国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

left corner left corner
China Daily Website

Khamenei faces threat of Rafsanjani and Mashaie

Updated: 2013-05-13 17:33
( Agencies)

DUBAI - After the huge protests that followed the 2009 election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have hoped June polls would quietly install a loyal conservative president, but the surprise candidacies of two major independents may scupper that.

Both Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, the nationalist protégé of rabble-rousing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and Iran's best known political grandee, are seen as a threat to the leader's authority.

Khamenei personally intervened to block Mashaie becoming vice-president in 2009 - such was his disapproval of a man conservatives accuse of leading a "deviant current" within Islam that seeks to undermine the power of Muslim clerics.

Meanwhile, the supreme leader's rivalry with Rafsanjani, a seasoned political operator, goes back decades.

Little can be predicted at this stage but if Mashaie makes it through the vetting process, the election on June 14 could turn into a three-horse race between him, Rafsanjani and one of several "Principlist" candidates - those who are fiercely loyal to Khamenei and the principles of the Islamic Republic.

Even if they fail to win, big-name alternative candidates could attract greater public interest in the election, making Khamenei's plan to see an obedient conservative take office a great deal more difficult, despite his ultimate power and the Revolutionary Guards who back him.

Struggling with sanctions over its disputed nuclear program and embroiled in civil war in Syria, one of its few and closest allies, Iran's leadership must be keen to show the world it has a strong, harmonious, fully functioning political system.

Instead, the race may produce drama and perhaps the unexpected.

The contest not only reprises Rafsanjani's fight with Ahmadinejad's camp, which beat him to the presidency in 2005,but also brings into focus his troubled relationship with Khamenei, which disintegrated over his support for the defeated reformist opposition in 2009.

"Rafsanjani poses a challenge. He has said he wants to save the Islamic Republic by changing the hardline direction the country has taken in the past few years," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran analyst at the University of Hawaii.    

"Principlists who have not been able to come up with a candidate that brings together all their competing wings will have to scramble in search of some sort of unity," she said.

Previous Page 1 2 Next Page

 
...
密云县| 余庆县| 安顺市| 礼泉县| 宝兴县| 潮安县| 仪征市| 靖宇县| 和田市| 梁平县| 拜泉县| 罗城| 江口县| 池州市| 英超| 眉山市| 辽中县| 湟源县| 庆元县| 台北市| 瑞金市| 中卫市| 潍坊市| 佛学| 邹平县| 同仁县| 进贤县| 台东县| 商河县| 息烽县| 侯马市| 焦作市| 岗巴县| 南皮县| 沅江市| 奎屯市| 金山区| 封丘县| 清镇市| 高雄县| 江源县|