Yury TYSSOVSKY Political analyst, journalist On August 6, 2005 Iran got a new President. This is Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, a man of rigorous conservative views. As usual, the presidential elections were monitored by the Council of Guardians headed by Ayatollaah Ahmad Jannati, also a renown conservative. The Council includes six theologians appointed by Rahbar - the Supreme Leader and spiritual preceptor of the Islamic revolution Ayatollaah Mahmud Ali Hoseini Khamenei. Six other members of the Council are lawyers recommended by the head of the judicial authority, who is also appointed by Khamenei. They are approved by the Majlis (the Parliament). These twelve individuals check the correspondence of all the legislation adopted by the Parliament to the norms of the Muslim Law and also consider the candidates for the parliamentary and presidential elections. стр. 60 During the last eight years the struggle between the conservatives and the reformists in Iran has been the key issue of the country's domestic politics, but the Western hopes for the victory of the reformists never materialized. The reformism of the former President Mohammad Khatami met with a strong opposition of such influential authorities as the Council of Guardians, the armed forces command, and pasdarans from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. Whereas the reformists were the majority in the 2000 Parliament, in 2004 the conservatives prevailed and elected Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, Khamenei's son-in-law as the Speaker. None the less, until the very day of the presidential elections the West laid bet on the followers of Khatami represented by Mostafa Moeen or, at least, on the 'moderate conservative' Ayatollaah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whereas the Tehran Mayor Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad was not considered a front-runner. The 70-year old Hashemi Rafsanjani is a key figure in the domestic life of Iran. An associate of Imam Khomeini and Ali Khamenei, Hashemi Rafsanjani was President of Iran in 1989 - 1997. ... Читать далее