Iran News Round Up

(Thanks to Ali Alfoneh for his compilation)

Politics: 2008 Parliamentary Elections

• Election participation stats from the Ministry of Interior
• Asr-e Iran’s analyst predicts inflation in the provinces harms the Ahmadinejad campaign outside Tehran.
• Ahmadinejad wins the popularity contest published by Ya Lesarat al-Hossein weekly, the mouthpiece of the Ansar-e Hezbollah vigilante group.
• 680 candidates abstained from running for parliamentary elections.
• Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts: “Non-participation in elections is the worst of all cures.”
• Mirdamadi, general secretary of reformist participation front, says the parliamentary elections are unfair, unjust and deviate from the line of Khomeini.
• Hojjat al-Eslam Mousavi Lari protests against the conditions of politics for the reformist camp.
• The candidate from Kerman, Mohammad-Reza Poor-Ebrahimi’s permit for candidacy for the parliamentary elections was withdrawn 12 hours before the elections.
• Ahmadinejad, in OIC meeting in Dakar, hopes to return to Tehran to vote in parliamentary elections.
• Ayatollah Makarem-e Shirazi: “Participation in elections is vajeb [mandatory].”
• Supreme Leader Khamenei: “Elect candidates who will make it easier for the government to serve.”
• According to Asr-e Iran, the CV’s of the parliamentary candidates in the Islamic Republic contains former positions as diverse as “Chief of the Headquarters for the Dissolution of the Soviet Union,” and “Head of the Iraq Headquarters.”
• The reformist camp protests against the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, and its newspaper Jam-e Jam’s misrepresentation of the reformist alliance’s candidate list.
• One of the candidates in Khorramabad arranged a party with singing and dancing traditional Lori and Kurdish dances on the last night of his campaign.
• Political activist Abbas Abdi says participation in elections is meaningless.
• A female parliamentary candidate in Semnan says Fatemeh-ye Zahra, daughter of the prophet Muhammad, has asked her to declare her candidacy to the Iranian parliament from the constituency of Garmsar, the birthplace of Ahmadinejad.
• Reformist theoretician, Sa’id Hajjarian warns against degeneration of the elections in the Islamic Republic into a superficial phenomenon.
• Poll releases before election even starts: 60 percent will participate.

Political: General

• Maryam Firooz, wife of the last General Secretary of the Tudeh [The Communist Party of Iran], Kianouri dies.

Diplomacy

• Supreme Leader Khamenei claims the latest U.N. Security Council Resolution was designed to reduce popular participation in parliamentary elections, and urged the electorate to vote for those who have made known their clear boundaries with the enemy.

Security and Military

• Asr-e Iran reports of clashes between Iranian security forces and “counter revolutionary” and “terrorist cells” in Iranian Kurdish areas.

Religion, Society, and Culture

• Shi’a News publishes the edicts of Shi’i sources of emulation on when a girl is mature and ready for marriage:
• Ayatollah Khamenei: “After the end of the ninth solar year of the girl, in case having had a period, or if there has been pubic hair growth in the special place.”
• Ayatollah Sistani: “The end of nine lunar years.”
• Ayatollah Rowhani: “At the end of the ninth year and by entering the tenth year.”
• Ayatollah Shahroudi: “At the end of the ninth lunar year and by entering the tenth year, girls enter the age described by the Shari’a.”
• Ayatollah Mazaheri: “The colloquium of the religious scholars agree that for girls it is the end of the 9th year, and for boys 15.”
• Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani condemns Iranian religious innovator Abdol-Karim Soroush’s claim that the Quran is not the word of God, but the words of the prophet Muhammad as an act “worse than the Satanic Verses of Rushdie.” He adds: “If Soroush’ deed is in bad faith, the duty of the Muslims is clear [Soroush should be killed].”

Photos of the Day

• Sweeping up election posters before the election. Campaigning.
• Flat-screen TV comes to Iran. Here and, more importantly, here.