Issue 854, 29 May 2009

Ahmadinejad confronts an Iran looking for change within the continuity

Given half a chance, Iranians will vote against the establishment – not just in disaffected urban areas, but in the countryside (where incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is widely believed to have the edge), and even within the ruling elite, whose members may swap from faction to faction while maintaining staunch support for Iran’s velayat-e faqih system of clerical rule. Ahmadinejad has made a global career by presenting himself as an underdog – a status that tends to attract Iranian voters (as the reformist Mohammad Khatami found when he beat conservative rivals in 1997). But he has other elite ‘underdogs’ to compete with. So in a system where the intervention of religious authorities to stop otherwise well-qualified candidates from standing and to encourage support for a favoured few does not necessarily produce the expected results, there remains everything to play for when Iranians go to the polls on 12 June.

Campaigning began on 21 May after four out of the 475 registered candidates were cleared by the Guardian Council to stand. Those who made the cut were Ahmadinejad, two reformists – former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and ex-parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karoubi – and a former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Mohsen Rezaie. Other potential presidents, such as Tehran mayor Mohammed-Baqer Qalibaf, failed to make the cut.

Mousavi is seen as the president’s strongest rival (GSN 850/1). According to a poll of Iran’s ten largest cities, Mousavi is leading Ahmadinejad by 4%. In another opinion poll by Iran’s conservative state television company IRIB, Mousavi also leads in the capital Tehran (by 4%). But such predictions could be wildly wrong. Iran watchers will remember that in 2005 Ahmadinejad won 62% of the vote and upset widespread predictions of victory for Expediency Council head Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mousavi, who claims to represent the reformist camp, is a politician, painter and architect. He was a capable premier from 1981 to 1989 under then president Ali Khamene. The 67-year-old son of a tea merchant enjoys the support of ex-president Khatami, who many reformists had hoped would stand again; Khatami has been constantly at Mousavi’s side during election events. In a signal that important elements of the ruling elite are not prepared to support Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani is apparently backing Mousavi. But it would be critical if Rahbar (Supreme Leader) Ayatollah Khamenei shifted his support from the president.

Mousavi is a veteran, but his campaign has a fresh look. He has made an unprecedented move by encouraging his wife Zahra Rahnavard to campaign for him. Many have likened them to US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. Rahnavard has a PhD in political science, was an adviser to Khatami and chancellor of Tehran’s Al-Zahra University, the first woman to hold such a position. Iran has not had a female cabinet minister since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and both Karoubi and Rezaie have also pledged to appoint one.

Some analysts have said that Mousavi’s attempt to appeal to voters across the political spectrum risks alienating reformers who are seeking a more radical break with the Ahmadinejad era, although none of the candidates offer this alternative. His relationship with Khamenei is ambiguous. The two are distant relatives, but are said to have had differences in the 1980s when Khamenei was president. Khamenei never formally takes sides, but he has called on voters to back an ‘anti-western candidate’.

Karoubi is seen as the most liberal candidate – and a potential spoiler of the reformist vote. He appears to be trying to expand his power base through a populist promise to distribute Iran’s oil wealth to every citizen over 18; Ahmadinejad made similar promises in 2005, but he has not delivered. Karoubi has not revealed the size of the handout or how it will be paid. Born in 1937, Karoubi was an activist in the 1979 Islamic revolution and is the only candidate to form a party, the National Trust. Although he is said to favour better ties with the United States, he also follows the official line that calls for US policy concessions upfront.

Rezaie, born in 1954, could get support from conservatives opposed to Ahmadinejad, causing the ‘revolutionary’ vote to split. Having commanded the IRGC during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, he now serves as secretary of the Expediency Council. Rezaie has promised to pursue Ahmadinejad’s ideological path, but to take a more moderate foreign policy line. There are many in the ruling elite who might appreciate such a position. But Rezaie is a controversial figure, with an international arrest warrant issued against him in 2006 for alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires, which he denies.

Obama’s potential for shifting policy or bringing further pain looms over an election whose main policy issues are Iran’s right to develop its nuclear capacity, US relations and the economy. The right to nuclear power is a very popular issue and no candidate is promising major change. All candidates have said they are open to the idea of resuming relations with the United States. None have offered concrete plans on how they would improve the economy but have hinted at what approach they would take.

Ahmadinejad’s steadfast approach to the nuclear issue has won him friends, as has his government’s very generous handouts to voters. But his alienation of international opinion has raised doubts across Iranian society, and mismanagement of the economy has not yielded vote-winning results. The election is unlikely to usher in radical change, but a change of tone would do much to open the door to international dialogue and start to reverse the economy’s dangerous isolation.