Free Republic

Officially the reason that the DNC is going with a ‘virtual roll call’ for the Biden nomination is the issue in Ohio. But Gov. DeWine has offered to quickly pass a bill to make sure that Biden will still be on the ballot.The DNC’s decision to switch to a virtual roll call may be exploiting worries about Ohio, but like the rest of its campaign decisions has more to do with locking in the nomination for Biden while avoiding a floor fight.Most people refused to believe me when I told them that Biden would run or the party would nominate...

Partial election results in Iran on Saturday point to major gains by reformists and moderates who favor expanding freedoms and engaging with the West, and who defended the recently implemented nuclear deal with world powers against opposition from hard-liners. Friday's election was the first since last summer's agreement was finalized, lifting international economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curbing its nuclear program. U.S. officials had hoped the deal would strengthen President Hassan Rouhani and other moderates, paving the way for greater cooperation on other regional issues. Reports in the semi-official Fars and Mehr news agencies showed hard-liners losing ground in...

So this is what democracy looks like in a theocratic dictatorship. Iran's presidential campaign season kicked off last month when an unelected body of 12 Islamic jurists disqualified more than 600 candidates. Women were automatically out; so were Iranian Christians, Jews and even Sunni Muslims. The rest, including a former president, were purged for possessing insufficient revolutionary zeal. Eight regime loyalists made it onto the ballots. One emerged victorious on Saturday. That man is Hassan Rohani, a 64-year-old cleric, former nuclear negotiator and security apparatchik. Western journalists quickly hailed the "moderate" and "reformist" Mr. Rohani. The New York Times's Tehran...

Iran’s electoral watchdog will consider on Monday whether to disqualify a centrist cleric from running for president, just days before Friday’s election, Iranian media reported. The semi-official Mehr news agency, citing an unnamed source, said the Guardian Council would consider barring Hassan Rohani for revealing what it said was classified information on Iran’s nuclear program in a televised presidential debate and for some slogans chanted by his supporters during rallies. Rohani is the most prominent moderate approved to run by the Guardian Council, a vetting body made up of clerics and jurists. The slate of eight candidates is dominated by...

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, a candidate in next month's presidential elections, vowed Friday he will pursue a policy of resistance against the West if elected. Addressing his first campaign rally in Tehran, Saeed Jalili said his priority in foreign policy will be to expand Islam’s influence in the world and counter “arrogance,” a reference to the U.S. Jalili is considered one of the most hard-line of the eight candidates approved by the Guardian Council, Iran’s election overseers, to run in the June 14 race. … Jalili said he is seeking to revive the revolutionary policies of the 1979 Islamic revolution...

Iranians wrapped up a parliamentary election likely to reinforce Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's power over rival hardliners led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iranian leaders were looking for a high turnout at Friday's poll to ease a crisis of legitimacy caused by Ahmadinejad's re-election in 2009, when widespread accusations of fraud plunged the Islamic Republic into the worst unrest of its 33-year history. Iran also faces economic turmoil compounded by Western sanctions over a nuclear program that has prompted threats of military action by Israel, whose leader meets U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House on Monday. The vote...

The first step toward understanding the Iranian “elections” is that they weren’t. Elections, that is, at least in our common understanding of the term, namely the people vote and the counters count those votes and so we find out what the people want. That’s not what happens in Iran, where both the candidates and the results are determined well in advance of the casting of ballots. Yes, people get mobilized and go to the polls and mark their ballots and put them in the ballot box. But then Groucho comes into play: “I’ve got ballots. And if you don’t like...