Iran has to be the only country where one nuclear negotiator defeated another for the presidency.

Iran’s new President Hassan Rohani/Rowhani/Rouhani was Iran's nuclear negotiator with Britain, France, and Germany between 2003 and 2005. One of his opponents and Supreme Leader Khameini’s candidate of choice, was Saeed Jalili, the current chief nuclear negotiator. In what other state, would you find two nuclear negotiators running against each other for president? Presumably it’s a sign of Iran’s priorities.  (No, not nuclear weapons, but nuclear energy.)

As far as the election itself, the first piece of good news is that there may not have been any “jiggery-pokery.” Say what? Reuters reports.

British former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who dealt with Rohani during nuclear negotiations between 2003 and 2005, called him a "very experienced diplomat and politician".

"This is a remarkable and welcome result so far and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be no jiggery-pokery with the final result," Straw told Reuters, alluding to accusations of widespread rigging in the 2009 election.

Regarding Straw’s kind words about him, at al-Sharq al-Awsat on Thursday (linked to by Juan Cole) Rohani extends olive branch.  

“The Iran–US relationship is a complex and difficult issue. A bitter history, filled with mistrust and animosity, marks this relationship. It has become a chronic wound whose healing is difficult but possible, provided that good faith and mutual respect prevail. … As a moderate, I have a phased plan to deescalate hostility to a manageable state of tension and then engage in promotion of interactions and dialogue between the two peoples to achieve détente, and finally reach to the point of mutual respect that both peoples deserve.”

As for ye olde 800-pound gorilla …

Nuclear weapons have no role in Iran’s national security doctrine, and therefore Iran has nothing to conceal. But in order to move towards the resolution of Iran’s nuclear dossier, we need to build both domestic consensus and global convergence and understanding through dialogue.

He actually declares that

Iran should articulate its positions and policies in a more coherent and appreciable manner

What about the disclaimer you always hear that Iranian presidents have little impact on foreign policy, ostensibly  Supreme Leader Khameini’s turf? Rohani was national security ddvisor for sixteen years during the administrations of Rafsanjani and Khatami (Ahmadinejad’s predecessors) and continued as one of Khameini’s two representative at the Supreme National Security Council. He maintains:

If elected, I expect to receive the same support and trust from the supreme leader on initiatives and measures I adopt to advance our foreign policy agenda.

Meanwhile, the ball, once again, is in the court of the United States and the West. I have no illusions about Rojani: he is, after all, an Iranian politician – or a politician, period. But it’s tough to disagree with him when he says:

Obama’s policy on Iran should be judged by his deeds, not by his words. His tactic, as he himself has indicated, is to speak softly but to act harshly. Sanctions adopted and implemented against Iran during the Obama administration are unprecedented in the history of bilateral relations between Iran and the US. … In my view, Obama’s policy toward Iran cannot lead to the improvement of the troubled bilateral relations as long as the US’s mischievous treatment of Iran continues to dictate the course. [Emphasis added.]

No need to pull punches, Hassan. A more fitting adjective than mischievous might be malevolent.

What you need to know if you’re voting in the Iran presidential election -- or viewing it from afar.

Four years after a contested presidential election that sent thousands of Iranians into the streets, sparked a harsh government crackdown, and ended with the house arrest of two opposition candidates, Iranians are again going to the polls to elect a president. The controversial Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, who has long since fallen from favor with the country’s clerical elite, is prevented by term limits from seeking reelection.

Six hopefuls are vying for the highest elected position and second most powerful position in Iran: three affiliated with the ruling conservative party, one from a reformist party, one centrist and one independent. Reformist Hassan Rowhani and conservative Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf are considered the two front-runners in the first-round June 14 election. 

Rowhani, a member of the Association of Combatant Clerics, recently received endorsements from ex-presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani, with the latter describing Rowhani as a “more suitable” candidate to steer the country’s executive branch. As a former chief nuclear negotiator and secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Rowhani calls for a better relationship with the west and greater scrutiny of the nation’s nuclear program. He is an ardent critic of Iran’s current trajectory in global politics and has expressed support for freedom of speech. With his pledge to support and protect women and ethnic minorities, Rowhani has garnered support from the moderates, liberals, and young people, in addition to reformists. Rowhani is running with the slogan “Government of Prudence and Hope” and current polls show him with 27.2 percent of the vote.

Rowhani’s biggest threat comes from Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who unlike Rowhani has significant political experience, serving as the mayor of Tehran since 2005. He represents the conservative party and the Islamic Society of Engineers and has called for greater unity between currently divided political actors, namely Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadenijad but also within his own party. Prior to being elected mayor, Qalibaf served as the chief of national police from 1999 to 2005 under the appointment of Khamenei. Qalibaf is running with the slogan “Love and Sacrifice” and according to current polls has 20.1 percent of the vote.

Saeed Jalili, also a member of the conservative party, is affiliated with the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability. He supports greater privatization and pledges to crack down on corruption in the government. Jalili is the current chief nuclear negotiator and has been the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council since 2007. He lost a leg during the Iran-Iraq war. Although he is thought to be Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s preferred candidate, polls give him just 5.1 percent of the vote.

The candidate representing centrist views, Mohsen Rezaee, is a member of the Moderation and Development Party. Rezaee calls for subsidies for farmers and is an outspoken critic of current president Ahmadinejad’s handling of Iran’s oil revenue. He has presented plans to reduce the country’s inflation and pledges to select cabinet members from different ethnic groups throughout Iran. Rezaee is the former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and ran for president in 2009, coming in third. His slogan is “Say hello to life” and he currently has 10.7 percent of the vote.

Ali-Akbar Velayati, the third conservative candidate, is a member of the Islamic Coalition Party. He campaigns for better inter-governmental relations between the parliament and judiciary and economical overhaul, also pledging to address inflation, rising prices, and unemployment. Velayati was Iran’s minister of foreign affairs for more than 16 years and was the first person to hold that position for longer than 10 years. He serves as an advisor to the Supreme Leader and holds beliefs that, ideologically, are very similar to Khamenei’s. Velayati is running with the slogan “Complete government” and currently has 9.1 percent of the vote.

The sixth candidate, independent Mohammad Gharazi, pledges to run an anti-inflation administration. Gharazi has a long history in politics, serving as minister of petroleum from 1981 to 1985, minster of post, telegraph, and telephone from 1985 to 1997, and as a member of parliament from 1980 to 1984. He is campaigning with the slogan “Government against Inflation” and currently only has 1 percent of the vote.

 Lizzie Rajasingh is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.

This Will Hurt Me More Than It Does You

What are the potential effects on the global economy of U.S. actions against Iran? … the rough effects of U.S. action against Iran on the global economy – measured only in the first three months of actualization – to range from total losses of approximately $60 billion on one end of the scale to more than $2 trillion to the world economy on the other end.

War with Iran? Revisiting the Potentially Staggering Costs to the Global Economy, Charles Blair, FAS Strategic Security Blog

Beyond Recognition

Raymond brought up the telephone conversation in which [his son] had hinted that he might have shot a child in Iraq. He said, “It’s just like I told him, ‘I need you back.’ And then when he gets back I ain’t got my son no more. I got a body that looks like my son. But that ain’t my son. And that’s what the people don’t understand from the V.A. And that’s what I told them down there, too. ‘I don’t want this. I want my son back.’

In the Crosshairs, Nicholas Schmidle, the New Yorker

Assad Government on Its Last Legs “Something of a Myth”

Assad isn’t going to win a total victory, but the opposition isn’t anywhere close to overthrowing him either. This is worth stressing because Western politicians and journalists so frequently take it for granted that the regime is entering its last days. A justification for the British and French argument that the EU embargo on arms deliveries to the rebels should be lifted – a plan first mooted in March but strongly opposed by other EU members – is that these extra weapons will finally tip the balance decisively against Assad. The evidence from Syria itself is that more weapons will simply mean more dead and wounded.

Is it the end of Sykes-Picot?, Patrick Cockburn, the London Review of Books

What’s Another City Left for Dead?

Over the last twenty years, increasing access to records in Japan, Russia, and the United States has revealed that in the three days follow­ing the bombing of Hiroshima Japan’s leaders had little idea that they had to surrender as a result of the bombings. … The Foreign Minister, Togo Shigenori, actually suggested convening the Supreme Council two days after the bombing of Hiroshima to discuss it and found he could not generate enough interest on the subject to get it on the agenda.

Rethinking the Utility of Nuclear Weapons, Ward Wilson, Parameters

Turkey’s Putin

Erdoğan’s Turkey is also the scene of an ominous and increasingly bitter political battle, where there is constant talk of coups and counter-coups. In 2007, Erdoğan began a series of investigations of his enemies that reveal a repressiveness and paranoia that belie his international reputation as a reliable moderate. The strategy seems designed to secure his hold on power for years to come.

The Deep State, Dexter Filkins, the New Yorker

Even Sensenbrenner Has a Rubicon

On Thursday, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001, said that the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds by obtaining a secret order to collect phone log records from millions of Americans.

“As the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely troubled by the F.B.I.’s interpretation of this legislation,” he said in a statement. “While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses.” He added: “Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”

President Obama’s Dragnet, Editorial, the New York Times

The International Atomic Energy Agency and Mission Creep

Nonetheless, the [International Atomic Energy Agency’ has been insisting on access to the Parchin military base to address concerns about “possible military dimensions.” … The agency’s standard safeguards treaty makes clear that its mandate is to account for fissile materials “for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

This may seem a subtle, technical distinction, but it has important implications for the role the IAEA has been given to play by its member states – including Iran. The IAEA is not a “nuclear watchdog” or nuclear policeman. It is, essentially, a fissile material accounting agency, with deliberately limited powers of investigation into states’ peaceful nuclear programs – which the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty refers to as every state’s “inalienable right.”

‘Reset’ on Iran now, Yousaf Butt, Reuters

More on Parchin: How It Parallels Benghazi

Reading … reports, it struck me how the whole Parchin issue appears to be being used by the IAEA so similarly to how the Benghazi consulate attack issue is being used by the US House of Representatives. In both cases, I think we are seeing perfect examples of the use of investigation powers by a legal institution as a political weapon. In both cases, the investigating authorities ask a neverending stream of questions, trying to get at “the truth,” which is really of course merely an attempt to confirm their own unsupported allegations against the target of the investigation. But the fact that no evidence is ever produced through these endless interrogatories that there is in fact anything ”there” there, does not deter the investigators. That’s because the purpose of the investigation isn’t really, in the final analysis, a quest for truth. It’s a procedural weapon that is being employed to harm the public perception of the adversary target, by maintaining an investigation ad infinitum, in the hopes that the absence of any actual incriminating evidence will be lost on a largely ignorant public audience, and that the fact alone of an ongoing investigation will be enough for media outlets like the Washington Post to parrot the unfounded accusations, keeping the perception of something “there” in the public consciousness.  

Wherefore Parchin? Dan Joyner, Arms Control Law

There’s a Limit to Deterrence’s Charms

All told, these reports represent more than 1,000 pages of text that all boils down, more or less, to the idea that the Department of Defense, and especially the Air Force, are losing competence in the nuclear enterprise because no one takes deterrence seriously anymore. You could read any of the reports, but they typically contain sober warnings about the "loss of attention and focus, downgrading, dilution, and dispersal of officers and personnel" involved in the nuclear mission that reflects "a failure to appreciate the larger role of deterrence."

"Failure to appreciate" is one way of looking at it. One might, on the other hand, argue that the lack of appreciation stems from the fact that there isn't anything to appreciate. Many of these weapons no longer have plausible military missions. The people handling them know that, and act accordingly. The problem isn't that they don't "get it." The problem is that they do.

Death Wears Bunny Slippers, Jeffrey Lewis, Foreign Policy

Battle for the Soul of Guatemala

Ríos Montt maintained his innocence, saying he had no control over what soldiers did in the field. He disputed that there was a policy of extermination; “We had a concept of Guatemalanness,” he said, “not to take away the Maya identity but to consolidate them with us.” As anthropologist Patrick Ball testified, the army wiped out 5.5 percent of the Ixil in 17 months.

The Jig Is Up in Guatemala, Patricia Davis, Foreign Policy in Focus

Iran Never Got Over U.S. Intelligence Infiltration of U.N. Inspection Teams in Iraq

"There is a consensus within Iran that more access [granted to and] more cooperation [with the International Atomic Energy Agency means] more assassinations, more sabotage," says [Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team]. "Which means there is a great, great mistrust from the Iranian point of view to the real intention of the IAEA. They are really concerned that the IAEA has been used as an instrument for espionage, sabotage, covert action and preparing the ground for a military strike."

Iran nuclear talks: Why the trust gap is so great, Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor

The MSM Doesn’t Know a Dramatic Story When It Sees It

In the face of this situation — as much as it pains me to say this — you are failing. Your so-called "objectivity," your bloodless impartiality, are nothing but a convenient excuse for what amounts to an inexcusable failure to tell the most urgent truth we've ever faced.

Let me be clear: the problem isn't simply a matter of "false balance" — for most of you, that debate is largely over, and you no longer balance the overwhelming scientific consensus with the views of fossil-fuel lobby hacks. No, what I'm talking about is your failure to cover the climate crisis as a crisis — one in which countless millions, even billions, of lives are at stake.

A Convenient Excuse, Wen Stephenson, the Boston Phoenix

Syria has become the weak leg of its tripod with Iran and Hezbollah.

"A Syrian official called an attack Sunday on the nation's military research facility a 'declaration of war' by Israel,'" reports CNN.

In an interview with CNN, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al Mekdad said the attack represented an alliance between Islamic terrorists and Israel.

He added that Syria would retaliate against Israel in its own time and way. [Emphasis added.]

Yeah, like it did when Israel bombed its alleged nuclear reactor that Israel bombed. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but after a certain point it's just frostbitten. Needless to say, Syria is in no position to wage war on another front besides the domestic against rebels.

This latest attack came on the heels of, an airstrike, reports the New York Times:

… that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria overnight on Thursday … directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, American officials said Saturday

Meanwhile, reports the Times:

Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war [but] they also have a powerful interest in expediting the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case Mr. Assad loses his grip on power.

On the other hand

… some analysts said they believed that a strong Hezbollah could also emerge as a powerful ally for Mr. Assad if he is forced to abandon Damascus, the Syrian capital, and take refuge in a rump Iranian-backed state on the Syrian coast, a region that abuts the Hezbollah-controlled northern Bekaa Valley.

“The relationship between Hezbollah and the Assad regime is stronger now,” said Talal Atrissi, a professor at Lebanese University in Beirut who has good relations with Hezbollah. If Mr. Assad falls, Hezbollah knows the axis of Syria, Hezbollah and Iran will be greatly weakened, he said.

But what use is Assad to Iran, not to mention Hezbollah, if he's exiled to a "rump state"?