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Presidential candidates participate in a televised debate in a state-run television studio, in Tehran, Iran
ONE of the seven Iranian presidential election candidates caused a stir during the third and final televised debate on Saturday by touching on subjects long seen as taboo.
Former Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati called upon the electorate to vote for him in order to avoid a recurrence of August 1953 — a reference to the Anglo-US coup which reinstalled the Shah’s dictatorship and an attempt to indicate that the Islamists plan to close society further.
And Mr Hemmati also referred to the country’s rigged 2009 election, which gave rise to nine months of massive public protests, a brutal crackdown and an existential crisis that the Islamic Republic still reels from today.
MOHAMMAD OMIDVAR, a senior figure in the Tudeh Party of Iran, tells the Morning Star that mass protests are rooted in poverty, corruption and neoliberal rule and warns against monarchist revival and US-engineered regime change
The Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights (Codir) welcomes demonstrations across Iran, which have put pressure upon the theocratic dictatorship, but warns against intervention by the United States to force Iran in a particular direction
Payam Solhtalab talks to GAWAIN LITTLE, general secretary of Codir, about the connection between the struggle for peace, against banking and economic sanctions, and the threat of a further military attack by the US/Israel axis on Iran
