Senior Hezbollah commander killed in Aleppo

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah group says it has recovered the body of a senior commander who was killed during fighting in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo.
Hezbollah said the body of Ali Fayyad, known locally as Haj Alaa, was recovered in an operation in which Syrian army and Hezbollah special forces took part.
Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Bashar Assad’s troops in Syria and the forces recently took from Daesh the town of Khanaser and its surroundings in Aleppo.
Fayyad is a Hezbollah veteran who has led major battles against the Israeli army in south Lebanon. He was among four Hezbollah cadres killed in Aleppo last week.

Isis kills eight Dutch members for 'desertion'

The Islamic State has killed eight Dutch members whom it accused of trying to desert, activists have said.

“Daesh [Isis] executed eight Dutch fighters on Friday in Maadan, Raqqa province, after accusing them of attempting desertion and mutiny,” said Abu Mohammad, a member of the citizen journalist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), via Twitter on Monday.

RBSS has been documenting the group’s abuses in its de facto capital in northernSyria since April 2014. The Twitter group said tension between 75 Dutch jihadis – some of them of Moroccan origin – and Isis intelligence operatives from Iraq hadreached a new height over the past month.

Three other Dutch jihadis were arrested by Iraqi Isis members who accused them of wanting to flee, and one of the detainees was beaten to death during the interrogation, according to RBSS.

Isis leaders in Raqqa sent a delegate to solve the dispute with the Dutch cell’s enraged members, but they murdered the intermediary in vengeance, the citizen journalist group added.

The Isis leadership in Iraq then ordered the arrest of all the members of the Dutch group and imprisoned them in Tabaqa and Maadan in Syria before killing eight of them, RBSS said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, could not confirm the report. However it said three European jihadis of North African origin were killed in what Isis calls the Wilayet al-Furat – an area stretching across the Syrian-Iraqi frontier.

According to the Dutch secret services, 200 people from the Netherlandsincluding 50 women have joined Isis in Syria and Iraq.

First test for Syrian truce after breaches reported on both sides

The Syrian ceasefire is facing its first serious test after Syrian opposition leaders claimed it was close to collapse and the French government called for a meeting of the monitoring body amid allegations that Syrian and Russian forces had seriously breached its terms.

The ceasefire came into force on Friday night and was widely thought to have held on the first day, but the Syrian High Negotiating Council (HNC), which represents rebel factions, said on Sunday that breaches had nullified the process.

The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) will meet in Geneva at the request of the French to examine whether the alleged breaches were deliberate, the product of competing misinterpretations of the ceasefire, or military error.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said: “We have received indications that attacks, including by air, have been continuing against zones controlled by the moderate opposition.

Alberto Nisman: Argentina prosecutor's death closer to being solved

A year after the mysterious death of star prosecutor Alberto Nisman shookArgentina to the core and made headlines around the world, the case may finally be moving closer to a solution.

A judicial attempt to rule out the suggestion that Nisman’s death was suicide and the appearance in court of a former spymaster who could provide clues in the case suggests that the stalled investigation may inching towards a conclusion.

Nisman was found shot dead in his home last year just hours before he was due to appear before Congress to explain his accusations that thenpresident Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had conspired to cover up Iran’s alleged involvement in a 1994 terrorist attack in Buenos Aires.

The death remains unsolved, and until last week, authorities had not even decided whether to define it as homicide or suicide. On Thursday, however, federal appeals court prosecutor Ricardo Sáenz said that “the evidence produced so far” showed that Nisman had been the victim of a homicide.

Sáenz agreed with Nisman’s family that the absence of gunpowder on Nisman’s hand has ruled out the possibility of suicide.

“Scientific tests lead to the indisputable conclusion that the weapon that produced Nisman’s death leaves residue from the shot up to 20 hours after being fired, while no particle characteristic of a blast was found on the victim’s hands,” Sáenz wrote in the document which was submitted to the court in support of a lawsuit launched by Nisman’s family.

Nisman’s supporters have long alleged that the prosecutor was killed in an attempt to derail his investigation into the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead and hundreds wounded.

“Nisman was murdered and it was state policy [under Fernández] not to investigate it,” said Waldo Wolff, a Jewish community leader and legislator for the Cambiemos (Let’s Change) coalition of the country’s new centre-right president, Mauricio Macri.

Iraqi PM and US issue warnings over threat of Mosul dam collapse

The Iraqi government and the US embassy in Baghdad have both issued urgent warnings about the possibility of the Mosul dam collapsing and sending a 20-metre-high flash flood coursing down the river Tigris, putting more than a million people at risk. 

The embassy on Monday issued a call for people to evacuate the Tigris flood plain, saying “proper preparation could save many lives”. The embassy had earlier described the threat of collapse as “serious and unprecedented”.

Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, issued a statement on Sunday night urging residents of Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, 25 miles south of the dam, to move at least 3.5 miles away from the river. The strength of the warning marked a sharp change in tone for the Baghdad government, which for years has played down the threat of collapse.

The cities of Tikrit, Samarra and Baghdad itself also lie in the path of a potential flood wave. 

The dam, the largest in Iraq, has had structural problems since its construction in the 1980s. The Saddam Hussein regime pressed on with it in the face of warnings from geologists that it was being built on weak, water-soluble rock such as gypsum and anhydrite.

A report by a panel of Iraqi and Swedish geologists and engineers last year described it as “the most dangerous dam in the world”, saying its very construction was a “mystery” in view of the unfavourable geology. Before it was built, the report said, “all the studies expressed a clear concern on the fact that this region suffers from extensive presence of soluble rock formations that might undermine the safety of a high dam of a large reservoir such as Mosul dam.”

Since its construction it has been propped up with constant patching with concrete grout, but that maintenance was interrupted when Islamic State extremists temporarily captured the structure in 2014. Water has continued to seep through since then, further weakening the dam. The level of the reservoir has been lowered in an effort to reduce the pressure, but at the expense of irrigation and the potential for power generation.

Iran election results put Hassan Rouhani on cautious path to reform

Hassan Rouhani’s friends and enemies alike identify him as the architect of Iran’s nuclear agreement that finally brought the end of sanctions last month. After last Friday’s elections the man who made the Barjam – the Persian acronym for the laboriously negotiated deal – should be able to pursue further opening-up to the west, and perhaps implement gradual change at home. The results of the twin elections for parliament and the clerical assembly of experts have been a significant boost for the president and vindicated the policy of engagement he has pursued since 2013. On the evidence of the results so far, in the next Majlis, the Iranian parliament, he will enjoy the support of a coalition of reformists, centrists or pragmatic conservatives more ready to confront suspicious hardliners.

In the run-up to the Vienna breakthrough last July, Rouhani came under severe pressure from “principlists” opposed to dealing with the US and Europe. Mohammad Javad Zarif, his foreign minister, was labelled a traitor and threatened with being buried in the concrete to be used to decommission theArak nuclear reactor.

Despite the widespread disqualifications of candidates, reformists did not abandon the race. Instead, they threw their weight behind a coalition with little-known independents and moderate conservatives that are on course to outnumber hardliners opposed to Rouhani.

Ali Larijani, the outgoing Majlis speaker, is a principlist from Qom but is on the president’s side – and serves as a useful conduit to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The same is true of Ali Motahari, a conservative on social issues – for example he supports compulsory hijab for women – but moderate on others.

Iran set to elect record number of women into parliament

With reformist-backed candidates securing a sweeping victory in Tehran, and moderates leading in provinces, a record number of women are set to enter the next Iranian parliament. 

Estimates based on the latest results show that as many as 20 women are likely to enter the 290-seat legislature known as the Majlis, the most ever. The previous record was set nearly 20 years ago during the fifth parliament after the 1979 revolution, when 14 women held seats. There are nine women in the current Iranian parliament. 

Eight of the women elected this time were on a reformist-backed list of 30 candidates standing in the Tehran constituency known as “the list of hope”.

Among them is Parvaneh Salahshori, a 51-year-old sociologist and university professor originally from Masjed Soleyman, in the south of Iran. Her husband, Barat Ghobadian, also a university professor, was disqualified from running. As the results were being counted, an interview surfaced online showing Salahshori speaking out about discrimination against women in Iran, pleasing many women’s rights advocates. She also said women should be able to choose whether or not to wear the hijab, a taboo subject in the Islamic Republic. 

When asked by an Italian journalist what it meant to belong to reformists in Iran, she said: “It means that we want change, it means that we want to empower our women, we want to empower our young people and we want to grow our economy.”

Salahshori criticised the nine existing female MPs, who mostly belong to the conservative camp, saying that they did not represent women. “They think completely differently from us [reformists],” she told Corriere della Sera. “They are against women, I think some women are against women and these women are not women, only their gender is female, but their language is pro-men.”

‘Tehran is now free': Iranian​s​​ celebrate​ reformist victory online

As reformist-backed candidates sweep to victory in Iran’s elections, many voters have taken to social media to share celebratory jokes and mocking memes about the country’s conservative hardliners. “Dear citizens! Attention please, attention please: Tehran is now free,” read a message widely shared on the popular messaging app, Telegram.

Jokes started circulating on social media on 27 February after it became clear the coalition of candidates supported by the reformists, dubbed “the list of hope”, was likely to take all of the capital’s 30 parliamentary seats.

One popular quip shared on Telegram imagined the former parliament speaker and conservative hardliner Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel – who eventually lost his seat – resting his head on the legs of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, telling him: “I won’t go to the parliament!” with Khamenei responding: “Don’t be afraid, my little one. You’ll find new friends.”

With strong emphasis on privacy protection and anonymity for its users the Telegram app has become a popular platform for pro-reform supporters to spread their message, with one in four Iranian now thought to be using the service.

One joke shared widely on the app showed the head of the Guardian Council of the Constitution, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, pleading: “Don’t push me [out]!” – a reference to the fact that he is was languishing in 15th place on the list of assembly candidates from Tehran.

‘Please end vote counting’

Other social media users alluded to the house arrest of Iranian opposition figuresMir Hossein Musavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and fellow reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi.

Somalia attacks signal escalation of al-Shabaab offensive

Combined car bomb and suicide attacks in the Somali city of Baidoa that killed at least 30 people at the weekend appear to be part of an accelerating offensive by al-Shabaab. The group aims to disrupt national elections planned for this year, undermine public confidence in international peacekeepers and bring down Somalia’s weak western-backed federal government.

The Baidoa attacks targeted a busy restaurant where patrons were watching the English Premier League football match between Manchester United and Arsenal on Sunday. The bombings, claimed by the al-Qaida-affiliate, followed a lethal attack in the capital, Mogadishu, on Friday. An al-Shabaab spokesman saidgovernment officials had been targeted, but most of the dead in both incidents were civilians. Somalia has suffered two decades of lawlessness, insurrection and invasion since the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship in 1991, earning it the label of “failed state”. Instability has spread to neighbouring Kenya, home to large numbers of Somali refugees, following Nairobi’s decision in 2011 to intervene militarily.

Enraged by Kenya’s support for the African Union’s 22,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Somalia (Amisom), al-Shabaab caused mass casualties in attacks on a university in Garissa last year and at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in 2013. Last month as many as 200 Kenyan soldiers died in an al-Shabaab attack on a military camp inside Somalia, according to Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

Kenyan authorities disputed the figure but did not give a specific death toll. Al-Shabaab later distributed photos of dozens of dead Kenyan soldiers, many apparently shot in the head.

“We have been winning for years and months but [in] that El Ade battle [at the Kenyan camp], we were defeated,” Mohamud said.

From astronaut to refugee: how the Syrian spaceman fell to Earth

The Neil Armstrong of the Arab world has an office in a ramshackle building in Istanbul’s Fatih or “Little Syria”. Muhammed Faris is a refugee, just like the people milling outside, facing up to the hardest challenge in his life; one that has already seen the roles of fighter pilot, spaceman, military advisor to the Assad regime; protester, rebel and defector.

In Syria, Faris is a national hero, with a school, airport and roads named after him. Medals on the wall of his office honour his achievements as an astronaut (or, strictly speaking, a cosmonaut). Here, hundreds of miles from his birthplace, Aleppo, he campaigns for democratic change in Syria, “through words, not weapons”.

In 1985, he was one of four young Syrian men vying to join the Interkosmos training programme, for allies of the Soviet Union, at Star City just outside Moscow. There had been one Arab in space before, Sultan Bin Salman Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, but never a professional Arab spaceman. Despite the thawing of the cold war, US relations with Iran and its ally Syria were deteriorating. Syrian ties to the Soviet Union were strong: Russia supported Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad, in his rise to power in a coup in 1970. In return, the Soviets were allowed to open a naval base in Tartus, which remains in Russian hands today.

He was one of 60 Syrian candidates at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre and made it down to the last four. Two were Alawite, the same sect as Assad, one was Druze and the fourth, Faris, was Sunni. As a member of the sect that makes up more than 80% of the country’s population, a perceived threat to the leadership, Faris was there in name only. Assad sent a delegation to the Soviet Union to “help” the Russians choose their man. The most senior candidate, an Alawite colonel, had a medical problem, so he was out, and the Druze man failed to make the grade. It was clear that Faris, the Sunni, was the more suitable of the two remaining candidates. But, as Faris puts it, “it would have been easier to choose me as a new prime minister than [for the Syrian group] to make me their first spaceman”. The Russians overruled Assad’s delegation, and Faris went into training, followed by a trip to the Mir space station in July 1987.

Somalia's Lido beach: the heart of Mogadishu and the place my friends died

As a winter storm approached New York in January, I lost my cousin. I lost a very good friend from high school too. Abdirahman and Omar died in the same place during an attack on a beachside restaurant in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

When I learned of the attack on Twitter, I posted a note of concern for those who were targeted. Lido beach is a symbol of the city’s comeback. It is a space that captures the rhythmic changes of Mogadishu, and the pulsing beat of a city shedding its war-weary image. “Stay safe everyone,” I wrote, rather naively.

Just over 20 minutes later, I went on Twitter again and posted a prayer for those caught “in this dusk of danger and darkness”. I put my phone aside and continued eating dinner with a friend.

An hour later, I came to know about my loved ones’ deaths through WhatsApp. After the first group of people ran to safety, Abdirahman and Omar couldn’t be found. When the siege ended in the morning, family members went back to the restaurant and identified their bodies. That’s when my sister messaged me from Nairobi to break the news.

At first, the words on my screen seemed to reverberate through my apartment. I felt the heat at the back of my head rising. I remember the stillness of the leafless trees outside. The world, for a moment, seemed to rise in collective upheaval and violent silence. Suddenly, I recalled the last time I saw my cousin Abdirahman.

It was on Lido beach late on 11 January – 11 days before his death. He was sitting in the same cafe where he was killed. I had travelled to Somalia for a reporting project.

That night, a friend had picked me up from my hotel, and we went to have dinner together. When we got to the beach, Abdirahman was sat with friends. His feet were buried in the sand and his sandals lay by his side. When I called his name, he leapt from his chair and hugged me. “I thought you were in New York,” he said, “I can’t believe this.” He was warm and cheery that night.

The Syrian spaceman who became a refugee

Muhammed Faris became Syria’s first Syrian astronaut in 1987, and subsequently used as a propaganda tool by President Hafez al-Assad. But when the Syrian people rose up against his son Bashar, Faris sided with the Free Syrian Army rebels. Now a refugee in Istanbul, he reflects on his exile from the beloved country he once saw from space

Erol Mintaş , Taylan Mintaş,Mustafa Khalili and Charlie Phillips, theguardian.com

Tuesday 1 March 2016 07.00 GMT

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SodaStream lays off last Palestinian workers after leaving West Bank

Hundreds of Palestinian workers have been left unemployed after the SodaStream factory where they worked moved out of the occupied West Bank and back into Israel following an international boycott campaign.

SodaStream leaves West Bank as CEO says boycott antisemitic and pointless

 

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Daniel Birnbaum, chief executive of SodaStream International, said the last 74 Palestinian workers left on Monday after being denied permits to work inside Israel at the new factory.

“We gave them an opportunity to work,” he told Israel’s Channel 2 TV, calling Palestinians the main victims of the boycott movement while also criticising the Israeli government for not granting them work permits.

“The government of Israel somehow couldn’t overcome their own bureaucracy or hard-headedness and figure out the tremendous challenge of enabling 74 good people … to continue to let them do what they have been doing.”

In all about 500 Palestinians have lost their jobs after the factory moved in 2015 amid a high-profile boycott campaign known as BDS, meaning boycott, divestment and sanctions.

The movement seeks to ostracise Israel by lobbying corporations, artists and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state. Supporters say the boycott is aimed at furthering Palestinian aspirations for independence, and that their efforts are modelled on an earlier campaign against apartheid South Africa.

Critics say the campaign is not aimed at Israeli policies but at delegitimising Israel itself. Some accuse it of antisemitism because it singles out Israel for boycott while ignoring countries with poor human rights records.

Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.

At a march to protest the government’s decision on Monday, a few hundred SodaStream employees formed a peace sign at the company’s Lehavim factory.

Palestinian employees then boarded buses for the last time to be taken into the West Bank.

Anas Abdul Wadud Ghayth, 25, had worked for SodaStream for four years and wiped tears from behind his glasses.

“We were one family. I am sad because I am leaving my friends who have worked here for a long time,” he said.

“There is no hope in Palestine. There is little work.”

Bassel Salhaya said he had no plan for future employment in the West Bank.

“We were together 12 hours a day, more than I see my wife and son,” he said. “We became like brothers.”

Many Palestinians work in Israeli settlements because of limited job prospects in the West Bank. The Palestinians say the local economy is hobbled by Israeli restrictions.

Mahmoud Nawajaa, the BDS coordinator in the West Bank town of Ramallah, called the loss of the Palestinian jobs at SodaStream “part of the price that should be paid in the process of ending the occupation”. He called on the Palestinian Authority to do more to find jobs for the workers.

SodaStream, which had revenues of $112.9m in the final quarter of 2015, initially threatened to halt production at its factory unless the “essential” workers were given permits. However it later backed down and made them redundant.

Birnbaum said he was “still hopeful” a solution could be found and said the company might move some operations back to the West Bank.

“If the government of Israel does not allow the Palestinians to get their jobs, I will bring those jobs to the Palestinians. That is not a threat. It is a fact.”

Cogat, the defence ministry body responsible for coordinating Israeli government activity in the Palestinian territories, declined to comment on the redundancies but said it had helped facilitate the movement of the factory.

“Cogat has taken many measures to help the factory and provided temporary permits to hundreds of labourers in the past year and a half to enable the transfer [of the factory],” a statement said.

According to Cogat 58,000 Palestinians hold permits to work in Israel, with another 27,000 working for Israeli businesses in West Bank settlements and industrial zones.

SodaStream - which employs around 1,200 people - has called for that number to be increased but it would require a government decision.

Canada meets target to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees

Canada’s immigration minister said on Monday the country has reached a significant milestone with the arrival of 25,000 Syrian refugees.

Immigration minister John McCallum said work continues to integrate the Syrians into the community. McCallum was at Toronto’s Pearson airport as the last two government-arranged refugee flights were arriving as part of the Liberals’ $678m (US$501m) settlement plan.

The refugee resettlement program was launched in November, after prime minister Justin Trudeau came to power and promised to bring in 25,000 government-sponsored refugees by the end of 2015 amid an intense debate in the West over what to do with people fleeing violence in the Middle East.

Trudeau later pushed back the date by two months.

In the United States, the Obama administration plans to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees. But several Republican governors have tried to stop the arrival of Syrian refugees in their states in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris and California. Canada’s commitment reflects the change in government after October’s election. The previous Conservative government declined to resettle more Syrian refugees, despite the haunting image of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach. The boy had relatives in Canada, and the refugee crisis became a major campaign issue.

McCallum previously said he hopes to bring in between 35,000 and 50,000 Syrian refuges by the end of the year.

Isis claims responsibility for double suicide bombing in Baghdad

A double suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State has killed 70 people in a Shia district of Baghdad in the deadliest attack inside the Iraqi capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.

Police sources said the suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.

A Reuters witness saw pools of blood on the ground with slippers, shoes and mobile phones at the site of the blasts, which was sealed off to prevent further attacks.

In a statement circulated online, Isis claimed responsibility for the blasts. “Our swords will not cease to cut off the heads of the rejectionist polytheists, wherever they are,” it said, using derogatory terms for Shias.

Iraqi forces, backed by airstrikes from a US-led coalition, have driven Isis back in the western Anbar province recently, and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul.

But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control, often targeting members of Iraq’s Shia majority, most recently on Thursday when two Isis suicide bombers killed 15 people at a mosque in the capital.

Prime minister Haider al-Abadi said the attacks were in response to Isis’s recent defeats. “This gang targeted civilians after it lost the initiative and its dregs fled the battlefield before our proud fighters,” he said on his official Facebook page.

At dawn on Sunday, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, seizing positions in a grain silo and a cemetery and killing at least 17 members of the security forces, officials said.

The Guardian view on the US and Russia in Syria: rivals who need each other

The Syrian war has lasted so long and diplomacy has proved so ineffective that the hope that it could end or at least be brought under some kind of control is hard to sustain. Yet the cessation of hostilities agreed by nearly all of the warring parties seemed to be holding this weekend. Most observers give it a chance, not because of some sudden change of heart on anybody’s part – nearly all those concerned still hate each other – but because it is arguably in the interests of the key players to pursue their objectives in the future in a different way.

That way will not exclude violence, but could greatly reduce its role in the conflict. It is also true that Syria is such a complicated and dangerous mess that even states which are opposed to each other sense the need to cooperate in order to avert dangers that they cannot deal with on their own. Syria is like a clover leaf motorway interchange in very bad weather, threatening a multi-vehicle pile-up at any moment.

It has to be immediately added that the cessation deal is very much on Russia’s terms, that it favours the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, that violations have already occurred and will continue, and that the danger of a Russo-Turkish clash is still a real one. Indeed, the threat of a wider war has been the main driver in the negotiations which led up to the cessation deal.

King Abdullah of Jordan has said that the Russian military intervention “had shaken the tree”, and it is certainly true that President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send substantial forces to Syria has transformed the situation in that country. His move was initially derided by some because Russian planes and tanks did not at first seem to be making much difference to the military balance between the regime and the rebels, but as the weight of Russian arms began to tell, perceptions shifted. The Russians rescued the regime and strengthened it to the point where the idea that it might be toppled became, at most, a very distant prospect.

Rebel groups were at a stroke deprived of their principal war aim. Yet Moscow’s success brought its own problems. Making war is easier than devising political solutions. It seems unlikely that Russia wants to underpin the Assad regime militarily, and certainly not to fight for it, for ever.

The ultimate aim is presumably to secure a stable Syrian entity as an ally and a client, yet that is almost certainly incompatible with unqualified support for President Assad, or with helping him regain full control of Syria, his proclaimed objective. Moscow has been talking to a range of opposition figures, and may well understand, by now, that few would consent to cosmetic incorporation in an unchanged regime, and that there will eventually have to be an internal settlement that the Sunni Arab majority and the Kurds can tolerate, and not just those Sunni loyalists who had stuck with President Assad all along. A joint offensive against Islamic State, involving both regime and rebel forces, as well as coordination with the western coalition against Isis, is an equally tricky prospect. Putting Syria back together after that as even a loosely federated state will be a daunting task.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has played a weak hand well. America forfeited influence in Damascus years ago, when it came out prematurely against President Assad. It lost more when President Barack Obama decided not to bomb Syrian targets in 2013 in retaliation for the regime’s use of chemical weapons. The campaign it has led against Isis in Iraq and Syria has been a very slow-burning affair, and its grip on Iraq’s faltering progress less than impressive. What Mr Kerry has done is to take Russia’s project and to try to bend it so that it serves the interests of America, Europe, and other concerned states as well. Russia and the US need each other, and at the same time are trying to use each other. This could so easily go wrong but it is the only game in town, and the only one which promises some relief for Syria’s suffering people.

Iranian elections deal blow to hardliners as reformists make gains

Hardliners in Iran have been dealt a humiliating blow after reformist-backed candidates in Friday’s hard-fought elections appeared on course for a sweeping victory in Tehran, with a combination of moderates and independents sympathetic to President Hassan Rouhani leading in provinces.

A coalition of candidates supported by the reformists, dubbed “the list of hope”, is likely to take all of the capital’s 30 parliamentary seats, according to the latest tally released by the interior ministry, in surprising results seen as a strong vote of confidence in Rouhani’s moderate agenda. Mohammad Reza Aref, a committed reformist who has a degree from Stanford University in the US, is at the top of the list.

Preliminary results for the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for appointing the next supreme leader, showed Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a key Rouhani ally, leading the race. Elections to the assembly are usually a lacklustre event but have attracted huge attention this time because of the age of the current leader, 76-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei and Rafsanjani, a prominent pragmatist who was not allowed to run for president in 2013, have been at odds in recent years.

Five lessons from Iran's 2016 elections

The primary divide is now between supporters and opponents of the nuclear agreement

Last July’s agreement with world powers brought a realignment in Iranian politics. The central divide in the election was between supporters and opponents of the deal.

The ‘principle-ist’ Ali Larijani as parliamentary speaker was an effective ally of President Hassan Rouhani. Larijani headed off critics of the deal in a level of co-operation between parliament and government not seen during the presidency of Ahmadinejad and the latter years of Khatami. During the election, public supportoffered to Larijani as candidate in Qom by General Qassem Soleimani, chief of the Revolutionary Guards overseas Qods brigade, reflected broad backing in the political elite behind the nuclear agreement.

This agreement was not consigned to history when signed. Implementation is to last over the next nine years – both in limiting Iran’s nuclear programme and in removing United Nations, European Union and most United States sanctions. This suggests the agreement will continue to shape Iranian politics, even if less strongly over time.

Iranian politics cannot be reduced to ‘reformists’ versus ‘hardliners’

Iran is a large country – bigger than Iraq, Turkey and Syria combined – and every Iranian election throws up a complex mix of regional, tribal and local factors. Voters have many reasons for voting as they do. The single biggest issue in most elections in most countries is the economy - but this is a catch-all that can lump together jobs, prices, housing and urgent environmental issues like water management.

The generalisations of ‘left’ versus ‘right’ of the 1980s, and ‘reformists’ versus ‘conservatives’ of the 1990s – however well they applied at the time – no longer work. Observers who portrayed the elections as between ‘reformists’ and ‘hardliners’ have tied themselves in knots – as shown in reports that ‘reformists’ and ‘moderates’ had all been disqualified followed by reports they had won the election. 

The succession to Ayatollah Khamenei as leader looks remarkably open With the defeat of Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi in the Experts Assembly election, the assembly will need a new chairman. The assembly will remain an opaque body, but whoever fills the post (as well as the conduct of his election) will be the next clue as to how the succession to Khamenei will proceed.

The defeat in Tehran not just of Yazdi but also of Ayatollahs Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmad Jannati represents a serious blow to the senior clerics most alarmed by Rouhani and the prospect of better relations with the west. But the views of less vocal Assembly members elected round the country may be less clear-cut than those trumpeted on the noisy hustings in Tehran. Further surprises lie ahead.

Hassan Rouhani is a capable politician, if no reformist

Iran’s president has proved himself an astute, hard-headed operator. He not only carried the bulk of the political class behind the nuclear agreement, he has again won electoral endorsement for his pragmatic conservatism. His politics are based on efforts to improve relations with other countries, including the United States; reform of the economy to boost the private sector and attract foreign investment; and some easing of press controls and morality policing.

Rouhani’s instincts and temperament do not favour exciting opinion leaders – especially the urban middle-classes and students – behind a programme of change. He is well aware that the Khatami era and the street protests after the disputed 2009 election opened up bitter divisions within the political class: his approach is based rather on incremental change and building agreement.

Change comes dripping slowly ...

Economic reform to encourage sustainable growth – increasing employment and improving living standards – will challenge vested interests, including those that have benefited from the closed economy encouraged by sanctions and an ideology of ‘resistance’. Rouhani will prefer reassurance to confrontation and will pick battles carefully.

Internationally, the region looks dangerous, and these are troubled times with unprecedented tensions between Sunnis and Shia. This creates a tricky balance of keeping Iran ‘strong’ while also improving relations with both the US – even as a presidential election draws nearer – and an increasingly assertive Saudi Arabia.

Politically, Rouhani will need to maintain public support with an eye to being re-elected as president next year. Anecdotal reports of a lower turn-out in poorer parts of Tehran may reflect most strongly a wider sense among Iranians they are not benefiting from the easing of sanctions. In terms of the political class, Rouhani will need to reassure conservatives that cautious change continues to be in the interests of the Islamic Republic, while also offering reformists some concessions over political prisoners and censorship.