Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday attempted to soften his hardline image by nominating three women to his Cabinet following June’s disputed election.
As a new trial began of 25 more activists and opposition supporters, Ahmadinejad named Fatemeh Ajorlou, a member of parliament (MP), as social welfare minister and Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi as health minister, with a third woman to be named later.
“With the 10th presidential election, we have entered a new era ... Conditions changed completely and the government [make-up] will see major changes,” Ahmadinejad said on state television.
PHOTO: AP
He also said Heydar Moslehi, his adviser on clerical affairs, would be nominated as intelligence minister. There were unconfirmed reports that the country’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, would be named foreign minister.
Like Ahmadinejad, Jalili has taken an uncompromising stance in Iran’s dispute with the West over its nuclear program, which it defends as being for peaceful purposes.
But it is Ahmadinejad’s intention to have three women ministers that stands out in a society where women politicians are thin on the ground. There are only eight women among Iran’s 290 MPs.
During the election campaign, the defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, who holds a doctorate in political science, galvanized younger and female voters with promises to eliminate discrimination, abolish the “morality police” and “help the youth to think freely.”
Rahnavard emerged as the unlikely star of the presidential campaign. Ahmadinejad used a televised debate between the candidates to question the legitimacy of her doctorate. She then astonished the political establishment by accusing him of lying, debasing women and abusing his office, and threatened to sue him.
By seeking to promote women in his Cabinet, Ahmadinejad has taken on board the increased political clout of Iranian women, but the appointments — which have to be approved by parliament — are unlikely to appease reformists as both women named by Ahmadinejad are considered hardliners.
Mousavi announced plans over the weekend to create a political organization called the Green Path of Hope to restore constitutional rights. He said volunteer and social networks would form the mainstay of the organization, which he plans to be able to function legally within the political framework.
Mousavi said its goal would be to “defend the rights and votes of citizens that were crushed in the election.”
Following Ahmadinejad’s unexpectedly large majority in the June vote, hundreds of thousands of Mousavi’s supporters, wearing green, took to the streets claiming the election was fraudulent, in defiance of a government ban on political demonstrations.
Hardliners are increasingly calling for Mousavi to be put on trial along with hundreds of the regime’s opponents. During Sunday’s trial, one defendant, Mehrdad Aslani, accused Mousavi of planting the idea of election fraud in the mind of supporters. There have been no official indictments against Mousavi.
Earlier this month Iran held two other trials for more than 100 reformist politicians and activists accused of attempting to overthrow Iran’s Islamic system, including Hossein Rassam, chief political analyst at the British embassy and an Iranian citizen. The opposition has denounced the trials as a sham.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS