Iran's Revealing Electoral Mess

Amir Taheri, NY Post:

DISMISSED by the regime's opponents as irrelevant and touted by its supporters as a make-or-break moment, Iran's presidential election proved to be neither.

It is not irrelevant because it offers an accurate picture of the balance of political forces within the regime. Yet it is certainly not a make-or-break moment because, whatever the final results of the second round, it will not resolve the system's internal contradictions.

It is virtually impossible to know how many voters actually went to the polls. Iran has no independent election commission and there were no impartial observers. Worse, the seven candidates (jokingly dubbed "The Seven Dwarfs") had observers in fewer than a third of polling stations. But even in the official results, the percentage of the electorate that took part is the lowest of all the nine presidential elections held since the Islamic Republic's creation in 1979.

Also interesting is the divide between urban and rural Iran. While the rural areas reportedly went to the poll in huge numbers, at times reaching over 80 percent, urban Iran clearly shunned the exercise, with turnout as low as 12 percent in some cities.

Add in an age divide: The first analyses show that a majority of the young, those 15 to 30, did not go to the polls, while turnout reached 70 percent at the upper ends of the age ladder.

The divide is also clear in the votes cast for the seven candidates. To be sure, all seven belong to the same political family and were approved by "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei. Yet to ignore real differences among them is as foolish as saying that there was no difference between Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping because they were both Communists.

First: This is the first election since 1981 in which the mullahs were a minority among the candidates. Only two mullahs were allowed to stand this time, as opposed to the average of four for the previous elections. They key reason is that over the past decade or so the Shiite clergy has been distancing itself from the regime.

Today, there are no young rising mullahs within the regime, individuals who could provide it with high-level leadership in the future. The two mullahs who stood this time, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mahdi Karrubi, were the oldest of the candidates, with the best part of their careers behind them. Together they captured just 38 percent of the votes declared — another sign that the mullahs' domination of politics is on the decline even within the establishment.

The relative decline of the mullahs' influence could also be seen in the performance of Rafsanjani, who may yet win the presidency in a second round. In this election, he won only a third of the votes that he captured 16 years ago in his first presidential victory. For a man who prides himself in being the closest associate of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, this is little short of a disavowal, especially because no challenger from outside the regime was allowed to stand. Out of an electorate of almost 47 million, Rafsanjani won the support of just over six million — not a strong base from which to build a credible presidency.

As already noted, the second round may see Rafsanjani sweep to victory by default. But the fact remains that this election was a spectacular show of force by the more hard-line Khomeinists, whose most successful standard-bearer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be present in the run-off against Rafsanjani.

Ahmadinejad, though relatively unknown to most Iranians, won almost as many votes as Rafsanjani. And, unlike Rafsanjani and some other candidates, he spent virtually no money on Western-style advertising and events. Instead, he went barnstorming, visiting dozens of towns and villages while Rafsanjani, citing security concerns, decided not to travel out of Tehran.

Together, the four hard-line Khomeinist candidates, all members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), collected more votes than the two mullahs. This shows that the generation of militants produced by the IRGC now provides the dominant force within the ruling establishment. It is quite possible that this generation would have won the presidency outright had it fielded a single candidate.

The reason? As the main body of Iranian society moves away from the Khomeinist regime, the ruling establishment becomes more radical in emphasizing its Khomeinist identity. This means that even if Rafsanjani wins the presidency he will be operating from a relatively weak position within the regime.

"Supreme Guide" Khamenei has been intelligent enough to understand the changes that have taken place in the balance of political power within the regime. And, while Rafsanjani is trying to appeal to forces outside the regime, Khamenei seems determined to consolidate its radical base and give no quarter to the regime's critics.

Will the election lead to changes in Iran's domestic and foreign policies? The official line in Tehran is that it will not. The reason is that the presidency is, in fact a kind of premiership in an absolutist system in which the ruler has virtually unlimited constitutional powers. Whoever is elected president the final word on all key issues will remain with the "Supreme Guide."

Nevertheless, the outcome of the second round is of crucial interest, for it will offer a clear indication of the line that the "Supreme Guide" intends to pursue in the next four years. The system could arrange things for either Rafsanjani or Ahmadinejad to win.

A win by Rafsanjani would be a sure sign that Khamenei thinks he still needs a kind of interface with the broader Iranian society, similar to the role that the outgoing President Muhammad Khatami played in his first four-year term. It would also indicate that the "Supreme Guide" is still interested in playing diplomatic games, especially with the Europeans, rather than provoking a direct confrontation with the major powers, especially the United States.

On the domestic front, Rafsanjani's victory would allow the cosmetic reforms introduced by Khatami, especially allowing some women to show a few strands of their hair from under the Khomeinist hijab, to continue.

Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, represents the North Koreans of Islam: hard-line radicals who believe that they have discovered the recipe for the ideal society and that the rest of the world, which is corrupt and godforsaken must, at some point , either submit to them or be forced into submission.

The question is which view will Khamenei adopt. READ MORE

We shall find out when we know who wins Friday's runoff. This showdown is certainly worth watching.

During the time of the shah, Amir Taheri was editor-in-chief of Kayhan, Iran's most important newspaper. Now based in Europe, he is a member of Benador Associates.

A must read.