Presidential elections in Iran: Crackdowns and power struggles

On 14 June, Iranians will go to the polls to vote in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s successor. As debate around the elections begins to heat up we will be joined by a panel of experts to talk us through the power struggles and the state of opposition movements.

Although Ahmadinejad cannot run again, he has made clear he has no intention of ending his second term quietly. Our panel will be examining the power struggle at the heart of Iran’s political system and how it will play out in the lead up to the election.

A crackdown on the media has already been seen, with the arrests of 15 journalists at the end of January. With opposition leaders still under house arrest following the disputed 2009 elections, we will be asking if, once again, we will see protests on the streets of Tehran.

Chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.

The panel:

Mehri Honarbin-Holliday is senior research fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University and fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is the author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society and Masculinities in Urban Iran.

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by the Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.

Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.