Is Israel an evolving facist state?

[Prospero]

Iran's so-called democracy is just that....

[Stavros]

Nevertheless, Rouhani was not the preferred candidate of the Supreme Guardian Council, so how come they didn't fix it for their guy to win?

[Dino Velvet]

Nevertheless, Rouhani was not the preferred candidate of the Supreme Guardian Council, so how come they didn't fix it for their guy to win?

I'm a little submissive who has to rely on those media people and was convinced the fix was in thinking Saeed Jalili would win. Glad the news here was as full of horse manure as usual. Seems like the Iranian President is a more of a figurehead and they could do way worse than Rouhani. At least the isolation is thawing.

[broncofan]

Nevertheless, Rouhani was not the preferred candidate of the Supreme Guardian Council, so how come they didn't fix it for their guy to win?

If one is cynical enough they can always think of a reason. For instance, maybe they thought there was too much scrutiny this time around to fix the election. I wouldn't make an argument like that, but somebody could always mine for such a reason.

Maybe Prospero was talking about how the Supreme leader of Iran is not elected but his post is created by their constitution. Looking at the Supreme Leader's duties and putting aside his religious function, it seems he has a lot of the same responsibilities as the executive in the United States. He appoints heads of major departments, appoints individuals to judiciary, and command of the armed forces. I know very little about Iran's government and am just going by what I read on wikipedia this instant. But if the Supreme Leader is not accountable by election, he can act with impunity given that he controls the military, appoints the judiciary, heads of intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies.

[broncofan]

I am not saying that makes Iran entirely authoritarian either. There are restraints on what the Supreme Leader can do vis a vis initiating impeachment of the President and other executive functions. I am just saying it is not traditional for an un-elected official to wield at least some of the power he has been granted.

[Stavros]

I am not saying that makes Iran entirely authoritarian either. There are restraints on what the Supreme Leader can do vis a vis initiating impeachment of the President and other executive functions. I am just saying it is not traditional for an un-elected official to wield at least some of the power he has been granted.

I think the turning point in Iran, or one of them, will come when they no longer need a 'Supreme Leader' to maintain the legacy of Khomeini. At the moment that looks no more likely than the Chinese removing Mao's portrait from the entrance to the Forbidden City. Lebanon's democracy must be one of the oddest in the world as it guarantees offices of state to specific confession, and means the President will always be a Christian and the Prime Minister a 'Sunni' Muslim. A Lebanese Christian with political ambitions will never be Foreign Secretary, and so on. Just as seats in Parliament are guaranteed to representatives of different religious groups, so in Jordan seats in Parliament are reserved for the Bedouin while 'sons of the country' dominate the armed forces and the upper echelons of the civil service. Yet neither Jordan nor Lebanon are as bad as Saddam Hussein's Iraq, to take one example. Iran has the same vein of central command as other Middle Eastern states, I think the overall picture is relative and anyway even free elections are only one part of democratic life. Civil society, that network of activities autonomous from the state is lacking in the region as a whole, and as a result the state becomes a presence in people's lives to an extent we would find intolerable in the west and which many have in the Middle East.

In the meantime, burger joints are all the rage in Tehran, from blatant rip-off's of Five Guys, to McAli's...Iranians love a tasty burger...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...n-9042445.html