Throughout June, in association with BBC Persian, we will be joined by experts, journalists and commentators to make sure you are up to date with events in the country. We will be offering a portrait of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysing the candidates and, following the election, we will be asking what the result means for the future of the country.
Sneak Preview BBC Persian screening: Ahmadinejad – The Populist and the Pariah
Monday 3 June 2013, 7:00 PM
The screening is organised by BBC Persian Service.
Since his election in 2005, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has become the most well-known Iranian since the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini. Produced by the BBC Persian Service, this documentary looks at the rise of Ahmadinejad and explains how this provincial politician with a PhD in traffic management became a personality to be reckoned with.
Followed by a panel discussion with: Sadeq Saba, head of BBC Persian; Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, filmmaker and journalist and Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV.
First Wednesday: Who will be the next president of Iran and why does it matter?
Wednesday 5 June 2013, 7:00 PM
On 14 June Iranians will go to to the polls to vote for a president to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but what significance does this election hold? Join us to analyse the approaching election, the main players and what the result will mean for the future of Iran. With: Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau; Roberto Toscano, Italian Ambassador to Iran (2003-2008); Saeed Barzin, Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006; and Roger Cohen, a journalist, author and op-ed columnist for The New York Times.
Iran after Ahmadinejad
Wednesday 26 June 2013, 7:00 PM
Following the presidential election in Iran, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to deliberate the results and what they mean for the future of the country. In association with BBC Persian Service, we will be taking an in-depth look at Iran’s new president, exploring his affiliations and policies both at home and internationally. With: Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS); Saeed Barzin, Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. Additional speakers to be confirmed.
In association with BBC Persian:
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/iranafterahmedinejad
Following the presidential election in Iran, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to deliberate the results and what they mean for the future of the country.
In association with BBC Persian Service, we will be taking an in-depth look at Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, exploring his affiliations and policies at home and internationally.
Going forward, we will examine how Rouhani will tackle some of the biggest problems facing the country: from the nuclear issue to the economic crisis, and domestic power struggles to human rights.
Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.
The panel:
Azadeh Moaveni is a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.
Saeed Barzin has been an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. He has written extensively on Iranian politics, media and society for general audiences, internal BBC customers and UK government officials. Over the past 15 years he has written for a number of current affairs journals and has published several books, including the Political Biography of Mehdi Bazargan which was among the top ten best-selling books in Iran in mid 1990s.
Mark Fitzpatrick is the director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes. Prior to joining IISS he had a 26-year career in the US Department of State, where in his final posting he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-proliferation.
Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView, which specialises in analysis of Iran. A specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran, he has written and edited eleven books, more than 40 major articles, as well as producing a radio documentary and co-directing the 2007 film Laban!. Formerly a journalist in the US, he wrote for newspapers including the Guardian and The Independent and was an essayist for The New Statesman before founding EA WorldView.
This session is in association with BBC Persian Service.
On 24th April 2013, the Frontline Club hosted a discussion on Iran’s political system in the lead up to the country’s elections in June. Azadeh Moaveni, former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, hosted the panel of Iranian experts.
The conventional thinking is that the upcoming election will be a highly orchestrated event. Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau commented:
“The candidates are going to be vetted by the Guardian Council . . . conservative candidates who are all loyal to the regime are going to compete, and someone loyal to the Supreme Leader is going to come out of the ballot box. . . . It won’t be that interesting an election.”
With opposition leaders still under house arrest following the disputed 2009 elections, Mehri Honarbin-Holliday, author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society said:
“There isn’t the opposition in Iran against the Supreme Leader, because he is a cleric. Millions are saying they don’t want to vote again because it is like rubbing salt in old wounds. But the face of Iran today is not what it was in 1978. The education system has created an Iranian cosmopolitan that is unprecedented.”
Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV remarked:
“There are these people who are very powerful today in Iran and they have come to the conclusion that to hold onto power is a lot more important than the dictates of the ballot box. If they see that the ballot box does not go their way, they will do everything in their power to make sure that the outcome is what they want to see.”
Moaveni added: “Conservative Iran is not monolithic and there is a diversity of cultural attitudes.”
The audience asked the panel if Iran was on the brink of revolution. Naji responded:
“At the time of the [1979] revolution there was a political alternative – Khomeini provided that. Today there is no political alternative. Many people have gone through one revolution and seen what it might bring . . . there is little appetite for another.”
The panel discussed the power struggles emerging amidst the Iranian political spectrum, narrowly focused on the right. On the subject of the Supreme Leader, Naji told the audience:
“Ali Khamenei has all the leverages of power at his disposal . . . he is the man with the key to these elections. He wants someone as president who will be subservient to him and his policies.”
Niknejad concluded:
“The ultimate ray of hope is that, so far, anything that has happened has been unpredictable. Nobody really predicted what was going to happen in 2009, so if something happens, it’s not because we sat here predicting it was going to happen.”
Laura Hughes is a history student at University of York and editor of student newspaper Nouse.
You can watch the event and stream or download the podcast below:
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/presidential-elections-in-iran
On 14 June, Iranians will go to the polls to vote in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s successor. As debate around the elections begins to heat up we will be joined by a panel of experts to talk us through the power struggles and the state of opposition movements.
Although Ahmadinejad cannot run again, he has made clear he has no intention of ending his second term quietly. Our panel will be examining the power struggle at the heart of Iran’s political system and how it will play out in the lead up to the election.
A crackdown on the media has already been seen, with the arrests of 15 journalists at the end of January. With opposition leaders still under house arrest following the disputed 2009 elections, we will be asking if, once again, we will see protests on the streets of Tehran.
Chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.
The panel:
Mehri Honarbin-Holliday is senior research fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University and fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is the author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society and Masculinities in Urban Iran.
Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by the Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.
Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/presidential-elections-in-iran
]]>By Nicole Hunt
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has been ordered to appear before the Supreme Court again on Monday, this time to be indicted on charges of contempt of court over what prosecutors say is his refusal to ask Swiss authorities to re-open graft investigations against allies, including President Asif Ali Zardari. Whether Gilani actually appears or not depends on the outcome of his last-minute appeal against the order.
The beginning of the week is filled with little bits and pieces that will be closely watched as part of the ongoing EU debt saga. Short-term debt auctions in France and Germany get things started on Monday, followed by the release of Greece’s fourth quarter GDP estimate on Tuesday, the same day the OECD publishes its Economic Survey of Germany.
Tuesday also marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of ill-fated protests in Bahrain. Inspired by the toppling of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia a month earlier and Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt just days before, protesters took to the streets and Manama’s Pearl Roundabout to demand political reform. The protests were later crushed as a state of emergency was imposed a month later, with the help of Saudi Arabian troops, and the Pearl Roundabout was demolished on 18 March.
As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the prospect of having to appear before Parliament in the coming weeks to defend himself against allegations of economic mismanagement and shady friends, the country’s opposition Green Movement has called for demonstrations across the country to mark the one year anniversary of 2009 presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi being placed under house arrest for their support of Arab Spring protests.
Back to the EU on Wednesday as fourth quarter GDP estimates are released for the euro zone and Germany.
While recent Arab League meetings have been dominated by what’s happening in Syria and the state of the League’s observer mission there, a lower-profile meeting in Cairo shifts the focus briefly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Members of the League’s Follow-Up Committee are set to discuss the next steps in Palestinian negotiations with Israel, following the passing of a 26 January deadline without any Israeli commitments for a settlement freeze.
On Thursday, North Koreans mark what would have been the 70th birthday of recently-deceased leader Kim Jong-Il. Expect extravagant celebrations and more public mourning, and perhaps another parading of Kim’s son and heir, Kim Jong-un.
Ministers from the 56 countries that make up the Paris Pact Partners meet in Vienna to discuss how to combat the trafficking of opium and heroin from Afghanistan. The UNODC’s most recent Afghanistan Opium Survey, published in January, showed that opium prices in the country soared by 133 per cent last year.
Big celebrations are expected in Libya on Friday to mark the one year anniversary of the beginning of protests against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. As the initial protests prompted a violent crackdown from Gaddafi forces, the situation in Libya quickly turned into the most global of the Arab Spring protests, with NATO forces beginning action there in March and international action continuing up until Gaddafi’s death on 20 October and the subsequent declaration of liberation by the National Transitional Council.
The Rwandan Supreme Court is expected to announce the fate of two journalists sentenced to prison after being convicted of denying the 1994 genocide, inciting civil disobedience and causing divisions. Agnes Uwimana Nkusi and Saidati Kukakibibi, sentenced to 17 and seven years, respectively, await the outcome of their appeal.
Voters in Latvia go to the polls on Saturday to decide whether to introduce Russian as the country’s second official language. Native Russian speakers account for approximately a third of the population in the former Soviet nation; over 50 per cent of the electorate must approve the measure for it to take effect.
In Cairo, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaa get together to iron out the details of a new unity government, which is expected to be announced at the end of their meeting. They’re also expected to confirm a date for elections, which are due to take place around 4 May, one year from the date they signed an agreement ending four years of internal conflict.
Saturday is also the beginning of Rio Carnival!
And on an otherwise fairly quiet Sunday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is back in the spotlight – not in front of the courts, but on TV screens as he makes his appearance on the 500th episode of The Simpsons.
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