By Hamad H. Albloshi and Banafsheh Keynoush
Iran’s presidential election, which takes place tomorrow (18 June 2021), comes as the country’s prospects for reform face an uncertain future. President Hassan Rouhani leaves office having failed to fulfil promises to fix an ailing economy and re-engage with the international community by concluding the current nuclear talks with world powers. To make matters worse, public sentiment in Iran is that the elections will not bring about desired political reforms. The dire need for economic and political reforms is urgent, but the disqualification by the hardline Guardian Council of many potential presidential candidates destroys hopes that such reforms are forthcoming.
Iran’s election engineering leaves much to be desired by way of political reforms
Tehran is increasingly moving in the opposite direction of reforms by silencing calls for any uncomfortable change. Potential presidential candidates who promised to shake things up were quickly disqualified, including former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani.
While Mr Ahmadinejad’s disqualification was to be expected, given his repeated attempts to challenge the authority of the elections, blocking Mr Larijani’s candidature implied that even figureheads loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be sidelined if they were considered a challenge to a hardline candidate. Mr Larijani had questioned, for example, the need to over-regulate the mandatory wearing of the hijab by women, and belongs to a political dynasty considered too ambitious for its own good. When selected candidates like former Central Bank Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati briefly questioned the harassment of Iranian women for refusing to wear the hijab, the Guardian Council stepped in to threaten him with disqualification.
The message of this presidential election is thus clear. Tehran is keen to place power in the hands of only a few loyalists. The Guardian Council has cherry-picked candidates from among competing political factions, i.e. the Reformists, Conservatives/moderates, and hardliners, who can bring different voices to stir enough interest in the elections in an attempt to increase voter turnout, but not pose a challenge to the goal of electing a hardline president loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei.
The only Reformist candidate in this carefully-engineered race was Mohsen Mehralizadeh, who lacked a strong base to compete with key hardline candidates like Ebrahim Raisi. When he ran for president in 2005, Mr Mehralizadeh received a dismal 1.3 million votes. This time, his candidacy was not even endorsed by the Reformists’ Front, whose members announced that they would not put forward a candidate to participate in elections, although they would not boycott the race either. Mr Mehralizadeh eventually withdrew from the race. This might have been a result of his lack of a strong base as well as the endorsement that Mr Hemmati received from some Reformist parties and politicians such as Mehdi Karoubi. Reformists have split since the announcement of qualified candidates by the Guardian Council, and while former president Mohammad Khatami called for voter participation and praised Mr Mehralizadeh for his withdrawal – an indication of his endorsement of Mr Hemmati – other Reformists such as Mostafa Tajzadeh, who was disqualified from running, boycotted the race.
The withdrawal of Mr Mehralizadeh can benefit Mr Hemmati, who is expected to encourage voter turnout by moderate groups, such as the Executives of Construction Party, that support rapid economic reforms, even if political reforms are slow to follow. But the exclusion of key moderate candidates by the Guardian Council means that the circle of political participation is tightening in Iran in favour of the hardline conservative camp.
Iran’s hardliners have tried to control key state institutions since the re-election of President Rouhani in 2017, which happened to coincide with the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran. The hardline camp also aims to uphold the absolute power vested in the Supreme Leader, and is not too keen to reconcile with the United States.
Key hardliners loyal to the Supreme Leader, including the political theorist Hassan Abbasi, openly challenge democracy as a form of governance if it creates more tensions in society. He even questioned if Iran should follow the example of its many neighbours who avoid elections altogether. Other hardliners, like Isfahan’s Friday prayer leader Yousef Tabatabai Nejad, asserted that the recent Syrian presidential election model, in which Bashar al-Assad was the obvious frontrunner given the lack of real political competition, should be an example to follow in Iran. While this seems to be already happening, by selecting Mr Raisi along with some lesser known candidates, Iran still tries to give the semblance that it has real competitive elections. In the past, lesser-known candidates indeed did challenge the status quo. This happened in 1997, when Mr Khatami was elected, and some even argue that this was the case in 2005, when Mr Ahmadinejad reached power.
What Happens Next?
Ebrahim Raisi’s victory in the presidential race seemed sealed when the Guardian Council systemically disqualified candidates running in Iran’s parliamentary elections in 2020 to ensure hardline dominance over the legislative body. Mr Raisi was later appointed the Chief Justice of Iran.
But nothing about Iran’s elections is certain, and it always carries an element of surprise, which seems deliberately designed to let votes that are cast to speak and shock critics who argue that the country’s elections are a total sham. Still, if Mr Raisi wins, the vacant Chief Justice seat will likely be filled by another hardliner to ensure that all three major executive, legislative and judicial powers in Iran are controlled by this camp.
This may be a blessing in disguise for Tehran, according to the hardliners, who are eager to end the factional paralysis that has dominated Iranian politics in recent years. They are eager to fix the economy, an issue which Mr Raisi was partly in charge of addressing since the US resumed sanctions on Iran in 2018. Unable to lift sanctions or address large scale economic problems, Mr Raisi led an internal campaign against local corruption as head of the judiciary. Sanctions have since resulted in the withdrawal of many foreign companies and investments from Iran, the rapid rise of inflation rates, and currency devaluation. Unemployment remained an unfixable problem for the country, and anti-poverty protests that rocked the country in December 2017 and November 2019 were quelled.
Besides Mr Raisi, Mr Hemmati is the only other candidate with experience on Iran’s economy, but does not a very good record when it comes to fixing it. If reformists and moderates rallied the public to vote him into office, Mr Hemmati might lead Iran. However, hardline conservatives are eager to prevent this from happening: Just two days before the election, two hardline conservative candidates, Alireza Zakani and Saeed Jalili, withdrew from the race and endorsed Mr Raisi. As of this writing there are two other hardliners in addition to Mr Raisi who remain in the race. If they do not withdraw, the hardline conservatives’ votes may be split, weakening Mr Raisi’s chances. If voter turnout rates are unexpectedly high and Mr Raisi fails to gain his desired 20 million votes, a second round of elections might be called for.
Consequently, while this engineered election is designed to end Iran’s political and economic uncertainties, there is little doubt that in the end, it will take a great deal more than elections and a presidential figurehead to lead Iran into calmer waters.
If Mr Raisi wins the election, this might lead to a more closed political atmosphere in Iran. In addition, Iran might be more isolated in the international community because hardliners will not shy away from confrontation. This could impact negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This does not mean that confrontation is imminent – Mr Raisi might move forward pragmatically and continue the nuclear talks, for example. However, in the short term, dealing and negotiating with a government led by a hardliners will not be an easy task.
Image caption: Supporters of Iranian presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi attend an election campaign rally in the capital Tehran, on 14 June 2021. Photo: AFP Forum
About the Authors
Dr Hamad H. Albloshi is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kuwait University.
Dr Banafsheh Keynoush is an independent scholar of international affairs. She is the author of Saudi Arabia and Iran: Friends or Foes? (Palgrave, 2016) and the editor and an author of Iran’s Interregional Dynamics in the Near East (Peter Lang, 2021).
