Reply #14: Some background:

[rman]

Current Iran President Ahmadinejad is conservative, and leaning to wards the more radical religious groups in Iran. He replaced the relatively moderate ("reformist") Khatami, after some dubious electoral maneuvering.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iran

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In February, 2003, for the second time local elections had taken place since being introduced in 1999 as part of President Khatami's concept of a civil society at the grassroots level. 905 city councils and 34,205 village councils were up for election. In Tehran and some of the major cities, all of the seats were taken back by conservatives over reformists. This swing was caused by widespread abstention from the local elections. In Tehran only about 10% of the electorate voted, following appeals by reformist groups.

In February 2004 Parliament elections, the Council of Guardians(* banned thousands of candidates, including most of the reformist members of the parliament and all the candidates of the Islamic Iran Participation Front party from running. This led to a win by the conservatives of at least 70% of the seats. Approximately 60% of the elegible voting population participated in the elections.

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The closed loop of power

According to current election laws, a body of 12 experts called the Guardian Council oversees and approves electoral candidates for most national elections in Iran. The majority of the members of this body are appointed by the Supreme Leader. According to the current law, this council vets also Assembly of Experts candidates, which in turn in supervise and elect the Supreme Leader, which ultimately creates a closed loop of power.

In addition, current elections law requires Assembly of Experts candidates to be religious mujtahids, which greatly narrows the potential field.

Neither of these two laws are mandated by the constitution and are ordinary laws passed by the Parliament or the Assembly of Experts, which therefore can theoretically be reversed. However, despite efforts of many political activists, it has proven to be practically impossible to do so until now.

Many Iranian reformists (including Abdollah Noori) consider this to be the core legal obstacle for a truly democratic system in Iran.

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*)The Guardian Council of the Constitution is a high office within the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran which has the authority to interpret the constitution and to determine if the laws passed by the parliament are in line with the constitution of Iran. As such, the Council itself is not a legislative body, but it has veto power over the Iranian parliament. Its members are composed of Islamic clerics and lawyers. In function it is similar to a Constitutional Court.

Six members of the Council are clerics selected by the Supreme Leader, who serves as Iran's Head of State. The other six members are lawyers proposed by Iran's head of judicial branch (selected in turn by the Supreme Leader)...