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The Iranian Presidential Race Heats Up? |
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Wouldn’t it be ironic if after all this debate about whether or not American leaders should meet Iranian ones “without preconditions,” we find President Obama sitting across the table next year from…someone other than Ahmadinejad?
Mehdi Karroubi, former speaker in parliament, announced today he will challenge Ahmadinejad in next June’s elections. Observers are taking the challenge seriously:
The announcement confirms that Mr Ahmadinejad will face a serious challenge for the presidency in next summer’s election.
He could well become the first president in the history of the Islamic republic not to be re-elected after his first four-year term.
Mehdi Karroubi is a reformist and something of a populist who offered anyone in Iran a $50 (£29) hand-out last time he stood for election.
There is certainly plenty of opposition to President Ahmadinejad.
The economy is in a mess and the president’s foreign policy is becoming increasingly controversial.
The big question is whether the opposition can rally around a single credible candidate.
As Mr Karroubi announced his candidacy, the first thing everyone wanted to know was whether he would stand down if the former president, Mohammad Khatami, decided to run for election himself.
And indeed that may happen. Yesterday Khatami kicked off a high-profile conference in Teheran. A lot of big dogs were in attendance:
The high-level participants — including the former secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan; the former Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi; the former Irish president, Mary Robinson; and the former president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio — demonstrated Mr. Khatami’s popularity in the West.
Mr. Ahmadinejad, by contrast, has isolated Iran with his hostile words. He now faces serious domestic challenges because of a weak economy.
A strike in Iran’s traditional bazaars, including the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, continued Monday in protest of a new sales tax.
Mr. Khatami, president from 1997 to 2005, has recently criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political and economic performance.
The leadership of the Middle East’s democracies - and yes, we should give Iran partial membership in that category - is changing. Tzipi Livni is getting closer to forming a coalition government and thereby becoming Israel’s prime minister. if Ahmadinejad loses, and Obama wins, the players in the Middle East could be quite different even nine months from now.
Here’s one election where calling your opponent a terrorist might actually be appropriate.
Everybody hopes Ahamdinejad stay far from that persident office, but still we should be awar Reformists are not so popular in Iran and Ahamadinejad became the persident becuse of vast bycot by the people, near 60% of people stayed at home and then he came out of the ballots with about 55&!
Acctualy nobody takes him serouicly, he is just a show man and nobody belives if Khatami, Karobi or even Jesus will be the next perisdent anything with that Islamic regime and its structer realy change!