Iran’s Supreme Chief Is Frightened
Iran has taken a flip that hardly anybody might have seen coming a number of brief months in the past. For years, Iran’s reformist faction has languished within the political wilderness, banished there by hard-liners extra aligned with Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and by a disillusioned voters satisfied that its votes didn’t matter. Few imagined this 12 months that the reformists have been about to make a comeback and elect a president for the primary time since 2001. But on July 5, that is exactly what occurred.
Masud Pezeshkian, a doctor and longtime member of Parliament, defeated the ultra-hard-liner Saeed Jalili in a runoff with 54.8 p.c of the vote. Turnout was terribly low within the first spherical and solely considerably increased within the second, based on the official numbers—which means that Pezeshkian will turn into president with a smaller share of eligible voters than another president within the historical past of the Islamic Republic. For a lot of of those that did come out, the primary motivation was not love for Pezeshkian, however concern of his rival.
In impact, Iranian residents despatched two detrimental messages this election week: Those that didn’t vote demonstrated their rejection of the regime and its uninspiring decisions. Those that did vote mentioned no to Jalili, who represented the arduous core of the regime and its extremist agenda.
Khamenei might have averted this end result by merely not permitting Pezeshkian to run. The Guardian Council, an unelected physique, vets all candidates for workplace and is in the end loyal to the supreme chief. So why did Khamenei permit this election to turn into a binary alternative pitting Jalili, whose imaginative and prescient dovetails together with his personal, in opposition to a consultant of the reformist faction, which has proved extra widespread again and again?
The selection is especially baffling contemplating that Khamenei had, previously few years, lastly achieved a long-standing dream: He had managed to completely populate the regime with hard-line zealots who paid him unquestioning obedience and shared his imaginative and prescient for an anti-West, anti-Israel, and anti-woman theocracy. In 2021, Ebrahim Raisi, a former hanging choose and an unimpressive lackey, was coronated president in an uncompetitive election.
![Supporters of Masoud Pezeshkian attend a rally in Tehran, Iran, on July 3, 2024. Right: Pezeshkian walks under a portrait of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while attending to speak to the media on June 1, 2024.](https://i0.wp.com/cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/_cYQCBeoEsdJkrSItilS7sZ3AKU=/665x443/media/img/posts/2024/07/inline/original.jpg?resize=640%2C426&ssl=1)
Earlier than Raisi, each single one of many 4 presidents who served beneath Khamenei ended up turning into the chief’s political nemesis. Now Khamenei might say goodbye to all that. The Parliament, the judiciary, the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council, and all the opposite main our bodies of the regime, too, have been dominated by conservatives and hard-liners within the Raisi period. Not solely reformists, who had historically favored political liberalization, however even centrists, who adopted a realistic moderately than ideological international coverage, have been booted out of positions of energy. This previous March, the Islamic Republic held in all probability its most restrictive parliamentary elections ever, a contest largely between conservatives and ultra-hard-liners. In the end, the 85-year-old Khamenei appeared to carry virtually uncontested energy.
So why would he jeopardize this state of affairs by permitting a reformist into the presidential race?
Khamenei needs to be conscious that the societal base for his regime is just shrinking. The combo of political repression and financial failure has proved unsurprisingly unpopular. A majority of Iranians refused to vote not solely on this election but additionally within the three elections earlier than it, beginning in 2020. Even the reformists joined an official boycott this 12 months, one thing usually extra the province of younger radicals and abroad-based opposition. Tens of 1000’s of Iranians turned out for avenue protests in 2017, 2019, and 2022–23, and a whole lot have been killed in violent crackdowns all around the nation.
The regime put down these demonstrations, however its leaders must know that they by no means addressed the issues that produced them. Thousands and thousands of ladies proceed to interact in acts of every day civil disobedience by refusing to abide by the mandatory-veiling coverage. Prisons are stuffed with political detainees, together with former regime officers resembling Mostafa Tajzadeh, as soon as a distinguished reformist politician, and the well-known filmmaker Jafar Panahi. A horrible economic system, poor progress, an ever-weakening foreign money, and skyrocketing inflation bedevil the nation. Khamenei could properly have calculated that if he doesn’t change tack, he’ll be due for no finish of social explosions.
The regime’s worldwide isolation could have additionally begun to really feel untenable. Below President Raisi, Iran reestablished diplomatic ties with its historic foe Saudi Arabia and joined multilateral organizations resembling BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Group. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Iran prolonged army assist and expanded ties with Moscow. However solely a cope with the West can present respite from the sanctions which are squeezing Iran’s economic system. Even dealings with anti-Western nations, resembling China, are hampered by these restrictions, which complicate all of Iran’s monetary transactions. (On the marketing campaign path, Pezeshkian complained that China has demanded huge reductions on oil as the worth of doing enterprise beneath the sanctions.) The Raisi administration held secret talks with the Biden administration, however they got here to little. Now the potential for Donald Trump’s return could also be focusing Khamenei’s thoughts on this downside.
The regional state of affairs certainly additionally factored in. Iran’s shadow warfare with Israel, which turned to direct mutual assaults in April, is vulnerable to escalating, and Khamenei could really feel that managing it’ll require subtlety. Fundamentalists like Jalili are nice for grandstanding speeches—much less so for delicate worldwide negotiations. Right here, too, West-facing figures—resembling Javad Zarif, the previous international minister who was Pezeshkian’s high aide in the course of the marketing campaign and is now the chair of his foreign-policy activity drive—as soon as once more have one thing to supply the Islamic Republic.
Raisi’s loss of life in an odd helicopter crash on Could 19 supplied the opening for Khamenei to recalibrate his relationship with the reformists and centrists. Pezeshkian was disqualified from working for president in 2021. Earlier this 12 months, he was denied even a parliamentary run; Khamenei then personally intervened to permit him to enter and win the race for the Tabriz seat he has held since 2008. For this presidential election, he was the one considered one of three reformist candidates to be accepted.
That Pezeshkian bought the nod over the others will not be an accident. Having served as a well being minister beneath former President Mohammad Khatami, Pezeshkian has robust reformist credentials. He has usually led the minority reformist caucus in Parliament, and he gave a brave speech in 2009 condemning the tough repression of that 12 months’s Inexperienced Motion. On the similar time, nevertheless, he has demonstrated his loyalty to the Islamic Republic. In 2019, the Trump administration designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group, and Pezeshkian, then the deputy speaker of Parliament, donned the militia’s inexperienced uniform for the cameras and proudly recognized himself with it. That very same 12 months, he celebrated IRGC’s downing of an American drone.
As president-elect, Pezeshkian has already sought to reassure the regime’s conventional companions. He wrote a letter to the Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah promising continued help for the “resistance,” and he spoke by cellphone with Russian President Vladimir Putin to pledge continued ties. The Kremlin should be feeling a little bit antsy, on condition that many Iranian officers within the orbit of former centrist President Hassan Rouhani, together with Zarif, have expressed open dislike for the regime’s latest break with Iran’s custom of nonalignment as a way to orient the nation towards Moscow.
Regardless of being nominally a reformist, Pezeshkian didn’t marketing campaign for any critical reforms this 12 months. Throughout the televised debates and on the marketing campaign path, he professed extra fealty to the supreme chief than his hard-line rivals did. To match this new reformist president with the reformists of 20 years in the past—Khatami and his coterie imagined marginalizing Khamenei and democratizing Iran—is frankly miserable. Pezeshkian ran as a technocratic centrist, very very like his main conservative rival, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who, regardless of the help of a lot of the IRGC’s excessive workers, didn’t garner greater than 13.8 p.c of the vote within the first spherical. Pezeshkian was endorsed by reformist grandees resembling Khatami and the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, who has been beneath home arrest since 2011. And but, his marketing campaign leads have been largely not reformists, however cupboard ministers from the centrist Rouhani administration.
Nonetheless, a few of Pezeshkian’s private qualities made him a pretty candidate, in a way considerably harking back to the hard-line populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Pezeshkian sports activities a humble, plebeian look—he usually wears a raincoat as a substitute of a swimsuit jacket—and speaks in plain, easy language as a substitute of the jargon typical of Iranian politics.
The earlier time a reformist received the presidency—Khatami, in 1997 and 2001—he did so on the again of a serious social motion. Rouhani, too, had a powerful mandate behind him, which gave him ballast in confronting the institution hard-liners when he wanted to. Pezeshkian’s place is much less safe, given final week’s anemic turnout, and the establishments round him are managed by hard-liners. His fealty to Khamenei, and his lack of expertise in excessive politics, may also make him a meek match for the grand ayatollah and his minions.
Pezeshkian will nonetheless be judged on no less than three points that dominated the marketing campaign: whether or not he can assist loosen enforcement of the obligatory hijab, loosen up restrictions on the web, and, most essential, impact a gap with the West that might assist raise sanctions and enhance the nation’s financial outlook. On Saturday, which is the primary day of the week in Iran, Tehran’s inventory index jumped excessive, reflecting the market’s optimism about his prospects. However whether or not he can understand such hopes, particularly given the restricted energy vested in Iran’s presidency, stays to be seen.
One wind blowing in Pezeshkian’s favor is the potential for an alliance with some sections of the IRGC. He already has one thing of a tacit alliance with Qalibaf in opposition to the extra excessive hard-line camp. Earlier this 12 months, Pezeshkian’s help helped Qalibaf win the speakership of the Parliament. Within the second spherical of the presidential elections, Qalibaf dutifully endorsed Jalili, as a fellow conservative, however he didn’t marketing campaign for him, and plenty of of his supporters endorsed Pezeshkian as a substitute. Can this alliance lengthen into the Pezeshkian administration? And if that’s the case, how can the West-facing coverage favored by Rouhani and Zarif be reconciled with the IRGC’s sponsorship of anti-Israel militias within the area, and the proximity of sure segments of the IRGC to Russia? It’s a truism {that a} change in president received’t change Iran’s core insurance policies, as a result of these are set by Khamenei. However the ever-shifting stability of energy amongst factions of the regime does have coverage penalties.
Iran’s democratic and civic actions should determine learn how to navigate this rebirth of one thing like reform. Throughout the election cycle, distinguished activists and political prisoners have been divided over whether or not to endorse Pezeshkian or name for boycotting the vote. Now they might want to plot their strikes beneath his new authorities, weighing two competing impulses: to place calls for on a probably amenable administration, or name for the overthrow of the regime.
As for the octogenarian dictator, these waning years of his life resemble a Greek tragedy. As soon as a radical poet and a Sixties revolutionary who dreamed of constructing a greater world, he has ended up overseeing a regime rife with corruption and incompetence, hated by most of its populace. Even many institution figures know that revolutionary slogans received’t remedy the nation’s issues, therefore their flip to technocracy.
Lenin as soon as admonished that those that need obedience will get solely obedient fools as followers. Khamenei by no means heeded that warning. Repeatedly, he pushed out independent-minded however spectacular figures in favor of obedient fools. As he seems to be on the ragtag group of tinfoil-hat conspiracists and dour fundamentalists that surrounds him immediately, he should be considerably embarrassed. Simply 5 years in the past, on the fortieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, he spoke of cultivating a authorities dominated by “religious younger revolutionaries.” By opening up the political area to technocrats and centrists, he’s maybe admitting the defeat of that dream.