FACTOID #151: The five countries with the highest coffee consumption are also the five countries whose citizens trust one another the most. Coincidence? Probably.
Iran, for its part, is unlikely to grant such concessions at the best of times, let alone during a period when the system is undergoing its gravest legitimacy crisis in 25 years.
The broadest implication of the parliamentary elections is that they have dramatically underscored the failure of Iran's mullahs to graft Islamist ideology with the institutions of a modern democratic state.
For all the elections the Islamic Republic has held over the past 25 years and all the gesture politics and sloganeering revolving around the theme of "Islamic Democracy," alternations of power in the Iranian government are still determined in secret by a handful of clerics.
Elections to the Majlis of Iran were held on February 20, 2004.
The runoff elections for Tehran has been postponed to be held with the Iranian presidential election of June 17, 2005.
The elections took place amidst a serious political crisis that developed due to the January 2004 decision of the conservative vetting body, the Council of Guardians, to ban thousands of candidates from running -- nearly half of the total.
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