Iran’s Interior Ministry announced on Friday that the 11th presidential election will be held on June 14, 2013 along with the 14th municipal elections.
This will be the first presidential election since the controversial election of 2009, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory triggered widespread allegations of vote fraud and mass street protests.
MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two opposition candidates in the last election, became the target of severe persecution by the government for their persistence in challenging the election outcome and were finally put under house arrest in February of 2011.
Mousavi and Karroubi have been under house arrest for over 18 months, and all efforts to free them have been to no avail. Zahra Rahnavard, MirHosein Mousavi’s wife, is also being held under house arrest with her husband.
The election protests of 2009 persisted for months and were finally quelled after a severe state crackdown on the opposition.
