Dec. 15, 2006: Iran

Election to watch

Battle of the Crocodile and the Shark in Iran , via Punted Posters

www.timesonline.co.uk/article
/0,,251-2505511,00.html

... elections for a clerical assembly empowered to appoint the next supreme leader of Iran.

[....] In the assembly elections, Iran’s traditionalist old guard is backing Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 72, a pragmatic former president who favoured accommodation with the West. .... Kooseh, the Farsi for shark, ....

His main rival is Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah- Yazdi, also 72, a radical fundamentalist who regularly rails against the West and is known by his detractors as “Ayatollah Crocodile”. ....

[....] has often spoken against democracy, arguing that ultimate authority to rule in Iran is based on God’s will, not the public’s. [....]