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REPORTING FROM TEHRAN AND BEIRUT-- A man reportedly upset about losing his job and not receiving benefits hurled a pair of shoes at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech in a northern city Monday, a grave insult in the Middle East, local websites said.
The shoes reportedly missed Ahmadinejad. But members of the audience became so angry that they started beating the man, with some in the crowd shouting pro-Ahmadinejad slogans, reported the Iranian news website Etedal, which is close to Ahmadinejad rivals. The man was reportedly taken into police custody after the incident.
Conflicting stories emerged on what may have motivated the attack by the man, reportedly a factory worker who had lost his job.
Ghased News, a website close to the Ahmadinejad government, described the man as a troublemaker with a record. It reported that the same man once threw a tomato or an egg at the former reformist President Mohammad Khatami and was in detention for a long time during the latter's tenure.
Websites close to Ahmadinejad's rivals, meanwhile, were quick to point out that the man was protesting against unemployment and financial problems in the Islamic Republic.
A preliminary investigation showed that the man had worked at a textile factory in the city of Sari in Mazdaran province and that he had been laid off and not received his salary for a year, reported the semiofficial Tabnak news website.
The incident occurred as Ahmadinejad was holding a speech in Sari for a low-income housing project. The shoes sailed past Ahmadinejad and slammed into a banner behind the president, Etedal said.
That guy will be swinging from a crane by sundown
Too bad they can't string up Ahmadinejad as well...
That guy will be swinging from a crane by sundown
Too bad they can't string up Ahmadinejad as well...
You are right the guy is pretty much going to die for this, but it was a heroic act, that fuck deserves to have a brick thrown at his head too.
As Iran experiences new, harsh US and international economic sanctions over its nuclear program a program considered by much of the country as a matter of national pride a stable currency has become a national security priority. Even though it's not necessarily good for the economy, amidst sanctions a stable currency creates an illusion of strength, says a veteran analyst in Tehran. It reflects how nonvulnerable the Iranian economy is to sanctions. But in the past week Iran's currency the rial dropped almost 30 percent after President Obama approved new sanctions targeting Iran's Central Bank. The rial has since rebounded significantly from a low of 17,800 rials to the dollar on Monday. However the Central Bank has tried to introduce a cap on the market rate of 14,000 rials to the dollar, and the government announced that anyone caught selling rials at a higher rate would be arrested.
A sign of national strength
In a country such as Iran, with a rich history of empire and a powerful literary tradition, national pride has remained strong even in the wake of growing discontent with the country's Islamic regime and mounting global isolation. A stable currency in recent years, in the face of economic sanctions, has shored up that pride. Since Iran's 1979 revolution, which led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy and the eventual establishment of an Islamic Republic, Tehran has used massive state subsidies as a means of fulfilling its revolutionary promise to redistribute wealth and achieve economic justice for all Iranians.
A stable, overvalued currency was considered a critical aspect of these programs. In the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, a strong currency became a symbol to both the world and the Iranian population, which was beleaguered by war with Iraq throughout the 1980s that an Islamic government could keep the country as strong and stable as its imperial predecessor. But the overvaluing of Iran's currency has come at a considerable price. It has worsened the country's imbalance in foreign trade by encouraging imports and discouraging non-oil exports. It has also reduced state spending on economic development programs, subsidized large-scale consumption of imported goods particularly among the country's wealthier urban classes and poured more of Iran's natural and state resources into commerce instead of production.
Bad for Ahmadinejad
For President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration, which has embarked on a controversial state program to cut national subsidies while engaging in large-scale government spending, a strong currency creates a sense of domestic economic strength and stability on the Iranian street, which is extremely sensitive to Iran's damaged standing in the eyes of the international community. The recent precipitous decline of Iran's currency, has therefore been a big blow for the Iranian president and for Iranian pride. For Ahmadinejad, a strong rial is a part of this whole idea of, 'It's us against the world,' the analyst in Tehran says. This breaks that image.
Source
Iran's currency, the rial, has plummeted to its lowest value against the dollar in more than two decades after President Obama signed legislation Saturday targeting Iran's Central Bank. The rial dropped almost 30 percent in two days, hitting exchange rates as low as 17,800 rials per dollar on Monday as Iranians rushed to sell their local currency holdings in favor of havens such as the euro, the United Arab Emirates dirham, the US dollar, and gold. Washington's new financial legislation against Tehran will sanction foreign firms that purchase Iranian oil by far the chief source of Iranian government revenue and penalize banks engaging in financial transactions with Iran. The legislation won't be enacted for another six months, in order for the White House to prepare for any potential fallout on global oil prices, and the rial strengthened today somewhat to 16,200 rials to the dollar.
But the psychological impact on ordinary Iranians, who see a strong rial as a sign of national strength amid the Islamic Republic's growing international isolation, has been huge. Mr. Obama's decision was a spark. There is an air of panic and people are worried, says George Washington University economist Hossein Askari, who is an expert on Iran's macroeconomic policies. If Iran's Central Bank or entities that deal with the Central Bank are going to be sanctioned, it means Iran's ability to import goods and finance imports will be more costly and pressure its foreign exchange reserves.
Potential dent in Iran's oil revenues
Iran's Central Bank, which serves as a clearinghouse for nearly all oil and gas payments in Iran, has faced increasing difficulty over the past year in facilitating foreign currency transactions abroad. Monetary policy inside the Islamic Republic is facilitated by buying and selling currencies through a network of money-exchange dealers throughout Iran, Europe and the Middle East, allowing Tehran to maintain the rial within a range determined by the Central Bank. By hindering the National Iranian Oil Company's ability to transfer oil revenues back to Tehran and by reducing the Central Bank's access to foreign exchange reserves held overseas, US Treasury sanctions have therefore limited the Central Bank's ability to control the depreciation of Iran's currency.
Last year, the Central Bank put a cap of $2,000 on the amount of currency private Iranian citizens looking to travel abroad could take out of government banks at the official rate of 11,180. Any foreign currency purchases beyond the Central Bank's $2,000 limit for private citizens must be made at the higher market rate for Iran's currency.
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Clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tightened his grip on Iran's faction-ridden politics after loyalists won over 75 percent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a near-complete count showed. The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters - including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad - is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy.
The outcome of Friday's vote, essentially a contest between conservative hardline factions with reformist leaders under house arrest, will have no big impact on Iranian foreign policy, notably its nuclear stand-off with the West. But it will boost Khamenei's influence in next year's presidential election. With 90 percent of ballot boxes counted, Khamenei acolytes were expected to occupy more than three-quarters of the 290 seats in the Majlis (parliament), according to a list published by the interior ministry on Sunday. In the race for the 30 seats in the capital Tehran, a Reuters tally of preliminary returns showed Khamenei supporters had taken 19 and pro-Ahmadinejad candidates the rest. Leading in popularity was Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, a key ally of Khamenei and father-in-law to the paramount leader's son, Mojtaba.
Khamenei allies take countryside too
Pro-Khamenei candidates won in the Shiite Muslim holy cities of Qom and Mashhad and led in other major provincial centres including Isfahan and Tabriz, where over 90 percent of voters backed Ahmadinejad in the 2009 parliamentary election. Khamenei loyalists also appear to have swept up around 70 percent of seats in rural regions - hitherto bastions of Ahmadinejad and his populist nationalism that clerics see as a threat to their political primacy in the Islamic Republic. Independents and women candidates fared relatively well in many provincial towns, where they campaigned on the immediate concerns - generally economic - of their constituents.
Iran's energy-driven economy is suffering badly from Western sanctions - now expanding to block its lucrative oil exports - imposed over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activity and give unfettered access to UN nuclear inspectors. The interior ministry said final results were expected by Monday but the exact makeup of the new parliament will not be known until April, following runoff elections for more than thirty seats.
Ahmadinejad fightback?
***Iran, the pathetic remnant of the defunct Persian Empire.
Ahmadinejad is the first president in the country's history to be hauled before the Iranian parliament, a serious blow to his standing in a conflict pitting him against lawmakers and the country's powerful clerical establishment. Iran's constitution gives parliament the legal right to question the president, but the body had never before taken a step that undermined Ahmadinejad's prestige and could set the stage for his subsequent impeachment should lawmakers determine his answers were unsatisfactory.
Ahmadinejad sniped back defiantly at his questioners, provoking the wrath of the chamber with jabs and sarcastic jokes. The disrespect drew strong condemnation from the lawmakers. "If the parliament had supported Ahmadinejad before today, it's now lost," said lawmaker Mohammad Taqi Rahbar. Rahbar like many other conservatives supported Ahmadinejad prior to April 2011, when the president publicly challenged Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, over the appointment of the intelligence chief.
This combined with the president's perceived reluctant to heed expert economic advice has convinced many hardliners that Ahmadinejad wanted to expand the powers of the Iranian presidency that was previously subordinate to clerical leaders. Conservative lawmaker Ali Motahari, a prominent opponent of the president, read out a series of 10 questions to Ahmadinejad in an open session of parliament broadcast live on state radio.
Some of the most hard-hitting focused on Ahmadinejad's refusal for 11 days to implement an order from Khamenei to reinstate intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi, who had been sacked by the president in April 2011. Ahmadinejad flatly denied that he challenged Khamenei, answering as though there had never been any showdown with the supreme leader.
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Ahmadinejad on the way out?...
Iran's parliament grills embattled president
14 Mar.`12 Iran's parliament grilled President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday over a long list of accusations, including that he mismanaged the nation's economy and defied the authority of the country's supreme leader.
Ahmadinejad is the first president in the country's history to be hauled before the Iranian parliament, a serious blow to his standing in a conflict pitting him against lawmakers and the country's powerful clerical establishment. Iran's constitution gives parliament the legal right to question the president, but the body had never before taken a step that undermined Ahmadinejad's prestige and could set the stage for his subsequent impeachment should lawmakers determine his answers were unsatisfactory.
Ahmadinejad sniped back defiantly at his questioners, provoking the wrath of the chamber with jabs and sarcastic jokes. The disrespect drew strong condemnation from the lawmakers. "If the parliament had supported Ahmadinejad before today, it's now lost," said lawmaker Mohammad Taqi Rahbar. Rahbar like many other conservatives supported Ahmadinejad prior to April 2011, when the president publicly challenged Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, over the appointment of the intelligence chief.
This combined with the president's perceived reluctant to heed expert economic advice has convinced many hardliners that Ahmadinejad wanted to expand the powers of the Iranian presidency that was previously subordinate to clerical leaders. Conservative lawmaker Ali Motahari, a prominent opponent of the president, read out a series of 10 questions to Ahmadinejad in an open session of parliament broadcast live on state radio.
Some of the most hard-hitting focused on Ahmadinejad's refusal for 11 days to implement an order from Khamenei to reinstate intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi, who had been sacked by the president in April 2011. Ahmadinejad flatly denied that he challenged Khamenei, answering as though there had never been any showdown with the supreme leader.
MORE
So the Iranian president and Bush II have something in common?
So the Iranian president and Bush II have something in common?
they both know when to duck...
