Historic shift in Iranian politics – seen in newspaper covers
#The student activists that seized the US embassy after the revolution and took the staff as hostage for 444 days are now mostly members of the reform camp, which is advocating better ties with the West as well as social freedoms.
#In a reference to the then interior minister, Mohtashami Pour, Iran's current foreign minister and former envoy to UN, Javad Zarif has criticized politicians in Tehran who, in those early years, openly expressed their distrust towards Iranian diplomats at the UN HQ in New York when they were in talks with world powers.But things change. Mohtashami Pour, who played a pivotal role in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon when serving as Iranian ambassador in Damascus, now has close ties with reformists whose support for President Rouhani during the election in 2013 was regarded as a game-changing factor in the latter's win.
#Former president Ayatollah Rafsanjani, one of the closest Khomeini aides, who once founded the Islamic Republic partytogether with Ayatollah Khamenei, has been shifting from the center right to the center left in the past few decades, just like many others.
