Ahead of the first round of Iran’s presidential election on June 28th, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, said that any vote was a vote for his Islamic Republic. By that test the poll raises deep questions about the decaying regime’s legitimacy. Some 60% of the country’s 61m-strong electorate have withheld their vote, resulting in the lowest turnout on record.
The streets of Tehran, the capital, were uncannily quiet on polling day with many people dismissing the exercise as a farce in a country being ruined by dictatorship. Instead of queues outside polling stations, election monitors slept at their desks in empty mosques.
Don’t mistake calm for stability, however. The system is still reeling from the mysterious death of the presidential incumbent, Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash on May 19th. And the surprise results mean a second round will take place on July 5th, which could further expose the fissures in Iranian society and the fragility of the regime.
Iran’s political system is a hybrid that mixes elements of democracy, military rule and religious authority. The clerics and military commanders who dominate the system had looked to Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf as their candidate. He is a stalwart of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the clerical authorities’ praetorian guard. Yet he came in third place and is now out of the race.
In the lead with 10.4 million votes is Masoud Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old surgeon who was a health minister in a reform-leaning government two decades ago. He has decried the regime’s corruption and brutal enforcement of the mandatory veil and called for engagement with the West. He has the backing of a reformist bloc hoping for a comeback.
Behind him stand Jawad Zarif, the foreign minister who negotiated a nuclear deal with America and others in 2015; and two former presidents, Muhammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani.
At his heels with 9.5 million votes is Saeed Jalili, a 58-year-old zealot who looks a decade older than he is. Mr Jalili blames Iran’s economic malaise on sanctions and calls for confrontation with America and engagement with Russia and China. He denounces anyone seeking social liberalisation as a counter-revolutionary.
He has the backing of the Paydari (or Stabilisation) Front, a growing movement of the militantly religious right. He was wounded in the Iran-Iraq war and graduated from Imam Sadiq, a university-cum-seminary in Tehran. He wrote his doctorate on the Prophet Muhammad’s diplomacy and, as a former chief negotiator on the nuclear file, took pride in his refusal to compromise. Such is his religious extremism that even the regime’s pragmatic top brass feel unsettled.
A riveting second round could now unfold. Both candidates still have much to prove. Mr Jalili received only half the votes Mr Raisi won in the election of 2021. Meanwhile Mr Pezeshkian has not convinced many prominent reformers. They include Mir Hossein Moussavi, the presidential candidate who lost the rigged presidential election of 2009 and remains under house arrest, and Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, the daughter of a former president. Mr Pezeshkian is a “wet blanket”, says a boycotter who once voted for reformists, but now deems the former minister too little too late.
In order to rally support and raise the turnout, both candidates are likely to denounce their rival as an existential threat and seek to exploit polarisation in Iran. In his casual checked shirts unbuttoned at the neck, Mr Pezeshkian will warn ordinary Iranians exhausted by the regime of the dangers of another puritanical wave.
In his starched white collars buttoned up to the throat, Mr Jalili will emphasise the importance of defending the regime’s standards, mores and theocracy. In a boost to him, Mr Jalil has won the support of Mr Qalibaf, the runner-up, who has urged his 3.4m voters to “stop the current that caused today’s economic and political problems,” a tacit rebuke of reformists. Had Mr Qalibaf and Mr Jalili, bitter rivals, not split the vote, one of their conservative ilk would have won a majority.
Both of the remaining candidates will exploit simmering ethnic tensions. They come from opposite ends of Iran. The zealous Mr Jalili is from Mashhad, Iran’s holiest city and its second-largest, and appeals to the Persian-speaking majority who fill the regime’s ranks.
The reformist Mr Pezeshkian is a long-time MP from Tabriz, a city in the north-west with both Turkish and Kurdish heritage. His campaign speeches in Turkish have already filled football stadiums. He may try to mobilise minorities who resent Persian domination. All this may concern Mr Khamenei, the supreme leader, who sees himself as straddling such divides. His family is Azeri from the Turkish-speaking north-west, but he grew up in Mashhad in the Persian east.
A final fissure is gender. The spectre of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died in custody after she was detained for a “bad” veil, in September 2022, continues to haunt Iran’s testosterone-heavy regime. Its bullyboys suppressed female-led protesters chanting “women, life, freedom” after Mahsa’s death.
So far few women have joined either candidate’s campaigns. Anecdotal evidence suggests women boycotted the polls more than men did. Yet Mr Pezeshkian could try to change this. The night before the first round he called for equal rights for women and said they should be allowed to choose how to dress. Many women are tired of sloganeering but more concrete steps could persuade them to vote: were Mr Pezeshkian to bring more women into his campaign and a future cabinet, he might see support surge.
This election takes place amid two big questions. One is Iran’s fraught geopolitical position, with conflict in the Middle East, its nuclear programme and its intensifying friendship with Russia and China. The other is succession. Mr Khamenei is 85 and wants a president who can help steer the country’s succession: under the constitution, the president is one of triumvirate that leads the interregnum. The election must be unnerving for the ageing supreme leader. He has said a higher turnout is a yardstick of the regime’s “durability, stability, honour and dignity in the world”.
That may yet happen, but if it does it will be the product of a fractious week of campaigning that exposes the fissures underlying his regime. He still holds many levers of power. His Guardian Council selects the candidates. His interior ministry manages the election. And his loyalists count the vote. Yet for all that, Iran is run by an unpopular regime dogged by repeated bouts of unrest. The election may yet awaken what many deem the greatest threat to his rule—people power.
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