Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Pragmatism and piety: Iran’s president-elect

June 18, 2013 5:49 pm by Amie Tsang

Hassan Rohani ( ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

Iranian voters rejected the hardline candidates in last weekend’s presidential election in favour of Hassan Rohani, a 65-year-old reformist-backed cleric.

Known as the “diplomat sheikh”, he is a former nuclear negotiator and convinced the regime to suspend uranium enrichment between 2003-2005. He has also served in Iran’s parliament and the security council.

Rohani “believes in the same pragmatic policies as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who has been in alliance with reformist forces in recent years”, wrote Najmeh Bozorgmeh, the FT’s Tehran correspondent. “Mr Rafsanjani’s backing for his campaign, and that of reformist leaders, was crucial to his victory.”

Tags: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hassan Rohani, nuclear, Tehran
Posted in Iran | Permalink

Smart Reads May 13, 2013

May 13, 2013 2:49 pm by Amie Tsang

♦ There are doubts over how much longer Latin America will benefit from the “commodity supercycle”.
♦ Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, has registered for next month’s election, disrupting the Islamic regime’s plans to hand power to a loyal fundamentalist.
♦ Nawaz Sharif has sealed his third term as prime minister of Pakistan. However, the sense of vibrant democracy has been tempered by Taliban attacks. The New York Times bureau chief was also expelled on the day of voting.
♦ Forty years after Watergate, the BBC looks at the legacy of investigative journalism in the UK.
♦ After the news that Bloomberg’s journalists could see more than Bloomberg’s customers would like them to, Quartz takes a look at the culture of omniscience that pervades the organisation and Hilary Sargent (aka ChartGirl) explains how it works in this neat diagram.
♦ On another note… Britain’s approach to Eurovision might need some fine-tuning. Read more