EU conference on Iran

Here is the summary of my talk in today's conference about the future of EU relationship with Iran.

Ahmadinejad's first-round vote is not much higher than the conservatives' usual share of vote. So he is not representing a change in the mood of the county or in middle-class's political taste. His second-round vote says nothing about him though. It was a 'No ' to extremely unpopular Rafsanjani who was, to many ordinary Iranian, much more of an establishment figure than a challenger to it.

Three reasons were among the biggest for his rise:

• Khamanei's voting machine that can easily produces over one million votes for the favored candidate in any election.
• Deep socio-economic gap which was a direct result of the careless economic reforms started from Rafsanjani's term 16 years ago and was more or less continued in the same manner under Khatami.
• Apathy which was heavily encouraged and justified by LA-based satellite TV channels that have produced a paradigm of apathy and indifference, mixed with a deep interest in developing conspiracy theories especially against Rafsanjani.