The leader of Iran's ruling clerics must be made more accountable to reform demands and should shed some powers to break a "vicious circle" of control, said the most prominent dissident lawmaker and brother of the country's president.
Mohammad Reza Khatami -- who was deputy parliament speaker and among more than 2,400 candidates blacklisted from today's elections -- offered glimpses of a new high-stakes gambit: trying to pressure Iran's supreme leader and the power base that controls everything from foreign policy to the media.
"They have no accountability to any part of the government and to the people ... We have a vicious circle here," he said Wednesday at the headquarters of his party, the Islamic Participation Front.
The strategy of directly challenging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could win applause from many Iranians frustrated by stalled efforts for more political and social openness.
But it carries clear risks. The Islamic leadership has come down hard before on those perceived as threats to the system.
On Tuesday, Khatami and other pro-reform lawmakers made public a letter sent to Khamenei accusing him of allowing freedoms to be "trampled in the name of Islam."
The letter served as a parting salvo by banned reform candidates calling the elections a "parliamentary coup" and urging for a voter boycott. It also was a taboo-breaking missive against the country's top religious and political authority -- whose supporters say holds divine right to rule.
Khatami said Khamenei should dismantle some of his power structure to allow elected officials room to make key decisions.
"They know what the people want and, because of this, I think they should respond to this will of the people ... even if they don't like it," said Khatami, whose brother, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, has lost a great deal of appeal after backing down in his attempts to postpone the elections.
He added that reformers want to reach a point "for people to believe they could change the leader."
It would be a huge challenge.
Khamenei and his inner circle have vast and powerful resources, including militia forces and the judiciary. In recent years, conservatives have detained or intimidated hundreds of reformers and muzzled dozens of publications.
Late Wednesday, two reformist newspapers, Yas-e-No and Sharq, were ordered to suspend publication and top editors and staff were detained by judiciary agents for publishing portions of the reformers' letter to Khamenei, said Issa Sahakhiz, member of the Iranian branch of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Near the entrance to the Panama Canal, a monument to China’s contributions to the interoceanic waterway was torn down on Saturday night by order of local authorities. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made threats in the past few months to retake control of the canal, claiming Beijing has too much influence in its operations. In a surprising move that has been criticized by leaders in Panama and China, the mayor’s office of the locality of Arraijan ordered the demolition of the monument built in 2004 to symbolize friendship between the countries. The mayor’s office said in
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
‘RADICALLY DIFFERENT’: The Kremlin said no accord would be reached if the new deal with Kyiv’s input did not remain within the limits fixed by the US and Russia in August Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida this weekend, but Russia on Friday accused him and his EU backers of seeking to “torpedo” a US-brokered plan to stop the fighting. Today’s meeting to discuss new peace proposals comes amidst Trump’s intensified efforts to broker an agreement on Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. The latest plan is a 20-point proposal that would freeze the war on its current front line, but open the door for Ukraine to pull back troops from the east, where demilitarized buffer zones could be created, according to details revealed by
RSS