This is a tremendous victory for Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, who engineered the gathering of all the major nations of the world to impose sanctions on Iran and then traded most of them away in exchange for the dismantling of the Iranian facilities for manufacture of nuclear weapons. It has saved the U.S. and the world from a devastating war with Iran. Now, a mere few weeks after the agreement was inked, it is succeeding in edging Iran further away from its control by ideological zealots to a more popular desire to end the fear of war and accommodate more towards the civilized world. It remains our principal enemy in the middle east but the possibilities of accommodation in some critical areas have increased.
PENINSULAQUATAR: Tehran: Reformist and moderate Iranian politicians allied with President Hassan Rouhani won second round parliamentary elections, preliminary results said Saturday, capping a remarkable comeback after years of isolation.
The outcome represents a significant realignment of competing factions in the Islamic republic, with conservative MPs losing their dominance and being outnumbered for the first time since 2004.
The result is also an implicit public vote of confidence for Rouhani, who won a landslide election victory in 2013 and went on to clinch a historic deal with world powers over Tehran’s nuclear programme that lifted sanctions… (more)
Rouhani allies win Iran parliament elections
