A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Friday, March 2, 2012

Election Day in Iran

 The Western media has been so focused on Iran's nuclear program and what Israel may do that little attention has been paid to today's Parliamentary elections. The deepening gulf between Supreme Leader Khamene'i and President Ahmadinejad, however, could have implications for Iran's future policy, not just on nuclear issues but elsewhere. (No, the liberals aren't going to win, since they're not running, but that doesn't mean the vote is meaningless.) One problem is that not every candidate fits neatly into partisan grouping, and what the new Parliament will really be like may take some time to emerge. How to follow it?

PBS Frontline's  excellent Tehran Bureau pages are live-blogging the vote, and Tehran Bureau also has some good background material available: Part One here and Part Two here.

There's another live blog at Al Jazeera English.

The British-based blog EA Worldview has a good pre-election piece here;  They too are live-blogging here. All the regional news sources should be covering the results. I will post other links here as I find them, and of course there are tons of op-eds all over the media.

No comments: