A key presidential election will take place in Iran this Friday 14 June. The last Presidential elections were held in 2009 and set themselves up as a turning point for democratic hopes all around the world, embodied by what many soon started calling the "Green Movement", in a country often dubbed "authoritarian" or even "dictatorial". Indeed, Iran’s elections have increasingly become more and more controlled by the regime since the 1997 vote, when Mohammad Khatami won over the Supreme Leader’s anointed candidate, a former parliamentary speaker. Likewise, in 2005, the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (the Revolutionary Guards) and the Basij (paramilitary volunteer militia to defend Khomeini´s intentions) are believed to have heavily intervened to ensure the incumbent President´s victory against former President and co-founding member of the Islamic Republic, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, just as he has been doing nowadays, was then see...
A blog on Middle Eastern affairs... and everything related to it.