Return of the ... One True King (XXV)
Fifteen months ago, when I was up most nights with Jonah, and MB tossed her hat into the ring to run for the Maine legislature, something surprised me. An independent candidate for the 7th Majlis disqualified by the Guardian Council and then allowed a second vetting at the expression of preference by the Supreme Leader, along with three thousand other candidates, mostly reform and independent, declined to be reinstated, and went on record that he'd not been vetted "according to defined legal procedure". Abu al-Fazl Rauf, said "I see this against my dignity as an Iranian citizen." The "this" was the core of Iranian legal theory -- wilayat-i faqih -- the primacy of the jurist.
That was what got Hashim Aghajari a death sentence, eventually commuted to life in prision, and then reduced to time served.
Former minister of science, research and technology Mostafa Moeen and Vice-President and head of the Physical Education Organization Mohsen Mehralizadeh were disqualified by the Guardian Council, along with a thousand other candidates, and their qualifications were then confirmed by the Guardian Council after the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered it through a letter addressed to the GC.
Moeen said that the Guardian Council violated the law. He's running not only in the 9th election for the President of the Islamic Republic, but against the authority of the Guardian Council.
The thing is, the deal that was reached in the Iran-E3 talks puts "whatever's next", which is usually cast as either a short trip to the UN Security Council followed by American bombing, or just American bombing, followed by follow-on forces, after the election. And Moeen may not see a need for Iran to engage in uranium enrichment on an industrial scale, at least for several years. The market price for SWUs is $112 from US/EU producers, and $89 from RU/SU producers, and stable for the past four years (the spot price for UF6 has jumped from $19/Kg in 2001 to $75/Kg in 2005), and outsourcing enrichment on an industrial scale has some economic and engineering appeal, as well as disarming Bush's most effective rhetorical device of 2002/3.
This may change the Iranian election. It may not be "war", and Moeen is a vastly better reform candidate than Rafsanjani, for a country not actually having war imposed upon it by Iraq or the United States, and simply has to do ordinary housecleaning, in the oil industry and elsewhere.