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ABC/Donna Svennevik(TEHRAN, Iran) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pick to succeed him won't be doing that.

Iran's Guardian Council decided on Tuesday that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a close presidential aide whose daughter happens to be married to Ahmadinejad's son, is not eligible to run in the June 14 presidential election.

The electoral watchdog also decided that former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani could not get on the ballot of eight candidates that includes Saeed Jalili, the country's chief nuclear negotiator.

The decision to exclude Mashaei, although a slap in the face to Ahmadinejad, was anticipated since he has long been at odds with Iran's ruling theocracy.

Conservatives who support the ayatollah claim that Mashaei is unacceptable because he puts Iran ahead of Islam.

In the past, Mashaei angered the clergy by suggesting that Iran could forge close ties with Israel, as well as for applauding women who danced in a ceremony in Turkey.  Women in Iran aren't permitted to dance in public.

All of those on the ballot are establishment candidates, more in tune with the thinking of the hard-line clerics, who oppose any association with the West.

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WOLFGANG KUMM/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The United States has new evidence that Iran and Hezbollah have direct involvement with the Syrian regime, a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry in Oman.

The official said that, according to the Free Syrian Army, Hezbollah and Iranian fighters have been helping the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad in Qusayr, near the opposition stronghold city of Homs.

“It is the most visible effort we have seen of Hezbollah to engage directly in the fighting in Syria as a foreign force.  We understand there are also Iranians up there,” the official said. “This is an important thing to note — the direct implication of foreigners fighting on Syrian soil now for the regime.”

The official said there are concerns that if the Syrian forces capture Qusayr they will slaughter the civilian population there, which numbers in the thousands. The opposition warns it could be a repeat of the massacres seen in Banias earlier this month, which is roughly 30 minutes away.

However, the official could not verify exactly what the Iranians and Hezbollah are doing — whether they are fighting alongside the regime or just advising the soldiers.

"I don’t think they’re arming because I’ve not heard that, but I think they could be doing a little of both advising and fighting,” the official said. “We know that Iran and Hezbollah cooperate in a number of countries, not just in Syria.  And so it is not a surprise that Iran would be there with Hezbollah on the ground.  We do have consistent reports of Hezbollah fighters on the ground.”

Meanwhile in Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the bipartisan Syria Transition Support Act, which approves lethal aid and training to vetted Syrian rebels, sanctions weapons and oil sales to the Assad regime, and provides further humanitarian assistance for planning for a post-Assad Syria. All but three senators on the committee are voting for the bill, which will now go to the full Senate for a vote.

The legislation allows for the U.S. to provide rebels with arms and military training only after they have gone through a vetting process by the U.S. government and are found to meet human rights, terrorism and non-proliferation criteria. The bill also creates a $250 million transition fund for the next two years to help Syria’s political opposition transition to governing the country, including supporting new institutions and supporting government institutions that currently exist.

While most of the committee members strongly supported the bill sponsored by chairman Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and ranking member Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., of the three senators who opposed, Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the most vocal, calling the Syria conflict “murky” and warning that America was getting involved in a situation “where it’s impossible to know who are friends are.”

Paul cited the current problem with insider attacks in Afghanistan as an example of how, when not careful, the United States leaves itself vulnerable to attack by the very people it is trying to help.

“Syria is 100 times messier than Afghanistan,” Paul said, and warned that the measure could be “a slippery slope to war.”

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., also expressed skepticism of the act, saying that he doesn’t think the United States knows whom they are really arming.

But Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; John McCain, R-Ariz.; Corker, and Menendez passionately argued that if the United States doesn’t do anything now, the only people with weapons will be the Assad regime and the extremist elements of the opposition.

“Extremists groups with links to al Qaeda are exploiting the conflict and gaining ground in a state with large chemical weapon stockpiles,” Menendez said. ” The time to act and turn the tide against Assad is now.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

FBI(MOSCOW) -- A delegation of American lawmakers will travel to Russia next week in part to investigate last month’s Boston Marathon bombings, ABC News has learned.

The group, led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., wants to find out why a 2011 Russian request that the United States investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston bombers, did not raise more red flags.

The Russians offered a vague warning that Tsarnaev planned to link up with extremist groups abroad, but an FBI investigation yielded no evidence to support those claims at the time. The lawmakers also want to know why subsequent U.S. requests for additional information about Tsarnaev went unanswered by the Russians.

“If there was a distrust, or lack of cooperation because of that distrust, between the Russian intelligence and the FBI, then that needs to be fixed and we will be talking about that,”  Rohrabacher, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, told ABC News by telephone.

“Our goal is to use Boston as an example, if indeed there was something more, that should’ve been done that wasn’t because of a bad attitude,” Rohrabacher added.

Rohrabacher said he hoped to use the trip to repair lingering mistrust between the former Cold War rivals. With that in mind, the lawmakers will also visit the Russian space center at Star City, outside Moscow, to discuss increasing cooperation between the Russian and U.S. space programs.

“There’s no reason for us to be in the Cold War attitude anymore,” Rohrabacher, a former speechwriter for President Reagan, said.

The lawmakers plan to meet political and security officials, including counterterrorism officials, during their week-long visit to Russia. They are also considering a trip to Dagestan, the restive region in Russia’s North Caucasus, where Tsarnaev spent six months last year and where investigators are digging into contacts he may have had with extremists and militants.

The other members of the congressional delegation include Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn;  Steve King, R-Iowa; Paul Cook, R-Calif.; Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.; and William Keating, D-Mass., who is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.

Several weeks ago Keating sent a member of his staff to Russia to investigate whether Tsarnaev had met with any extremists or militants in Dagestan. The staff member could confirm, from nongovernmental sources, reports from ABC News and elsewhere that Tsarnaev had been in touch with at least two such individuals, Mahmoud Mansour Nidal and William Plotnikov, during his time there.

According to the staff member, it was Plotnikov who first mentioned Tsarnaev’s name to Russian investigators during an interrogation. That may have been the reason Tsarnaev first came under scrutiny. Both Nidal and Plotnikov were killed in police raids last year.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio