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[anewaname]

They have elections in 5 months... their protesters understand their current administration is trying rig the election (voter suppression and misinformation, the Russian style).

[Strongpoint]

Georgian PM directly accused USA of trying to start a revolution

Heh, even Yanukovich wasn't spewing bullshit of this type. Neither did he dare to use this tone when speaking to the US.

Yeah, it is unlikely that it will end peacefully in Georgia. The pro-Russian "Georgian Dream" is burning bridges.

[martinuzz]

Well for lack of Middle East thread.

It is possible that the president of Iran, and some of his ministers are dead.
Their helicopter 'made a hard landing' near the Azerbaijan border.

The Iranian State television reports the helicopter has been found. The Iranian Red Half Moon denies this is the case and say search and rescue teams are still searching.

[hector13]

Iranian state media appear to be confirming they are dead.

Live updates from the BBC

[Strongpoint]

This is quite unimportant. He wasn't the ruler of Iran. Sure, some said that he was "the successor" but it always was nothing more than a rumor. I don't expect any major changes coming out of it.

[ChairmanPoo]

See, that IS a notable lack of perspective. Alive he might have been a nonentity but dead he can stir the pot quite a bit in the Middle East.

[martinuzz]

Khameini will not be happy. Raisi was being groomed to become the next ayatollah, Khameini is old and has cancer.

Let's hope this tragic accident will bring a fresh wind of change to Iran. I know the country has a lot of young progressives who would like to see a different Iran.

[Starver]

When I first head about it, the "stir the pot" came to mind. (Well, "this'll be interesting".) If it's him and the Foreign Minister (as per initial reports, not checked this morning), then it depends who is waiting (or suddenly very quickly manouvering!) in the wings to step into their roles. If there are moderates (nonetheless, poised to step in, which suggests some sort of 'line' they were holding) then it might spin the nation one way, but likely that there's just more of the same, and all it takes is a spurious misunderstanding/misinterpretation of how they got there...

All unknown, right now (or as of last night, haven't checked this morning, changes may well be afoot before I even typed this).

I was a bit confused about why the helicopter had gone from over on 'that' bit of northern Iran (for the publicised joint dam project) and headed to 'that' but of northern Iran (scraping some rather interesting geopolotical terrain, as well as ...as it turns out... scraping some actual physical terrain), but there are any number of reasons that someone who knew the region (transport links, other likely public business) or more advanced knowledge ('internal' government business, whilst in the region), but of course in that way of speculating lies madness. Or an international espionage thriller sceenplay. After a lot of tweaking to re-set it in "Ficticioustan"!


(And any Middle East thread is likely to get very heated, at times, especially given the current Near-Middle-East situation that I think has done for at least one well-meaning more localised thread, fortunately not this one. It's possible we even had one, either thankfully old and only necroable or possibly locked previously.  Such is the way of things. Even if it would have been nice to have had one specifically for this... at this time... no-fault regional incident.)