He may have failed to wrest the Iranian presidency from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Mir Hossein Mousavi at least has the satisfaction of knowing his wife has helped wring an unexpected political concession from his main rival.
Zahra Rahnavard’s appearance at her husband’s side throughout his campaign highlighted the issue of women’s rights in Iran and wooed many female voters to Mousavi’s side.
Never before in the Islamic republic’s 30-year history has a woman played such a high-profile political role, prompting some to compare Rahnavard — a sculptor and respected academic — to US first lady Michelle Obama.
Now her lasting impact has galvanized Ahmadinejad into a radical move that risks alienating his most religiously devout supporters. In announcing his intention to appoint three women Cabinet members — including Fatemeh Ajorlou as social welfare minister and Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi as health minister — Ahmadinejad trumped the campaign pledges of his two other election rivals, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohzen Rezai, who each said they would appoint the country’s first female Cabinet minister since the 1979 revolution.
But the social pressures prompting the appointments long pre-dated the election campaign.
“These appointments are a result of the pressure that women’s demands have imposed on the system,” said Asiyeh Amini, a leading women’s activist.
Female protesters played a prominent role in the unrest after the disputed election, as illustrated by the case of Neda Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old woman who became the symbol of the demonstrations after her death at the hands of a sniper was caught on film and beamed across the world.
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
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