IRANIANS HAVE HOBSON'S CHOICE

by Amir Taheri
Gulf News

Dismissed by the opponents of the regime as irrelevant and regarded by its supporters as a make-or-break moment, Iran's latest presidential election has proved to be neither. It is not irrelevant because it offers an accurate picture of the balance of political forces within the regime.

At the same time it is certainly not a make-or-break moment. Irrespective of the results of the second round, the election will not resolve the internal contradictions of a system still unable to define itself in historic terms.

Let us begin by the chief interest of this election: the information it provides on the relative strengths of the various factions within the establishment.

It is impossible to know how many voters did go to the polls. There is no independent election commission in Iran and there were no impartial observers around. Worse still, the seven candidates in the race, jokingly referred to as "The Seven Dwarfs", had observers in fewer than a third of the polling stations.

But even if we accept the official and unverifiable results, the percentage of the electorate that took part this time is the lowest of all the nine presidential elections held in the Islamic Republic since its creation in 1979.

Another interesting feature of this election 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 per cent, urban Iran clearly shunned the exercise with turnout as low as 12 per cent in some cities.

The age divide is also interesting. The first analyses of the results show a majority of young would-be voters, those aged between 15 and 30, did not go to the polls while voter turnout reached 70 per cent 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 the candidates belong to the same political family and were approved by the "Supreme Guide". Nevertheless, it would be foolish to ignore real differences among them. It is like saying that there was no difference between Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping because they were both Communists.

This election is interesting for yet another reason. It is the first 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.

The key reason is 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 political career behind them. Together they captured just 38 per cent 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 had captured in his first presidential victory 16 years ago. And this, for a man who prides himself on being the closest associate of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

His share of the votes is little sort of a disavowal, especially because no challenger from outside the regime was allowed to stand. Out of an electorate of almost 47 million, Rafsanjani has 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 Ahmadinezhad, will be present in the run-off against Rafsanjani.

Relative unknown

Ahmadinezhad, a relative unknown to most Iranians, won almost as many votes as Rafsanjani. But his performance was even more impressive because, contrary to 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. The four hard-line Khomeinist candidates, all of them members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), collected more votes than the two mullahs mentioned above. 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 is not hard to fathom. As the main body of Iranian society moves away from the Khomeinist regime, the ruling establishment becomes more radical in emphasising its Khomeinist identity. This means that even if Rafsanjani wins the presidency, he will be operating from a relatively weak position within the regime.

The "Supreme Guide" Ali 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 the presidency is 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 because it will offer a clear indication of the line the "Supreme Guide" intends to pursue in the next four years. The system could arrange things for either Rafsanjani or Ahmadinezhad to win in the second round.

A win by Rafsanjani would be a sure sign that the "Supreme Guide" thinks he still needs a kind of inter-face with the broader Iranian society, similar to the role the outgoing President Mohammad Khatami played in his first four-year term.

It would also indicate that Khamenei is still interested in playing diplomatic games, more so 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.

Ahmadinezhad, on the other hand, belongs to the 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 god-forsaken, must, at some point, either submit to them or be forced into submission.

The question is which view will Khamenei adopt. We shall find out when we know who wins the presidential run-off in a few days' time. This showdown is certainly worth watching.