Reform movement squashed

Tehran

Iran’s hard-line Guardian Council this week disqualified all but six of the more than 1,000 candidates who were running for president in the June election. The council, which is appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wields most of the power in Iran, disqualified all of the reformist candidates. The council made a similar move last year, when it disqualified more than 2,500 reformists from running for parliament, ensuring that the legislature would be dominated by conservatives opposed to President Mohammad Khatami’s attempts at reform. Khatami, a moderate, can’t run for a third term; the current front-runner is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a conservative who was president for much of the 1990s.

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