Search results

Once debate was unleashed in Iran’s election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s maverick foreign policy came to play an important role in shaping opinion, among ordinary voters who see beyond populist sentiments to count the cost of Iran’s isolation as well as among elite players who have increasingly come to view the incumbent as a liability.

Two years into his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy is starting to reap the rewards of an election night promise to place the Middle East among the key priorities of French foreign policy. Arab governments now see Paris as a key point of contact and leverage, a useful counterpoint to their traditionally close relations with Washington, and a strategic ally in propping up the peace process and countering the strategic challenge posed by Iran.

The former oil minister’s return is a measure of the political complications that Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed has to negotiate as opponents launch first grilling.

Opposition supporters remain passionate about the rightness of their cause, but as Basij and other militia stalked the streets of Tehran, the regime appeared to be regaining the initiative in realpolitik terms as this special issue of GSN went to press.

Rahbar (Supreme Leader) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Friday prayers speech at Tehran University on 19 June was awaited with great anticipation; Khamenei normally only makes public appearances to mark Ramadan and the anniversary of the 1979 revolution. Iranian state television promoted his appearance as a major event.

Public demand for a constructive and non-ideological politics seems to explain the severe election setback suffered by the Salafists and Islamic Constitutional Movement (Hadas), whose parliamentary contingent - five or six strong just a few years ago - has been slashed from three seats to one.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry’s much-criticised circular informing Saudi businesswomen of the need to appoint a male general manager is not the law, “but [it is] what is happening in Saudi Arabia”, Princess Loulwa Al-Faisal Bin Abdelaziz told GSN.

The election of four women to the National Assembly marks a significant victory for civic rights and indicates a shift in public mood.

Having seen voters punish the protagonists of confrontation, new MPs – women in the vanguard – could hold the key to co-operation in government. Prominent new MP Rola Dashti told GSN that Kuwaitis were seeking solutions rather than apportioning blame. Reappointed PM Sheikh Nasser Mohammed will hope she’s right.

Given half a chance, Iranians will vote against the establishment – not just in disaffected urban areas, but in the countryside (where incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is widely believed to have the edge), and even within the ruling elite, whose members may swap from faction to faction while maintaining staunch support for Iran’s velayat-e faqih system of clerical rule. Ahmadinejad has made a global career by presenting himself as an underdog – a status that tends to attract Iranian voters (as the reformist Mohammad Khatami found when he beat conservative rivals in 1997). But he has other elite ‘underdogs’ to compete with.

Widening their scope of operations, Somali pirates are posing an ever greater challenge to regional governments. While energy producers are rethinking their export strategies, governments are concerned that the Horn of Africa’s instability will encroach on the Gulf region’s southern flank. Yemen is especially vulnerable as the collapse of export revenues piles further pressure on President Saleh. GSN analyses developments in the Gulf of Aden, Somalia and Yemen, and talks exclusively to the Southern Movement’s new figurehead Ali Salem Al-Baydh.

Somali pirates are said to have earned at least $30m last year, although some estimates are much higher. This compares with the unrecognised Republic of Puntland's formal budget of around $20m/yr, with revenues gleaned from customs, airport and land revenues. Many pirates are said to be based in Puntland, which GSN's Nadine Marroushi visited last year, on terms which demanded a heavy security complement. Somalia's ruling Transitional Federal Government (TFG) Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdulahi Omar has said pirates can earn as much as $150m/yr from ransoms.

Sheikh Adil Al-Kalbani, appointed last year as imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, has bluntly dismissed calls for the admission of Shiite scholars to the Supreme Council of Ulemaa.

Southern Movement chief sets out his agenda

Engagement without marriage: Beltway pessimistic as Obama's team prepares to tackle Iran