Iran's supreme leader orders review of disqualified electoral candidates
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's supreme leader has ordered a review of the disqualifications of thousands of candidates from legislative elections, a government spokesman said Wednesday, in a bid to defuse a standoff with reformers threatening a boycott.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's move came a day after he sided with hardliners and rejected a request by reformist President Mohammad Khatami for the Feb. 20 elections to be postponed.
Khatami's government has said it would not stage voting unless the disqualifications are overturned. However, the powerful, hardline Guardian Council has refused to withdraw its disqualification of about 30 per cent of the 8,200 people who applied to run in the polls.
Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said Khamenei decided on the review, the second in less than a month, in a meeting with Khatami on Tuesday.
"We hope to achieve a final result as soon as possible that would allow us to hold an election with a huge turnout," Ramezanzadeh told reporters.
"I think we can expect some positive results tomorrow," Ramezanzadeh added. He did not elaborate.
Ramezanzadeh's announcement was the first in days that suggested the elections might go ahead as planned. On Tuesday, scores of reformist legislators called for the elections to be postponed.
Also, Iran's provincial governors said in a statement posted on the Interior Ministry's website that they would not hold the elections, suggesting that hardliners would have to use the military to run the polls.
The Guardian Council, which is appointed by Khamenei, has disqualified more than 2,400 people from the polls. Reformers have protested the disqualifications as an attempt to fix the elections in favour of conservatives. Hardliners have denied any political motives, arguing that the disqualified lacked the criteria to stand. But the disqualified include 80 incumbent legislators.
Ramezanzadeh said the review would be conducted by the Intelligence Ministry.
A cabinet minister indicated that most of the candidates, but not all, were likely to be restored to the ballot by the review.
"A large number are expected to be reinstated," said Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, a pro-reform minister told reporters Wednesday.
While Ramezanzadeh and Zanganeh sounded upbeat about the review's prospects, reformists have been disappointed before. Early last month, Khamenei urged the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualifications. It did so, but its reinstatements were regarded as politically insignificant.
What makes the new review different is that it is to be conducted by a ministry that is nominally under the control of reformists.
When the list of approved candidates was first announced in early January, it emerged that the Guardian Council had disqualified about 3,600 people of the 8,200 who filed papers to stand.
After protests, and Khamenei's requested reconsideration, the council reinstated 1,160 low-profile names, but the major reformists, including the leaders of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, remained barred. Reformists rejected the reinstatements as cosmetic.
The meeting between Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, and Khatami was seen as a last chance to ease Iran's worst political crisis in years. It was attended by parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi, a reformist who had urged Khamenei to intervene, and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the hardline head of the judiciary.
The leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest reformist party, Mohammad Reza Khatami, said Monday his group would boycott the polls. The day before, more than 120 legislators tendered their resignations, saying there was no point in holding elections whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.
http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=AAFFB595-447A-483A-A626-1B69A5FC44F3Ney says Fox News using Middle East consultant with Iranian terrorism link
By GREG WRIGHT
Gazette Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Ohio Rep. Bob Ney says an expert on the Middle East who appears regularly on the Fox News Channel has ties to an Iranian terrorist organization.
Alireza Jafarzadeh said Friday his group's opposition to Iran's fundamentalist Muslim government doesn't make it a terrorist group.
The State Department added the National Council of Resistance of Iran to its terrorist list in 2002 because it had ties to Mujahedin-e Khalq, a terrorist organization that seeks to overthrow Iran's government.
Jafarzadeh was the Washington-based council's congressional representative until the State Department closed its offices in August 2002.
"Absolutely not -- that is ridiculous," Jafarzadeh said when asked if his organization was a terrorist group.
Jafarzadeh, who runs his own consulting firm, claims the Bush administration put his group on the terrorist list because the White House wants to improve ties with Iran.
"Now he's simply not telling the truth," Ney, R-St. Clairsville, said in a telephone interview late Thursday.
Fox News officials refused to comment. Jafarzadeh said he would continue to appear on the 24-hour cable news network.
Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is a Marxist-Islamic organization created by children of college-educated Iranian merchants in the 1960s, the State Department said. The group resented the infiltration of Western culture during Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi's reign.
MEK supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and fundamentalist revolution that overthrew the shah. But MEK turned against the regime in the 1980s and is now the largest Iranian dissident group.
American relations are slowly warming with Iran's fundamentalist government. Iran is considering allowing a delegation of American lawmakers to visit for the first time since the 1979 revolution.
On Wednesday, Ney was in a group of lawmakers who met with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations.
Jafarzadeh, who attended college at Ohio University in Athens, accused Ney of switching sides by cozying up to an Iranian regime he used to criticize. Ney taught English in Iran before the revolution and is fluent in Farsi.
"We were good friends until he switched sides and he began defending the Iranian regime," Jafarzadeh said of Ney. "I have nothing personal against him. I still respect him."
Ney is also asking the Justice Department to investigate the Iranian-American Society of Northern Virginia, which planned a January benefit for victims of last month's Iranian earthquake. Ney said that group is also linked to MEK and Jafarzadeh and should not be allowed to raise money in the United States.
The Justice Department will review Ney's request, spokesman John Nowacki said.
http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20040131/localnews/327329.html Note: Although the MKO is a terrorist group and should be treated as such, Bob Ney has gone on an aggressive campaign of trying to undermine opposition groups to the Islamic Republic while at the same time meeting members of the Islamic regime.
Important to note that Ney had Trita Parisa working for him for a while. Mr. Parisa is a ranking member of the NIAC (a group large segments of Iranian-Americans believe is affiliated underhandedly with the Islamic Republic).
Mr. Ney may have been brainwashed by Mr. Parisas propaganda.
