri, who was instead appointed an adviser to Khamenei.

Iran Focus:Mehralizadeh, perhaps the most obscure candidate in the race, is a Vice-President in the present administration of President Mohammad Khatami, serving as the head of the National Sports Organization. Of the eight candidates cleared by the Guardians Council to run in the upcoming June 17 Presidential elections, Mehralizadeh is one of five former top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. He was was a regional commander of the ideological army from 1979 to 1981.

Iran Focus: Moin served as chancellor of Shiraz University from 1981 to 1982 and has been a member of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council since 1983. Moin was a Majlis (parliament) deputy from 1982 to 1984, and again from 1988 to 1989. Moin served as the Culture and Higher Education Minister from 1989 to 1993 and served as Higher Education Minister from 1997 to 2003. Students and professors in Shiraz University in the early 1980s have signed a petition against Moin, saying that as chancellor, he actively purged dissidents and all those who did not conform to the dominant Islamic fundamentalist ideology.

Reuters: Two small devices hidden in rubbish bins exploded in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Monday, causing no casualties, police said.
They said the first explosion damaged some cars and broke windows, while there was no damage from the second.

The Times: Gelled hair, shades, jeans and attitude: the youth
of Isfahan were hanging out in the neon-lit night of Nazar
Street doing what young men do best — smoking, posing and watching the girls. But they were feeling the pressure of their idle delight. “We don’t have any privacy,” began Irbad, 21, who is unemployed. . “We’re not free in the street, we’re not free to party, we’re not free at home. They can search us at any time.”

Editor and Publisher: Iran was rocked by bombings on Sunday, killing at least nine and wounding more than 30, as dozens of journalists from around the world gathered in advance of the presidential election this Friday. One of those journalists, actor Sean Penn–covering the events for the San Francisco Chronicle–was involved in a separate incident, and had his video camera confiscated for a time.