Republicans write open letter to Iran undermining nuclear negotiations

[T-Dub]

NYT on Wikileaks of Saudi docs

 

 

& there ya go.  Just a question of which shells need to be turned over to find who they paid off in Congress.

[Jamie_B]

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21693637-backlash-taking-place-against-conservatism-even-hardliners-want-reform?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/evenhardlinerswantreform

 

Even hardliners want reform

    A backlash is taking place against conservatism

IRAN’S holiest city, and also its second-largest, has long been a conservative bastion. In parliamentary elections in 2012 Iran’s most right-wing party, the Paydari or Stability Front, won all of Mashhad’s five seats. In local elections the year after it won an outright majority and left the reformists with none. But after the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions, reformists backed by the city’s businessmen are attracting packed audiences to their hustings for elections due on 26th February. The conservatives may have expanded the complex around the shrine of Reza, Shia’s eighth imam, but only the reformists can attract the foreign investment the city needs to fill it.

Their demands include a new railway to halve the time of travelling the 900 kilometres (560 miles) from Mashhad west to Tehran, the capital; highways designed to turn the city into Central Asia’s conduit to the Middle East; and leisure centres to diversify a rigidly spiritual form of tourism. Some suggest promoting the city not just as Imam Reza’s burial place, but also Harun al-Rashid’s, the eighth century caliph who presided over the golden age of Sunni Islam. “We have to replace the anti-Westerners,” says a businessman who says the conservatives blocked his joint venture with an Italian company, worth €400m ($440m), for a theme park.

Economic demands often turn cultural. Several female candidates are campaigning for an end to the glass ceiling on senior government posts. “Stop sanctions on happiness,” cries a local economics professor and reformist candidate, vowing to fight a ban on concerts, upheld by Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the city’s main preacher. One rally ends with a band with a female drummer performing renditions of Hafez, the most revered Persian poet, on stage. The more daring supporters don green veils or T-shirts (under jackets they can quickly zip up), harking back to the mass protests, or Green Revolution, that followed a rigged presidential election in 2009. Either as a reminder of or a precaution against a repeat of the violence, organisers distribute sticking-plasters which supporters wear on their index fingers.

The conservatives have struck back, casting doubt on the reformists’ patriotism and mocking the support they have received from the BBC’s Persian service. “Don’t vote for Britain,” read posters hanging from Mashhad’s lampposts, underlining the widely-held view that perfidious Albion continues to scheme. But in Paydari’s campaign office, the mood is more sombre. A campaign manager insists that, post-sanctions, hardliners also favour foreign investment. He fears the perception, even among the party’s traditional constituency, is that they are out of step with the times.