Al-Monitor – Mehdi Karroubi, the 2009 presidential candidate who was put under house arrest for challenging the result of those elections, has urged Iranians to vote despite the shortcomings of the election process. According to his son Hossein, Karroubi said this year’s disqualifications were “unprecedented.” Well-known moderate candidates such as Ali Larijani and Eshaq Jahangiri and former conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were all disqualified from running for …

Al-Monitor – With Iranians heading to the polls to elect a new president later this week, tackling economic challenges is the top priority for many voters. The average Iranian has faced high inflation and economic stagnation over the past few years, and a basic expectation is for the next president to restore some of the lost purchasing power and induce a …

thedispatch – What is the Iranian navy doing in the southern Atlantic? It is a question that Pentagon officials have had a hard time answering since late May, when they became aware that a large, repurposed oil tanker and a newly built frigate—both with Iran’s navy—were sailing past the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, heading westward. Officially, the Iranians sent …

RFL/RE – Iranian ex-President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, who was jailed for years in the crackdown that followed the former’s disputed 2009 reelection, have little in common. Except, that is, their responses to their respective bans against competing in next week’s presidential vote. Following their disqualifications by the powerful Guardians Council, Ahmadinejad and Tajzadeh each took to …

Iranwire – Drug trafficking routes involving Iran have latently shifted from land to sea, with more covert shipments now being discovered in the Gulf of Oman than on land. For their part, Iranian officials have sought to shift the blame, claiming: “The imposition of regulations and blockades on the country’s eastern borders have led to drug trafficking from the sea”. This change in Iranian …

Iranwire – In Iran’s third and final pre-presidential election debate on Sunday June 13, the IRGC’s candidate Mohsen Mehr Alizadeh quipped that conservative MP Alireza Zakani was playing the role of a “composition teacher”. In the previous televized stand-offs, Zakani had criticized the text and content of the statements read out by other candidates. But in the end, the whole …

VOA – The winner of Iran’s presidential election will face a host of tough challenges once he takes over from Hassan Rouhani in August.    Seven men are running in the June 18 vote, with a possible run-off on June 25.  The ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi is seen most likely to win after his strongest rivals were disqualified and would take over the post in a …

Al-Arabia – The US is closely tracking an Iranian navy transport ship headed for the Caribbean — possibly Venezuela — and is prepared to take action against the delivery of any weapons which may be on board, administration officials said on Friday. The Biden administration reserves the right to take measures, in coordination with allies in the region, to deter …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Sheikh Jarrah, the ostensible cause of the latest conflict in the Middle East, is not so complicated. It is a private rent dispute, caused by squatters and by Palestinian tenants who acquired protected tenancies (not ownership) during the period of Jordanian occupation 1948-1967 when Jordan illegally sequestrated the property rights of Jewish landowners. The Palestinian tenants and squatters …

gatestoneinstitute.org – [Putin] wants a return to the good or bad old days, when the USSR and the United States were regarded as arbiters of world affairs on an equal footing. Today, thanks to the Obama era, that vast region [Central Asia] is morphing into a race course between China and Russia, with the US as a distant observer. The …