in the 2004 elections most Reformist candidates were barred from standing by the cleric so that by default the Conservatives regained control of Parliament.
It WaS this decline in turnout HENCE largely contributed to the final victory of Ahmadinejad, reflecting the fact that an increasing proportion of Iranian voters had come to see the whole electoral process as irrelevant to their lives.
Many more issues were at stake though than just than seven presidential candidates are worthy of any torm of support, electoral or otherwise from socialists. undid Rafsanjani the second round.
Ahmadinejad was able to present himself to the electorate on a populist basis as a "man of the people' and as a man of humble origins who continued to live under modest circumstances.
Ahmadinejad was the most Conservative of the original seven candidates and as the preferred choice of the clerics may well have benefited from vote rigging in either or both of the Presidential rounds.
Nevertheless it is clear that he did have substantial workregime change in Iran and is making threats concerning the regime's capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons our role is to defend Iran against imperialist threats and incursion in whatever form it takes.
At the same time our role is to develop and build solidarity with the fledgling workers movement in Iran such as the workers at the Tehran Bus Company and with all those in Iran who oppose both imperialism and the highly repressive and misogynistic form of clerical and capitalist rule in the country.
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Ugly, oppressive, intrusive, built on Palestinian land: the fight to pull down Zionist apartheid wall must be a central feature of solidarity campaigns Piers Mostyn therefore, to organise popular The Presbyterian Church