I think any talk of a US military strike purely to influence the election result is paranoia.
Can't see anything like that happening.
The sanctions should eventually drag the mullahs to the table.
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I think any talk of a US military strike purely to influence the election result is paranoia.
I think any talk of a US military strike purely to influence the election result is paranoia.
Yeah,how long they leave it is another thing.The longer it goes on the worse it'll be for them domestically.
I don't know. I wouldn't rule it out. Yassamine Mather isn't someone whos prone to hyperbole.
Come on,any strike on Iran has the potential to ignite the whole region.
Attacking Iraq and Afghanistan is one thing,an attack on Iran would be a completely different matter.Im not saying politicians are above such maneuvers to boost their ratings but the unpredictability of what happens then should dissuade the Americans from doing anything.
Come on,any strike on Iran has the potential to ignite the whole region.
Attacking Iraq and Afghanistan is one thing,an attack on Iran would be a completely different matter.Im not saying politicians are above such maneuvers to boost their ratings but the unpredictability of what happens then should dissuade the Americans from doing anything.
Iran: Boycott the vetted election, not the mass protests
The Islamic republic is bitterly divided at the top and subject to crippling international sanctions. Yassamine Mather analyses the political situation in the run-up to the June 14 presidential poll
On the last available day, ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani arrived at the ministry of the interior to register himself as a presidential candidate. Rafsanjani was the Islamic republic’s fourth president, from 1989 to 1997, and is now once again standing as a ‘reformist’. In reality he is the candidate of capitalism and probably still one of the richest men in Iran. Despite that, the announcement that Rafsanjani had entered the race ‘to save the country’ generated an almost unprecedented hysteria.
There are two main explanations for his timing. The principlists (conservative, hard-line supporters of the supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei) are accusing Rafsanjani (also known as the fox because of his political cunning) of holding back before making his dramatic, last-minute move in order to surprise and spread confusion amongst his opponents. There is some truth to this claim: confident of an easy ride, principlists entered the presidential elections with at least seven serious candidates, and another 14 less serious contenders. One assumes that, had they known they would be facing such a figure, they would have tried to rally round a single candidate.
Some of Rafsanjani’s allies have claimed he was waiting for the approval of the supreme leader before putting himself forward. Two weeks ago he said he would only go ahead if Khamenei wanted him to do so, but a few days later there was a slightly different version: he would only put his name forward if the supreme leader did not object to his nomination. His telephone conversation with Khamenei1 or one his close advisers2 (depending on which version you read) only took place at 4.30pm Tehran time on May 11 - less than one and a half hours before the deadline. Rafsanjani’s daughter confirms this.3
Whatever the truth, Rafsanjani, who is now benefiting from the full support of the ‘reformist camp’ led by Mohammad Khatami, is no opponent of the Islamic regime. In fact he does not even claim to be a reformist: he is, in his own words, a “moderate”. Some consider him to be a “pragmatist conservative”4 - someone who tried to mediate between the ‘reformists’ and the conservatives after the debacle of the 2009 elections. Now he has, according to Khatami (Iran’s last ‘reformist’ president) made a “major sacrifice” and come forward to fulfil his duty to the “nation, the Islamic Republic and the faith”. ...
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/iran-boycott-vetted-election-not-mass-protests
Iran: Election farce exposes regime’s crisis
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/iran-election-farce-exposes-regime%E2%80%99s-crisis
The Iranian elections are a travesty that demands a boycott, says Yassamine Mather
Supporters and apologists of Iran’s Islamic Republic in Respect,1 Counterfire2 and the Socialist Workers Party3 have in the past told us that Iran is not a dictatorship. It has democratic elections to determine the president and the composition of its parliament ...
The regime’s 11th presidential elections have demonstrated how far removed this is from reality. Having arrested and imprisoned all serious opposition, including the regime’s own ‘reformists’, the remaining factions, despite being at each other’s throats, are all agreed that only those candidates for president who completely uphold the line of the supreme leader may be permitted to stand. So not only has the favourite of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, been barred. So too has the moderate centrist and former president, ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The omens were not good from the beginning. The supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had disowned his chosen candidate of 2009. Ahmadinejad, who came to power following a controversial vote in elections many Iranians believed to be rigged, is now considered an enemy. In fact, despite the careful vetting of candidates for this and other elected posts on religious grounds, as determined by the constitution, Iran’s clerical dictators, in the form of two supreme leaders, have ended up falling out with almost everyone who has occupied the presidency, beginning with ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who famously turned his back on the regime’s first president, Abulhassan Banisadr.
Rafsanjani, who was Khamenei’s first president, fell out with the supreme leader. So did Mohammad Khatami, a vetted, obedient servant of the regime - he was out of favour by the end of his first term and definitely an enemy by the end of his second. Last but not least, for all his earlier support for Ahmadinejad against leaders of the green ‘reformist’ movement, the supreme leader fell out with his chosen president in the first months of his second term and in the end it could hardly be any worse.
What is different this year is that the entire electoral process has become a joke even before the election campaign has started. Because Khamenei was determined to reduce electioneering from months to only three weeks, it was not until May 21, just 24 days before the polls, that Iranians got to know the final list of candidates. However, Khamenei had apparently been concerned that the absence of any known figure, never mind a controversial one, might lead to a lacklustre campaign and no doubt this played a part in the supreme leader’s quiet encouragement of Rafsanjani to enter the foray. ...
Progressive sentiments amidst reactionary illusions
Gilbert Achcar has strongly objected to being described as a ‘social-imperialist’ in the Weekly Worker. So what is the truth about him? Yassamine Mather investigates
Gilbert Achcar does not fit the description of a stereotypical social-imperialist. First of all, he is passionately pro-Palestinian. His book, The Arabs and the holocaust: the Arab-Israeli war of narratives,1 is a valuable study of the myths created around the formation of the state of Israel. He describes himself as anti-war and indeed his articles written at the time of the US invasion of Iraq were unambiguously anti-war.
Achcar has distanced himself from both conspiracy theorists and those who defend reactionary dictators in the Arab world - those who claim that the enemy of the US is necessarily a friend or that Muslim fundamentalists are the ‘anti-imperialist allies of the international working class’. In Hands Off the People of Iran we have always argued against those who confuse reactionary anti-western rhetoric with anti-imperialism and we recommend Achcar’s article, ‘Eleven theses on the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism’.2 Achcar’s stance on such questions has been consistent. He is also right when he argues against the view held by many on the left that US wars in the Middle East are all to do with oil.
The only time I met Achcar (and shared a platform with him) was at a conference in Lausanne in 2003.3 The main difference in our two approaches lay in my insistence that the left should support the Iranian working class’s call for the overthrow of the capitalist Islamic Republic of Iran. (From memory GA was less critical of Tehran. He emphasised the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam, the latter being the religion of the oppressed, he said.)
Apart from that instance, as far as Iran is concerned, he has made some useful comments: for example, in criticising president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s holocaust denial, in clarifying the progressive characteristics of the Iranian opposition movement in 20094 and there is no doubt that until 2011 all his writing fell on the right side of the thin line between opposing both imperialism and the Islamic regime, on the one hand, and support for regime change from above, be it in the form of a military intervention or sanctions, on the other.
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/progressive-sentiments-amidst-reactionary-illusions
Iran: No let-up on sanctions
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/iran-no-let-sanctions
How long after the inauguration of Rowhani before disillusionment sets in? Yassamine Mather discusses the limitations of Hassan Rowhani
Iran’s new president, Hassan Rowhani, will take office on August 3. He faces major internal as well as international problems. It will be interesting to see how a man who describes himself as a ‘centrist’ will try to reconcile the warring factions of the Islamic Republic, but also the increasing divide between ordinary Iranians - victims of sanctions, poor economic management, as well political repression - with an increasingly paranoid religious dictatorship.
However, the new president’s biggest and most immediate problem will be the nuclear issue. He was, after all, elected on the basis of promises to ‘resolve’ it and thus remove sanctions. In the month and a half since his election he has already faced some serious setbacks, particularly over sanctions.
Iran is now facing more sanctions than the day he was elected - including the academic boycott of research by Iranian scientists and engineers. They have only just begun to take effect, even though they were passed by the US Congress and approved by the Senate in early 2013.
In what is an unprecedented move against Iranian academics, major publishers are instructing journal editors that, in accordance with US department of the treasury regulations, they should not be involved in the management and processing of any manuscript through peer review with any author or co-author who is acting directly (as an employee) or indirectly on behalf of the government of Iran - which includes “any political subdivision, agency or instrumentality thereof, [including] the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. ...
CU 2013: The middle east after the Iranian election
Speakers: Moshe Machover Yassamine Mather
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/cu-2013-middle-east-after-iranian-election
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