Monday, February 29, 2016

What Iranian Moderates?



Eli Lake, Bloomberg: Iran's Elections Are Magic

If you are following the Iranian elections, prepare to be dazzled. According to major news outlets from the BBC to the Associated Press, the reformists beat the hardliners.

But wait. Didn't Iran's Guardian Council disqualify most of the reformists back in January? Of course it did, but thanks to the magic of Iranian politics, many of yesterday's hardliners are today's reformist.

Take Kazem Jalali. Until this month, Jalali was one of those hardliners whom President Barack Obama had hoped to marginalize with the Iran nuclear deal. Jalali has, for example, called for sentencing to death the two leaders of the Green Movement, who are currently under house arrest. And yet, he ran on the list endorsed by the reformists in Friday's election.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: The AP has a different point of view .... Iranian moderates win majority in parliament, clerical body (AP). What's my take .... if these are Iran's moderates, I hate to know who are the hard-liners who lost.

2 comments:

Don Bacon said...

We live in an age when people must be categorized. Apparently Iran hard-liners are defined by those who opposed the unreasonable nuclear program demands imposed by the US, which doesn't even recognize Iran, there is so much hate.

RRH said...

To paraphrase a qoute by our esteemed Editor,

There are more "moderates" in the "west" than there have ever been in Iran... Or vice versa.