maloney_suzanne

Zero. He actually never registered and surely never stood a chance. Don't know why he was flogging his psuedo candidacy so much!

No one really knows. And as @FTZ notes the elections are heavily managed - the government already had a say in who could run, slashing the initial list of applicants from 686 to 8. Two have since withdrawn, and there are likely only three real contenders today. Most expect that the government will take measures to ensure its preferred candidate will win, but the interesting aspect is that it's no longer clear who is the preferred candidate. Saeed Jalili, the nuclear negotiator, has underperformed. Mohammad Baqr Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, is unreliable ideologically and just a little too ambitious. So the real question is not so much will the election be rigged, but who will it be rigged for?

Here's what I wrote last night: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/iran-at-saban/posts/2013/06/12-campaign-end, and here's an earlier piece questioning the conventional wisdom on Jalili: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/iran-at-saban/posts/2013/05/24-iran-also-rans

The president has distinctly less authority than Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However whoever wins will have an enormous amount of influence of Iran's foreign policy as well as its domestic political climate and economic framework. Just consider the difference between Iran during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami and the past 8 years during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's tenture. Night and day. I'm not overly optimistic for dramatic immediate change, but the amazing thing about Iran is that even during a period of hard-line control, social and cultural change has continued ... which is why all the candidates are on twitter!

Deeply profoundly and passionately aware, despite the fact that the theocratic regime has largely sought to downplay the legacy of Mohammad Mossadeq. The name of the main street in Tehran was initially renamed in his honor after the revolution, but once the clergy consolidated control, it was changed to honor the 12th Imam (Vali-ye Asr.) Still, many Iranians remain deeply suspicious of US and especially the British as a result of the 1953 coup.

1) We write books, speak on panels, do research, engage with policymakers and other experts in DC and around the world. 2) I have a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; studied undergrad at University of Pennsylvania, studied languages in Cairo, London and Tehran. 3) I came to Brookings first as a pre and post-doctoral fellow in the 1990s; left to work in the private sector and then for the State Department; returned in 2007 to the Saban Center; 4) I wish I could provide an easy path to this kind of a career. The best advice I can give is to work on an issue that you are deeply passionately interested in, and it will often produce unexpected opportunities.