F
riday, 2 March 2012 the Iranian parliamentary elections take place, but unlike 2009 the reform movement is not taking part. It is a contest among conservatives and this time around Ahmadinejad is taking on the Supreme Leader and the clerics:
The real competition in this election is among the so-called principalists – the various conservative forces that have fought so fiercely to control Iran’s government.In that context, some see this election as fundamentally a fight between supporters of President Ahmadinejad and loyalists of the Supreme Leader.
“There is an attempt to rally people around the Ahmadinejad faction,” says Hashemi, the analyst at the University of Denver. “And one of the things that the Ahmadinejad faction has been doing is to try and play off of the peoples’ general antipathy toward clerical rule.”
Mike Schuster – In Iran’s Election, Not All Candidates Are Welcome NPR 1 Mar 12
Yeah, that’s right, this time Ahmadinejad is the moderate.