The country of Iran , which is part of the rich OPEC belt, has been always at the center of regional news for over three decades. Three decades back , Iranian people showed a major uprising against a powerful dictator, who was thrown out and Ayatollah Khameneni took charge.
Since then Khamaneni is the supreme leader of the country with the highest powers, which he has been using effectively in guiding Iran on fundamental lines with clear anti-west policies.
And five years back, a poor village person, Ahmedinejad fought the Presidential elections by stoking fundamental issues and also anti-west propaganda, and became Iran President with a clean majority.
The election system in Iran is unique, in the sense that the Presidential candidate is declared winner only if he gets more than 50% of the polled votes.
Iran has been going through a really tough economic situation, even when crude oil was quoting at 100 plus dollars. Iran has been deprived of basic crude oil processing facilities , which is why it remains the only Arab country to import diesel and petrol, even though it produces crude oil equivalent to over 5 times of the diesel and petrol it consumes annually.
Ahmedinejad has been stoking the anti-west rhetoric further in the last few years, and has put few more million Iranians below the poverty line. That is why the current Presidential elections were expected to help moderate forces to regain power in Iran.
The huge rallies for the moderate candidate Moulavi, were seen as a reflection of that. But the election results that were announced a week back, showed that Moulavi only got 34% of the polled votes, while Ahmedinejad got 63% of the votes. That is what has shocked the entire country of Iran, and since the announcement of results protests are being held everywhere , and over 100000 people participated in yesterday’s peace rally in Tehran, Iran capital.
The Iranian spiritual leader Khamaneni has ordered for part recounting of the votes, which the people of Iran might again reject since that may not be enough to get victory for Moulavi. Given the strong anti-west thoughts of the supreme Leader Khameneni, Moulavi supporters might not get a fair treatment this time.
Iran is sitting on the world’s largest reserve of natural gas, but it is not in a position to capitalize it only because of lack of adequate investment by the western countries into Iran, because the western governments have officially banned any investment by their citizens or companies into Iran.