Iran Live Coverage: Worrying About Syria

See also Saturday's Iran Live Coverage: Keeping an Eye on Human Rights

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1609 GMT: Election Watch. Another sign that reformists will participate in June's Presidential election....

Hojatoleslam Rasoul Montajabnia, the deputy of the Etemad-e Melli Party of detained opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, has suggested that --- to see more participation in the election --- former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani must be involved without necessarily becoming candidates.

Montajabnia said, "With their active presence in the election environment, the intellectuals and the critics of the country’s officials and rulers will become interested in participating in the election."

1549 GMT: Election Watch..Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, President Ahmadinejad's right-hand man and a possible candidate in June's Presidential election, has expressed his wish that the next Government continues on Ahamdinejad's path of the last eight years.

Rahim-Mashai also emphasised that the election must be honest and criticised State broadcast IRIB for what he was claimed was support for certain candidates --- a likely reference to the 2+1 coaliton, backed by the Supreme Leader, seeking a "unity" choice for June.

1544 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. Mohammad Dehghan, a member of the Board of Parliament has criticised the President:

In the beginning, Ahmadinejad government attracted people to itself by revolutionary slogans However once it was well stabilised, then it distanced from those slogans and now He (Ahmadinejad) is supporting “the deviant current“....I believe that the supporters ofand those loyal to Ahmadinejad have been denounced from the point of view of the people and the Supreme Leader.

1540 GMT: Election Watch. Hojatoleslam Mohammad Abou Torabi-Fard, a Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has announced his candidacy in the Presidential election.

1150 GMT: Election Watch. Hojatoleslam Tuyserkani, the Supreme Leader's representative to the Basij militia, has said that the Basij do not support a "special candidate" in June's Presidential election that he is just "explaining the Supreme Leader's views".

0750 GMT: Economy Watch. Yahya Al-Eshaq, the head of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, has said that 75% of Iranians cannot afford five basic needs and has called on the Government to act.

0500 GMT: Foreign Affairs Watch (Syrian Front). Although he never said "Syria" in his statement on Saturday, it was clear that the country concerned Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the deputy head of armed forces.

Specifically, Jazayeri was worried about Friday's reconcilation between Israel and Turkey. Motivated by its own approach to the Syrian conflict and prompted by the visit of US President Obama, Israel apologised to Ankara for the killing of nine Turkish civilians in an attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2010.

Jazayeri framed the development as "a US game to undermine the anti-Israel resistance movement in the region".

He then warned, "The elite of the Muslim world should remain vigilant and pay necessary heed...[and] not allow the Americans and their allies to humiliate public opinion." He implicitly accused Turkey of undermining the Islamic world, saying that the US and Britain were trying to replace "pure Islam" with “American Islam”.

The question: beyond propaganda declarations, what does the Islamic Republic do about the development?