The Nezam seems keen, at least rhetorically, to move away from political dualism or polarization, which in Iran has generally taken the form of principlist vs. reformist. And yet those dualisms that politicians claim to find distasteful are not going away. If anything, the current presidential race is reinforcing them. The Guardian Council could very easily have eliminated the reformist Mas’ud Pezeshkian from the field, leaving only conservatives of various stripes to compete for the late Ebrahim Ra’isi’s empty seat. Had it done so, it would have driven away a majority of Iranian voters in an election that the Nezam depends on for a show of legitimacy and public acceptability. Now that Pezeshkian is very much part of the race, and in fact in the lead according to his followers, his support of reformist positions on such issues as international relations and hijab enforcement draws a very sharp line between him and his rivals. Many Iranian voters, however, are suspicious of any candidate’s ability to make a difference. Such skepticism is based on the track records of previous reformist administrations which, despite enjoying massive popular support, failed to stand up to centers of power like the supreme leader’s establishment or the IRGC.
Old wine in new bottles?
Iranian voters cannot be blamed for a sense of déjà vu. Observers are seeing parallels between the current campaign and the presidential race in 2009 that erupted into massive protests. Pezeshkian and many who support him have begun a campaign of influence to convince voters that he will emerge the winner, reminding everyone of how imminent a Mir-Hosein Musavi victory seemed back then. In his election rallies, Pezeshkian’s supporters are chanting in support of Mir-Hosein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi and carrying and displaying their pictures. This seems almost like a carbon copy of Hasan Rouhani’s first campaign in 2013 when he promised that the release of Musavi and Karrubi from house arrest would be one of the planks in his platform. Ali Abdolalizadeh, the chairman of Pezeshkian’s presidential campaign, claims 80 percent of all surveys show his candidate ahead of the pack. He also claims that the campaign will have observers at major polling stations to ensure that a vote for Pezeshkian will not be read as a vote for anyone else—again, a reminder of the “Where is my vote?” objection that voters raised in 2009. Another echo from the election of 2009 is Abdolalizadeh’s revival of Musavi’s campaign slogan: “Every citizen a campaign,” this time in the form “Every citizen two votes.” Abdolalizadeh could not have meant fraud. As he explains, this simply means that each Pezeshkian voter has to convince one other person to show up at the polls for the reformist candidate. Unlike the hardliners who want to continue in the ways of Ebrahim Ra’isi, his candidate wants to engage with the international community, much like Musavi wanted a clear change of direction from the policies of Mahmud Ahmadinejad. At the same time, it is clear that Abdolalizadeh is nervous about comparisons between Pezeshkian’s campaign this year and those of Musavi and Karrubi in 2009, and he calls such comparisons “unjust.”
Rural vs. urban divide in election
In 2009, Tehran was at the forefront of the protests against the re-election of Ahmadinejad in what seemed like a rigged vote. This time, the citizens of the capital are so detached from the political process that they are showing no desire to play a role in the election of the country’s president. This is according to sociologist Mohammadreza Javadi-Yeganeh, who believes the candidate that most closely represents the views and wants of these citizens is the reformist Pezeshkian. Thus, the non-participation of the people of Tehran hurts his chances more than the other candidates. Javadi-Yeganeh believes it was Ahmadinejad who first created this split between the capital and the rest of the country, as well as between the people of Tehran, especially the middle class, and the ruling establishment. Reformist commentator Abbas Abdi sees the same thing. He believes the middle class in Tehran and other major cities has a “moral” aversion to participating in the election, whereas rural Iran and the smaller towns have no such compunctions. In any case, he believes the edge goes to Pezeshkian rather than his conservative rivals. The election is bound to test Abdi’s theory because the lingering bitterness over the suppression of the Mahsa Amini protests has resulted from the wanton killing of a young woman from the small Kurdish town of Saqqez.
Growing gulf between the people of Iran and their rulers
Assessing Pezeshkian’s chances to be greater than those of his rivals, Gholamali Raja’i, a political advisor to the late Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, finds the ridiculously exaggerated campaign promises of the conservative candidates a turnoff for voters. Amir-Hosein Qazizadeh-Hashemi has promised to fix the problems with the stock exchange in three days, while officials in the Ra’isi administration had claimed they could build four million homes in four years or create one million jobs per year. Alireza Zakani has promised to deliver rare food items like meat to people’s doors or help them build wealth by gifting them with certain quantities of gold. All of these, according to Raja’i, are insults to the intelligence of voters and serve only to widen the divide between the rulers and the ruled. The hardline outlet Kayhan, which many consider a mouthpiece for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is also reprising its role from 2009 when it supported the hardline Ahmadinejad and attacked his reformist rivals. This time, it has picked FATF as the issue, one that Pezeshkian, backed by former foreign minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif, clearly favors and Jalili most notably rejects. This means that Kayhan—and by extension the supreme leader’s establishment—stands with the most hardline of the candidates, one who is unpopular among the larger electorate. Clearly, the Nezam wants the people of Iran to move in its direction because it will not move in theirs.
