Opinion: Tehran Nervous as Election Process Starts

On Tuesday, Iran’s presidential election was kick started, with would-be candidates beginning to register at the start of a 40-day sprint to polling day. By all accounts, the Tehran leadership is nervous about the whole exercise. On the eve of registration, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a curtain-raising speech, urging the people to “create a historic epic.” Reading between the lines, Khamenei is calling for a massive turnout, bigger than in 2009, to show that the regime maintains m...

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Opinion: Hezbollah’s True Colors Revealed

In Syria, what was hidden has been revealed. Lebanon’s Hezbollah has cemented the image that some of its supporters in the Islamic world have tried so hard to deny, namely that of Hezbollah as Khomeinist Iran’s iron fist. We are talking about the image of Hezbollah as the obedient lap-dog of velayat-e faqih Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rather than the symbol of Lebanese “resistance.” This is no longer the party that would cross swords with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab nationalists,...

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