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Where Are Iran’s Reformists?

Sune Engel Rasmussen reports from Tehran that the reformists and green movement have been reduced to “near invisibility” in the run-up to the presidential elections scheduled for June.
EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to film or take pictures in Tehran.

An Iranian protestor with his face covered with a green mask flashes the victory sign as he holds stones in his hands during clashes in central Tehran December 27, 2009. A senior Iranian police official denied a report on an opposition website that four pro-reform protesters were killed during clashes in Tehran on Sunday, the Students News Agency ISNA reported. REUTERS/S

TEHRAN, Iran — Five months before Iran’s presidential elections, speculation is rife over who will succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The president is constitutionally forced to leave office in June, and will leave behind a widespread yearning for change. But this summer’s elections are unlikely to usher in a new reformist era in Iran.

Two years after opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, along with Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard, were placed under house arrest, the space carved out for reformists in national politics has narrowed to near-invisibility. For reformists, the elections will not be a genuine fight for power, but a catch-22 of either boycotting the vote in protest of the fraudulent elections of 2009 or participating to keep a presence in the system.

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