via LobeLog
by Farideh Farhi
After more than a month of intense speculation in Iran, Hassan Rouhani’s nominees for 18 cabinet posts were announced on the day of the new president’s inauguration. By law, Iran’s presidents have two weeks after taking office to offer their nominees to the parliament for confirmation hearings. However, as [...]
via LobeLog
by Farideh Farhi
Paul Pillar has aptly explained why the vote this week in the House of Representatives for even more sanctions against Iran (H.R. 850) is at odds with the stated US foreign policy objective of changing Iran’s nuclear policies. While the Senate is unlikely to go along, at [...]
by Farideh Farhi
via IPS News
Iran’s June 14 presidential election results, announced the day after, was nothing less than a political earthquake.
The centrist Hassan Rowhani’s win was ruled out when Iran’s vetting body, the Guardian Council, qualified him as one of the eight candidates on May 21.
Furthermore, a first-round win [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
I read with great interest the writing of Washington’s new Iran expert, Dennis Ross. With a title like “Don’t Discount the Iranian Election”, I thought, wow! Iran’s contested and improvised politics are finally being taken seriously. What else could that mean other than an acknowledgment that [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
It is fair to say that since Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s disqualification, a good section of the Iranian pubic has been in a state of shock and silence. A friend who is also a keen observer of Iranian politics described the mood not only in Tehran but also the [...]
by Farideh Farhi
via IPS News
With the disqualification of former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by a vetting body, the Guardian Council, Iran’s presidential campaign is opening with many in the country in a state of shock.
Although the eight qualified candidates offer [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
Okay, it is time to admit that the only thing predictable about Iranian politics these days is its unpredictability!
There are people who know Iran well and as early as a few months ago thought that the next president of the country was already decided by the powers [...]
via Lobe Logby Farideh Farhi
Iran’s June 14 presidential election, only about a month and a half away, will get ample attention — and more than a dose of speculation — from everyone interested in the big picture items: whether there will be an actual choice of candidates, whether the result will have an [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
From the looks of it, the second round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a complete failure, with both sides unable to even find a common language to begin a process of give and take. The sense I get is that the US side is rather [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
Others have written about the gist of a new report by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) on the impact of sanctions (here, here and here), so I am not going to provide a summary. But some points are worth reiterating. As Stephen Walt points out, the report [...]
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