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Final list of presidential candidates out

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:59:47 +0000

The Ministry on Wednesday released the names of the approved hopefuls. The candidates are Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili; former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi; President of the Center for Strategic Research of the Expediency Council Hassan Rohani; former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati; former First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref; Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei; Iranian lawmaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel; and Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.

The eight individuals were approved by Iran’s top constitutional supervisory body, the Guardian Council, after a 10-day vetting process.

The Council has not approved, among others, two-term former President Ali Akbar Heshemi Rafsanjani, former Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a close aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranian reformist candidate Aref, who is also an academic, says “Livelihood, Dignity and Rationality” is his campaign’s slogan.

Independent candidate Gharazi says he is running on a platform of “Administration against Inflation.”

Haddad-Adel, a principlist candidate, says he will form his cabinet based on “Piety and Good Judgment” if he is elected president.

Jalili, another Iranian principlist candidate, believes in the discourse of the Islamic Revolution as a means to promote national progress.

Principlist candidate Qalibaf, a former military and police commander, says “Better Economy and Life for People” is his battle cry.

Rezaei, an independent candidate, says he is campaigning on a platform of “Political Ethics and Economic Efficiency.”

“Moderation, Rationality and Acumen” is the slogan of reformist candidate Rohani, who is currently a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts.

Principlist candidate Velayati says his election campaign centers on “Moralism and Management Stability.”

The approved candidates have now three weeks to run their electoral campaigns, according to Iran’s Interior Ministry.

YH/NN/HJL

‘Europe faces decade of stagnation’

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:49:54 +0000

Mark Carney issued the warning on Tuesday while making a speech to the Montreal board of trade.

“Europe remains in recession, with economic activity constrained by fiscal austerity, low confidence and tight credit conditions,” said Carney.

He added, “Deep challenges persist in its financial system. Without sustained and significant reforms, a decade of stagnation threatens.”

Carney was vague on details however he pointed out that there are currently few institutional mechanisms within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMI) that could create shocks like the one Spain was hit by when its economy collapsed after the banking system and real estate market crashed.

This was Carney’s final speech as Canada’s central bank governor before taking the role of the head of Bank of England on July 1.

On April 16, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged the eurozone to avoid a long stagnation by calling on the European Central Bank to lower its key interest rate and to consider other stimulus measures, adding that efforts to cut budget deficits should be slowed.

Europe plunged into a financial crisis in early 2008. The worsening debt crisis has forced the EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms.

CAH/PR

Israeli soldier killed in Golan Heights

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:41:35 +0000

The 19-year-old soldier, Roey Yisrael Alfi, was a member of the Engineering Corps. He was participating in an advanced training course near Moshav Yonatan when an old mine went off.

A senior army source said that the mine exploded for unknown reasons.

Ground Forces Commander Major General Guy Tzur appointed a committee of inquiry to investigate the incident.

The occupied Golan Heights is an area surrounded by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, Mount Hermon in the north, and the Raqqad Wadi in the east.

Israel has occupied the western two thirds of this region. Syria controls the eastern third.

Tel Aviv has recently boosted military activities in the area, where clashes between Syrian forces and foreign-sponsored militants have spiked dramatically.

The Israeli military has set up a “military field hospital” at military outpost 105 in the occupied Golan Heights to treat wounded militants fighting against the government in neighboring Syria.

IA/PR

US senate votes to arm militants in Syria

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:33:31 +0000

On Tuesday, democratic chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez, introduced the bill which authorizes the US government to directly back foreign sponsored militant groups with arms.

The bill, which also authorizes a 250-million dollar fund to help the transition of the Syrian government, was supported by both the Democrats and Republicans with a 15-3 vote.

This is the first time Washington directly supports the foreign sponsored militants.

“Vital national interests are at stake and we cannot watch from the sidelines,” Menendez said.

This comes while Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.) warned his fellow senators of the dangers of arming rebel forces whose intentions are unknown, saying “I think we have to ask the question, who are we arming?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think we know who we’re arming. The truth is it changes every day,” he added.

The crisis in Syria began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

On Saturday, President Bashar al-Assad said militants from 29 different countries are fighting against the government in Syria. He stated that foreign intervention is the most important factor aggravating the situation in his country.

IA/PR

US-led forces kill 2 Afghan students

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:54:53 +0000

<br /> PressTV – US-led foreign forces kill two seminary students in Afghanistan <br />

SZH/HJL

French man kills self inside Notre Dame

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:27:24 +0000

Police confirmed that Dominique Venner, an award-winning essayist, shot himself in front of the alter of the church after leaving behind a letter denouncing gay marriage and saying new spectacular actions are needed to wake up the nation.

“I believe it is necessary to sacrifice myself to break with the lethargy that is overwhelming us,” Venner wrote in his letter and continued, “I am killing myself to awaken slumbering consciences.”

At the time of the shooting, the cathedral had about 1,500 visitors who were evacuated without incident.

France’s far-right Front National party leader Marine Le Pen says the suicide was a political gesture.

The Tuesday shooting came only four days after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a 50-year-old man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic primary school.

On May 18, French President Francois Hollande signed into law a bill legalizing gay marriages and child adoption by same-sex couples. The law was approved despite a huge number of protests against the legalization.

CAH/PR

A Founder of the Revolution Is Barred From Office, Shocking Iranians – New York Times

AbearJspand — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:26:46 +0000

“They say a revolution eats its children,” said Mehdi, 27, a teacher. “But in the case of Rafsanjani the revolution has eaten its father.”

The exclusion of Mr. Rafsanjani and another thorn in the conservatives’ side, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, could foreshadow even greater repercussions, analysts and commentators said.

Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic republic has been characterized by opposing power centers competing constantly and often publicly, a back-and-forth that gave ordinary citizens and private business owners the ability to navigate between the groups.

Barring further surprises, the winner of the June election will now be drawn from a slate of conservative candidates in Iran’s ruling camp, a loose alliance of Shiite Muslim clerics and Revolutionary Guard commanders. That would put the last major state institution under their control — the first time since the 1979 revolution that all state institutions were under the firm control of one faction.

Analysts have long speculated — and some conservative clerics have confirmed — that the ruling faction is determined to abolish the office of president, which has served as a locus of opposition under the populist incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and before him the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who pushed for more personal freedoms. While by no means certain, it is now a greater possibility.

At the very least, the anti-climactic election campaign seems likely to further reinforce the alienation of the urban classes, which make up a large portion of the electorate and mostly gave up on politics after the suppression of the 2009 uprising following Mr. Ahmadinejad’s re-election, widely dismissed as fraudulent. A major boycott of the vote could further undercut the government’s already diminished legitimacy.

The remaining candidates reflect the different shades of gray that now make up Iran’s establishment, a coalition of conservative clerics and Revolutionary Guard commanders known as the traditionalists. Of the eight who were selected — out of the 700 hopefuls who signed up — only one, Hassan Rowhani, a former nuclear negotiator, has even slightly different stances from the traditionalists.

Three of the qualified candidates have direct links to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a close adviser and a relative by marriage; Ali Akbar Velayati, his foreign policy adviser; and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili.

A fourth, Tehran’s mayor, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, has long presented himself as a technocrat but last week boasted publicly of having beaten protesting students as a police commander.

All of them say they are ready to fix the economy by using a “revolutionary mind-set” and to solve the nuclear dispute with the Western powers by convincing them that Iran’s position is just.

If history is borne out, one of the candidates, possibly Mr. Rowhani, who is close to Mr. Rafsanjani, will try to tap into votes that would have gone to the two disqualified candidates. Indeed, Mr. Rowhani has already said that if elected he would start direct talks with the United States, a popular theme among dissatisfied urban voters.

For many, though, the elections are shaping up as a shoo-in for someone close to Ayatollah Khamenei.

“Why are they even bothering to organize these elections?” asked a retired army officer, who like others interviewed for this article spoke anonymously out of fear of reprisals. “It seems everything has already been decided.”

It remains possible that one or both of the disqualified candidates will be reinstated. While they are not allowed to appeal, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, the secretary of the Guardian Council, a panel loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei that made the decision, told state news media on Tuesday that Ayatollah Khamenei could reinstate them by decree. He did that in the 2005 elections with a reformist candidate, Mostafa Moin, who came in fifth.

There was no immediate reaction from Mr. Rafsanjani. One of his daughters, Faezeh Hashemi, who was released from prison in March after spending six months there for ”anti-regime propaganda,” did not return calls seeking comment.

Mr. Mashaei said he would fight the decision.

“I consider my disqualification as unjust, and will follow it up through the supreme leader,” he told the Fars news agency.

Just a week ago, a pro-Rafsanjani columnist, Sadegh Zibakalam, predicted that the thousands of government managers, university professors and others in the middle class who once supported the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, would rapidly fall in line behind Mr. Rafsanjani. “The feeling of happiness, fervor and enthusiasm that Rafsanjani’s registration created will in the coming days gradually turn into a serious determination throughout the country to turn up at the ballot boxes on 14 June.”

Instead, Mr. Rafsanjani’s disqualification appeared to mark the end of their aspiration to bring change through the ballot box rather than through street protests.

For Mr. Rafsanjani himself, another shot at the presidency at the age of 78 seems not only physically, but politically, impossible. Tuesday’s disqualification also seemed like an official repudiation of his ideas of a liberal economy and more freedoms.

The question remains of what President Ahmadinejad will do now that his protégé, Mr. Mashaei, has been sidelined. His legacy has been tainted by his close relationship with Mr. Mashaei, whom traditionalists call a “deviant” for what they view as his liberal ideas on Islam. Many in his faction have charges of corruption being drawn against them, and the Revolutionary Guards have already hinted that they are ready to do whatever it takes, including the arrest of associates of Mr. Ahmadinejad, if they feel the revolution is under threat.

Iran and Hezbollah Support for Syria Complicates Peace-Talk Strategy – New York Times

AbearJspand — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:26:41 +0000

With White House support, Secretary of State John Kerry has pushed for an international conference in Geneva in June that would bring representatives of the Syria government together with the opposition.

The aim would be to negotiate a transitional government that would take over if President Bashar al-Assad vacates his post and to put an end to the civil war that has killed more than 80,000.

But the stepped-up support Mr. Assad has received from Iran and Hezbollah in recent months appears to have fortified his belief that he can hang on to power and prevail militarily — or at least control a strategically significant swath of the country.

The limited assistance the United States and its partners have so far been willing to provide the rebels seems unlikely to prompt Mr. Assad to look for a political way out, critics maintain.

And persistent divisions within the ranks of the Syrian opposition, which is again seeking to select a new political leadership, can only be a source of comfort to the Syrian president.

In an interview on Tuesday, Gen. Salim Idris, the head of the opposition’s military command, suggested that he was too preoccupied with the brutal fighting in the city of Qusayr even to worry about attending the Geneva meeting.

“Let the regime, Iran and Lavrov go to Geneva,” he said, referring to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who played a major role with Mr. Kerry in organizing the session.

The big issue is whether negotiations can succeed if the United States, its allies and the Syrian opposition do not have more leverage over a seemingly implacable Assad government.

“We have long said — and the secretary has said — that it is important to change Bashar al-Assad’s calculations in order to get to a political settlement,” a senior State Department official told reporters Tuesday in a conference call.

Mr. Kerry planned to meet Wednesday with members of the Syrian opposition and fellow foreign ministers in Amman, Jordan, to review the Syrian situation.

“One of the things we’ll be talking about here in Amman tomorrow is what else needs to be done with respect to the military balance on the ground,” the official added.

As the Geneva meeting approaches, however, it is Mr. Assad’s backers who appear to be pulling out all of the stops.

“Iran’s role and Hezbollah’s role has grown substantially over the last couple of months,” the State Department official said.

The number of Iranian weapons shipments to Syria declined after Mr. Kerry pressed Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq during a March visit to Baghdad to order more inspections of Iranian flights that crossed Iraqi airspace.

But after a lull, the flights have started up again. In early May, Israel carried out an airstrike against a warehouse full of Fateh-110 surface-to-surface missiles at Damascus International Airport that were flown from Iran on three cargo planes and that the Israelis feared would be transferred to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that is supported and equipped by Iran.

That led to a short break in the flights, but by May 11, the Iranian flights had resumed, according to American officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Syrian opposition officials have also told the United States that Iranians have joined Hezbollah in the fighting in Qusayr, a development American officials said they could not independently verify but that they suggested was plausible.

According to American intelligence reports, there are some 200 Iranian paramilitary Quds Force personnel in Syria. Qassim Suleimani, the Quds Force commander, recently ordered Iranian artillery and armor officials to help Mr. Assad’s regime, American officials say.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Muscat, Oman, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington. Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

Maliki orders Iraqi security shakeup

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:22:55 +0000

“After consultation with security officials, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, today (Tuesday) issued orders… for changes in the operations commands and the leadership of the divisions,” a statement on the Iraqi prime minister’s website said on Tuesday.

“We are about to make changes in the high and middle positions of those responsible for security, and the security strategy,” Maliki told journalists in Baghdad late on Monday.

“I assure the Iraqi people that they (terrorists) will not be able to return us to the sectarian conflict,” which killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq during the past years, the Iraqi prime minister stated.

On Tuesday, a total of 42 people were killed and dozens of others injured in several attacks across Iraq, according to Iraqi security and hospital sources.

A car bomb targeted a mosque in the west of Baghdad, killing 11 people and injuring 21 others.

Six more people were killed and 18 others were injured by a bomb that detonated outside a cafe in the Doura district of southern Baghdad.

Eight people, including two policemen, were killed in bombings and shootings in Diyala Province.

In the town of Kanaan, about 75 kilometers northeast of the capital, two roadside bombs went off in quick succession, claiming three lives.

In the city of Kirkuk, three roadside bombs killed six people, shredding their bodies.

Two car bombs killed three people in the town of Tuz Khurmato, which is located in Kirkuk Province.

A bomber killed three soldiers at a checkpoint in the town of Tarmiya, north of Baghdad.

And in the eastern town of Khalis, gunmen broke into a house and killed a couple.

The incidents are the latest in a string of attacks that have left more than 300 people dead this month.

GJH/HJL

Hope for saving US tornado survivors dim

Houty — Wed, 22 May 2013 02:55:36 +0000

“As long as we are here… we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said on Tuesday.

But officials believe more bodies are underneath the rubble.

“I truly expect that they’ll find more today,” Oklahoma City Medical Examiner Office Spokeswoman Amy Elliott said.

Elliott cautioned Tuesday that officials could see as many as 40 additional fatalities, and that bodies may have been taken to funeral homes instead of authorities.

Rescue crews are sifting through rubble in the search for survivors, painting X’s on buildings to make sure nothing is being overlooked.

“We will rebuild and we will regain our strength,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as a “heartbreaking experience” that is “hard to look at.”

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, forecast more stormy weather Tuesday in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, including the Moore, Oklahoma, area where the tornado hit.

The tornado, estimated to be up to two-mile wide, tore through Moore on Monday afternoon, a community of 41,000 people about ten miles south of Oklahoma City. The twister left at least 24 dead — including nine children.

Fallin said during a news conference on Tuesday that many houses and buildings have been reduced to “sticks and bricks.” Homes were seen crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside. At least 38,000 in the area remain without power.

Many land lines to stricken areas were down after the tornado hit, and cellphone networks were congested. The storm was so massive that it will take time to establish communications between rescuers and state officials, Fallin said.

Monday’s powerful tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region in May 1999; the storm then had winds clocked at 480 kilometers per hour.

EKA/MHB