CWRUObserver.com -Financial News and Headlines - NYSE, Nasdaq, OTC's

[jmhollen]

"..The wacko ayatollahs' Dominoe is starting to teeter in Iran....

Monumental resignations sweep Iran's parliament
The New York Times

TEHRAN, Iran -- More than one-third of Iran's parliament resigned Sunday to protest a sweeping ban on candidates running in the parliamentary election later this month. The defiant move threatened to plunge Iran's political system into chaos.

One by one, angry lawmakers, who have held a three-week sit-in at the huge parliament building, marched up to the podium and handed their resignations to the speaker.

In an emotional statement read aloud during Sunday's session of parliament and broadcast live across the nation on Iranian radio, the members who resigned accused powerful conservatives of seeking to impose a religious dictatorship like that of the Taliban, who were overthrown by American-led forces in Afghanistan.

Mohammad Reza Khatami, the leader of the main reformist party and the brother of Iran's reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, was among those who resigned. He warned of a conservative, military-backed coup.

The resignations were a move typical of the brinkmanship that marks Iranian politics, to try to get the hard-liners to back down three weeks before a crucial election that will determine the future of reform in Iran.

The mass resignation coincided with what was supposed to be a day of national celebration, the 25th anniversary of the return to Iran of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from exile to lead a popular revolution in the name of Islam and to bring an end to the 2,500-year monarchy and usher in an Islamic Republic.

The resignations came a day after the president announced that his negotiations with senior religious officials had failed to resolve the crisis.

Last month, the hard-line Guardian Council barred more than 2,000 candidates, including 87 current members of parliament, from competing for the 290-seat assembly in elections scheduled for Feb. 20

http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Feb/02022004/nation_w/134942.asp