-Analysis-
Voter turnout in the first round of Iran’s presidential election, on June 28, was an embarrassment. At 40%, by the regime’s own estimation, it was the lowest ever since the 1979 revolution. And if the regime estimated 40%, we can confidently guess that actual turnout may have been considerably lower, especially in sensitive places like Tehran.
As former reformist President Mohammad Khatami observed that it was unprecedented for “more than 60%” of voters to boycott an election.
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Even so, Iranians have the choice between two candidates in the second round of voting, set for July 5: Saeed Jalili, a former negotiator who is labeled as a hardliner, and Masoud Pezeshkian, a former health minister with a moderate, reformist profile. Yet neither is exciting for Iran, which saw a revolt in 2022, as both are regime loyalists with room for maneuver, given the country’s power structure.
Fruitless exhortations
As the regime’s exhortations to vote proved fruitless, Tehran is trying another old tactic: its carrot and stick, or good-cop-bad-cop, approach. It is giving voters a choice between a “Taliban” option in Jalili, or watered-down reformism with Pezeshkian.
Sympathizers warn of dire consequences if Jalili is elected president. Yet he is unlikely to be worse than his predecessor, the late Ebrahim Raisi, or the other clerics, secret policemen and hangman judges that have run Iran since 1979. In this context, it is only refusing to vote that will boost the morale of Iranians and give them hope that this regime could end one day.
Pezeshkian’s supporters include former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Khatami’s vice-president Muhammad Ali Abtahi, who wants Iranians to “forget about regime change.” Do they imagine Iranians have forgotten about the brutal repression of the 2022 revolt and of all preceding protests, the hangings, the morality police beating girls to death, the Ukrainian passenger plane shot down outside Tehran, the dismal economy and the rest of it?
How does Pezeshkian differ from other reformists before who would pretend in public to disagree with dismal regime policies, while competing in private to implement the instruction of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei?
Unfounded fears
Jalili is no more unusual than Pezeshkian. He is just another Raisi — just as Raisi was another Ahmadinejad. Iranians have need to worry about their impact on foreign or domestic policies; they’ll have little say in how either is shaped. It would be better for Iranians — and for all concerned — to have a fool outing the regime’s objectives by telling it how it is — which Jalili would do better than his rival.
What did Zarif and his boss Rouhani give Iranians that Jalili might take away?
The alternative is returning to the years of insidious lobbying in the West to push thinking that “things aren’t so bad” in Iran.
The regime and its friends want Iranians to fear a breakdown of dialogue with the West if Jalili is elected president. But what did prior dialogue and agreements with the West yield for Iranians? What did Zarif and his boss Rouhani give them that Jalili might take away? During his time as foreign minister, Zarif complained of being systematically sidelined, and effectively being a nobody, when it came to the affairs of Syria and Iraq — where the Leader and the Revolutionary Guards do as they see fit.
Another Trump term
The only person who should fear another clumsy president like Jalili is not the average Iranian but the supreme leader. Because the ayatollah needs a dose of appeasement (or as he calls it, “flexible heroism”) and deceptive diplomacy, which is a job for the moderates.
The regime is in a bind, and a hardliner is hardly the man to face down another Trump administration. Indeed, the regime wants Pezeshkian to become president. Otherwise, it would have chosen a “nobody” — in large supply among the reformists — rather than choose Pezeshkian — who has Azeri and Kurdish parents to boot, which attracts non-Persian voters.
Pezeshkian is in the race not only to boost voter numbers but also, and not for the first time, because reformists are always pushed to the fore when things get ugly outside. And things may soon get ugly if Donald Trump is elected president in November.
