In a speech on 07 March 2013 during a ceremony commemorating Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corsp (IRGC) clergymen martyred in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi attacked the Reformist Current in one of the first majour attacks against them in the lead up to the 2013 Iranian presidential election campaign. In the speech, which contained many indirect allusions, he said that Centrists (led by former President Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani), Reformists (led by former President Mohammad Khatami), and the Green Movement (led by former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and former Speaker of the Parliament Mehdi Karroubi) were united in a conspiracy against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [...]

Editor’s note: As part of our Iran Election Watch 2013 series, we are analyzing the key political currents in the Islamic Republic. Today we look at the Ahmadinejad-Mashaei Current in part because of the prominence it has gained in the domestic Iranian and international press as of late. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a lame duck president. His policies, particularly in the economy and foreign policy, are largely perceived as failures by the Iranian public. He is under regular attack from the Iranian parliament and judiciary. Hardliners who supported him to the hilt during his first term now disparage him for his association with what they call the “deviant current”, [...]

Background In a recent long-form analytical article published on the hardline website Jahan News on 27 January 2013, Reza Sarraj laid out what he asserted the United States’ strategy toward the Islamic Republic will be in the next several months. Sarraj is the former head of the student branch of the Basij paramilitary, currently a researcher for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked Imam Hossein University, and a political analyst for a number of hardline Iranian publications including Fars News Agency. He has been accused by Iranian student leader Ali Afshari of having participated in the interrogation of political prisoners in the past. Our article does not cover [...]

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei had in recent months called on Iranian officials as well as the media not to discuss the upcoming 2013 Iranian presidential election too early. Now with the supreme leader’s speech on 08 January 2013, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) political chief Yadollah Javani’s editorial in the organization’s flagship weekly newspaper Sobh-e Sadegh on 07 January, and the supreme leader’s representative to the IRGC Ali Saeedi’s interview with ISNA on 08 January, it appears that the election campaign has finally begun. While Khamenei, Javani, and Saeedi have all made remarks worthy of analysis, Saeedi’s recent comments have raised the most [...]

Between January and June of 2013, IranPolitik will begin a new series of articles under the label Iran Election Watch 2013 to cover the dynamics and implications of the upcoming Iranian presidential election. During this six month period IranPolitik will cover a wide variety of election-related subjects. These include the Islamic Republic’s system for vetting and filtering presidential candidates, the nature of political electioneering and campaigning in Iran, some of the key domestic and foreign policy issues at stake, the relevant political currents, and the candidates. Below we have given brief overviews of the main political currents that could play some role in the election. Each current will [...]