Iran’s Presidential Candidates: One Straw Man And A Regime Without Legitimacy

-OpEd-

After a helicopter crash killed Iran’s last president, Ebrahim Raisi, on May 19, the Iranian regime is holding presidential elections in late June to pick his successor. As in previous elections, this has put the spotlight on the Guardian Council — the constitutional body that vets would-be candidates and draft laws — and its threadbare legitimacy for the extremely restrictive role it plays in elections under the Islamic Republic.

On Sunday, the Guardian Council confirmed a total of six candidates will be allowed to run for the presidency, out of 80 individuals who had put down their name at the end of a five-day registration period. Only one of the candidates selected is considered a reformist.

This follows a long history of politically motivated exclusions from previous Iranian elections. The disqualified of recent years have included Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former president with a populist discourse, moderates Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, and Ali Larijani, a former parliamentary speaker once thought to be close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Larijani and Ahmadinejad had registered their candidacies for this election, but they have been barred from running. Once again, the Guardian Council’s intransigence, in this delicate time of transition, strikes another blow at the regime’s stability.

Crisis of legitimacy 

Allowing the likes of Larijani and Ahmadinejad to run would have clearly undermined the Council’s own legitimacy and authority. Either way, these choices are bound to produce another own-goal for the regime. Barring such prominent hopefuls means a continuation of the regime’s repressive policies and its crisis of legitimacy. Letting them through, in turn, would have been an admission of past errors and its failure to respect the law.

The Guardian Council mirrors an unbridgeable rift between a nation and its rulers

It seems the Islamic Republic is, once again, turning to the moderates or reformists it uses at sensitive junctures, as disposable tools to fuel voters’ interest in its elections. This is clear if we look at Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist lawmaker who was allowed to run in the elections.

That too is an admission of the failure of its restrictive policies. Iranians are dissatisfied with the regime and everything it does, which turns every election into a potential crisis — and for some at least inside the regime, an embarrassment.

The Guardian Council and its record of decisions are the clearest mirror of this unbridgeable rift between a nation and its rulers — and its recent choices have once again confirmed this.