Iranians in several European capitals have held demonstrations in the wake of their country’s elections and the subsequent unrest there.
Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba reports from London, where Iranians in the UK have rallied protesting what they claim was a “stolen election”.
Carol Giacomo, a member of The New York Times editorial board, and Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, join Martin Savidge to discuss the top stories of the week. They look at the election in Iran and changing leadership in North Korea, where two American journalists were also sentenced to 12 years of hard labor earlier this week.
This discussion took place on Friday, June 12, 2009 but was posted today.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state for the first time – but with tough conditions and a refusal to stop building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, a top Iranian nuclear official dismissed concerns over his countrys nuclear program as politically motivated gestures by some countries. But the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran needs to do much more to prove to the world that it is not developing a nuclear arsenal.
That possibility — a potential military dimension to Irans nuclear program — greatly worries Israel, which has hinted that it might attack Iran to disable its nuclear capabilities.
Daniel Levy, the co-director of the Middle East task force at the New America Foundation and a former adviser to the Israeli government, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Israels reaction to the Iranian election, Netanyahus endorsement of a Palestinian state and hopes for progress in the peace process.
There are no independent election monitors in Iran as the Islamic Republic does not permit international monitoring of its elections. Still, those of us who study and monitor elections can discern a number of abnormalities from afar. To begin with, no one would describe the Iranian electoral process as being “free, fair and transparent.” Nonetheless, Iranian elections have been competitive within the rules proscribed by the Guardian Council that is composed of clerics and judges. Candidates must be approved by this body. For the 2009 cycle, Iran’s tenth presidential elections overall, four candidates were allowed to run. In the 1997 cycle, 1,014 candidates registered to run, six were selected.
Iran’s various elections are governed by both the Iranian constitution of 1979 and specific electoral laws that have been enacted over the 30 year history of the Islamic Republic. According to the Presidential Election Law, Iran has two main bodies involved in the electoral process – the Guardian Council and the Ministry of Interior (MoI). The MoI is responsible for administration of elections while the Guardian Council is mandated with the broad supervisory role.
The major problem with Iran’s electoral system, other than the aforementioned limit on who can run for office, is that there is no independent electoral council. Rather the Ministry of Interior runs the elections. As the Ministry is under the direct control of the President, there is a conflict of interest. Most observers of Iran are fully aware the MoI is able to manipulate, massage if you will, results to a small degree generally around 2 to 3% percentage points. The issue in this election is that intervention seems to have been a massive scale perhaps upwards of 15 percentage points.