As part of its daily Iran briefings, EA WorldView will be providing detailed coverage of the Presidential campaign and the election, scheduled for 14 June.
Follow the developments in our Iran Today section and latest analysis.
New to the election and/or Iran? Get up to speed with our Animated Guide and our special section, with a description of the process and details of the key factions.
Friday, May 31, 2013 at 14:57 | Scott Lucas in EA Live, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran See also Syria Analysis: A 5-Point Guide to Assad Interview --- Is He Right To Declare Victory?
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Syria Audio Analysis: The Real Importance of the "Russian Missiles to Syria" Story
Syria Video & Transcript: President Assad's Interview with Al-Manar TV
Thursday's Syria Today: Last Chance for Opposition "Unity" in Istanbul Talks
Syrian TV has broadcast, from a passport, the identity of the British man among the three Western nationals killed by regime forces on Wednesday. According to the passport, he is Ali Almanasfi, 22 years old and born in London.
An insurgent commander told Mona Mahmood of The Guardian of the attack that killed Almanasfi, American Nicole Mansfield, and a third foreigner near the city of Idlib:
We'd been engaged in several shoot-outs with shabiha forces [pro-regime militia] in the area. We launched an attack against a Government checkpoint and managed to kill several shabiha.Another group of rebels came from the Al-Akrad mountains in Lattakia to join us. They made a mistake. They wanted to avoid the centre of Idlib [controlled by government forces] and instead took a back route through the suburbs. But they didn't know there was a Syrian army checkpoint; they didn't get the information. The army shot up their car and the British guy was killed.
Ramped-up foreign intervention is likely to tip the military balance against the Assad regime. But it faces a political question: is the aim merely to pressure and contain the President or to topple him?
And that question in turn leads to others: is there an effective political group, given the tensions and fragementing within the opposition, that can replace Assad? Will the "extremists", rather than the "moderates", win? Will the fall of the regime send destabilising ripples across the Middle East?
Assad is betting that all these questions can be turned into doubts to block further intervention for the opposition. Last night's declarations were his chips to support that bet.
On Monocle 24's The Daily on Thursday night, I discussed the latest rumours and claims over the Russian shipment of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria to get to the real significance of the story.
Listen from the 7:41 mark on The Daily's homepage or in a pop-out window
The take-away line? "The S-300 story is more important as a political game --- with the "West" trying to put Russia in a corner and Moscow standing firm --- than as a military development."
Friday, May 31, 2013 at 8:04 | Joanna Paraszczuk in EA Iran, Iran Election 2013, Middle East and Iran 
Presidential Election Watch --- First Televised Debate
Iranian State television aired the first televised debate between Presidential candidates, starting at 12.30 p.m. BST (4 p.m. Tehran time).
Moderate candidate Hassan Rouhani's campaign team lie-tweeted the event, and Principlist candidate Saeed Jalili's team also published tweets during the debate.
Friday's debate centers on the economy --- the hottest issue in the Presidential campaign. Highlights so far:
Former First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref has slammed the involvement of the Revolutionary Guards --- or "military-linked" bodies as he put it --- in Iran's economy, saying that privatizing state companies by selling to those entities merely results in quasi-governmental control.
Aref also criticized Principlists for sidelining other political forces in Iran, saying that this is the cause of the country's economic woes. Principlist MP Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel took exception to this remark, accusing Aref of politicizing the issue of the economy.
Tehran mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf also slammed the "politicization" of the economic problem. Iranians demanded change, not blame, he noted.
Hassan Rouhani said that Iran needs "freedom of expression", so that the government can be properly answerable to the people.
Supreme National Security Council secretary Saeed Jalili opined that Iran would progress by following the "discourse of the Islamic Revolution", a remark he has made during his campaigning. Jalili added that the Management and Planning Organization are not in line with the Islamic Revolution.
Former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei, whose campaign has centered on social justice, slammed the Mehr Housing Scheme --- a project under which the government gave real-estate developers free land in return for building cheap residential housing for first-time buyers.
Rezaei said that the project could have been run better and that it should have involved the people. Rezaei also said that the government should offer people more loans to buy property.
Jalili said that the Mehr Housing Scheme failed because house prices were too low and because of inflation. Jalili agreed with Qalibaf that the government should renovate old housing stock.
برای اصلاح تقاضای سوداگرانه و مقابله با قیمت کاذب مسکن، بایستی حل تورم،اصلاح نظام مالیاتی و مدیریت انتقال سرمایه به تولید را مدنظر قرار داد.
— Dr Saeed Jalili (@DrSaeedJalili) May 31, 2013
Rouhani said that his policies included providing cheap housing, particularly for young Iranians.
#Rouhani: Providing cheap housing, particularly for #young,key part of my govt's policies. We've witnessed 52% rise in house prices.
— Rouhani Campaign (@HassanRouhani) May 31, 2013
Jalili repeated his campaign line that economic reform required expert consultants, not just politicians.
برای اصلاح نظام اقتصادی کشور اول مردم، بعد کارشناسان و بعد هم افرادی که در دستگاه دولتی هستند، مهم هستند، نه صرفا جریانهای سیاسی
— Dr Saeed Jalili (@DrSaeedJalili) May 31, 2013
Al-Manar: Mr. President, we are in the heart of the People’s Palace, two and a half years into the Syrian crisis. At the time, the bet was that the president and his regime would be overthrown within weeks. How have you managed to foil the plots of your opponents and enemies? What is the secret behind this steadfastness?
President Assad: There are a number of factors are involved. One is the Syrian factor, which thwarted their intentions; the other factor is related to those who masterminded these scenarios and ended up defeating themselves because they do not know Syria or understand in detail the situation. They started with the calls of revolution, but a real revolution requires tangible elements; you cannot create a revolution simply by paying money.
Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 14:23 | Scott Lucas in EA Live, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 
Opposition Representatives at This Week's Talks Oppositions Appeals for Help in Besieged Qusayr and Damascus Suburb
Insurgent commanders in the besieged town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, have appealed for help and warned of dire consequences if it does not arrive:
If all rebel fronts do not move to stop this crime being led by Hezbollah and Assad's traitorous army of dogs...we will soon be saying that there was once a city called Qusayr.
Malek Ammar, an opposition activist in Qusayr, said, "The town is surrounded and there's no way to bring in medical aid."
Ammar said about 100 of 700 wounded needed oxygen: "What we need [insurgent units] to do is come to the outskirts of the city and attack the checkpoints so we can get routes in and out of the city."
Qusayr has been under sustained shelling and attacks for almost two weeks. On Wednesday, the Syrian military captured the nearby airbase of Dabba, cutting off the town on all sides and bolstering their positions.
Elsewhere, insurgents blockaded in the eastern Ghouta, east of Damascus, appealed for help on Facebook, claiming Assad's forces were "preparing to commit more massacres".
The fighters said they held the opposition Syrian National Coalition, whose members have spent a week arguing in Istanbul over the orgnaisation of the leadership, responsible for their plight.George Sabra, the acting head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, has confirmed that the group will not attend any international "peace" conference.
However, whereas the Coalition's formal declaration on Wednesday emphasised its demand that President Assad step down as part of any transitional government, Sabra's statement said the condition was the international community's intervention to end the Syrian military's siege of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.
Then Sabra declared, "The National Coalition will not take part in any international conference or any such efforts so long as the militias of Iran and Hezbollah continue their invasion of Syria."
Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 10:57 | Joanna Paraszczuk in EA Live, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 
Egypt: Concern Over Effect of Proposed Law on NGOs
Human Rights Watch has expressed concern that a draft law, placed by President Morsi before the legislature on Wednesday, would allow the Government and security agencies to arbitrarily restrict the funding and operation of independent groups.
HRW claims the Associations Law will reinforce and formalise State control over non- Governmental groups by denying them access to both domestic and international funding and giving "complete discretion" to authorities to object to activities of Egyptian and international organisations.
HRW said there were improvements in the draft, notably over the withdrawal of the designation of all NGO funding as "public" and thus open to Government supervision; however, it said the Government still retains excessive powers.
HRW cited the requirement of submission of an annual financial report, as well as copies of all internal decisions and a report on annual activities, to the authorities --- who could object and try to shut down the NGO. Groups also must notify the government in advance every time they wish to raise money through TV campaigns, charity events, or mail campaigns, and a Government committee has absolute discretion to block all access to foreign funding.
Egypt, Human Rights Watch, Iraq, Mohamed Morsi The IRDiplomacy website, close to former Iranian diplomat and adviser to former President Khatami Seyed Mohammad Sadegh Kharazi, has published excerpts of an interview with Presidential candidate Hassan Rouhani, which is highly critical of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's foreign policy.
Rouhani argues that though the events of the Arab Spring --- which Iran refers to as the Islamic Awakening --- could have changed the strategic balance in the Middle East to Iran's advantage, "some unwise and radical behaviors deprived the Islamic Republic of Iran of using the situation to its benefit."
Ahmadinejad's policies --- including his Holocaust denial and calls to eliminate Israel --- merely led to "increased unity among Iran's enemies", Rouhani argued.
Regarding whether Iran should open bilateral talks with the US, Rouhani said:
The present conditions must be carefully analyzed and, if necessary, negotiation and bilateral dialogue with the US must not be avoided. The first steps should be aimed at preventing the increase of pressures and stopping the trend of the present sanctions. During the next stages, the atmosphere must be balanced until the complete elimination of sanctions.I don’t believe in negotiation just for the sake of negotiation and without achieving any results. We must have a clear agenda and objective in negotiating with the US.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 8:48 | Scott Lucas in EA Live, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 
Bashar al-Assad & Vladimir Putin
Syrian National Coalition: No Part in Conference Without Assad Exit
The opposition Syrian National Coalition has officially confirmed that it will not participate in a proposed international "peace" conference in Geneva next month without a guarantee that President Assad will leave power.
The committee adopted a declaration amid a week-long meeting in Turkey, "The participation of the Syrians in any conference is tied to the presentation of a deadline for a solution and giving the necessary binding international guarantees."
