Global Insight: Iran elections raise problems for regime

This is not the sort of electoral race that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was banking on.

Four years after insisting on giving the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad a second term as president, even at the expense of sparking the worst street unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s supreme leader was undoubtedly hoping for a smoother contest this time.

At a time of deepening popular discontent in Iran, with the mix of international sanctions and government incompetence aggravating economic troubles, Ayatollah Khamenei has been looking forward to a June 14 election in which loyalists compete and a safe winner emerges.

But he has now been dealt two wild cards that have confused the regime’s orchestration of the vote.

The first is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president, who is a pillar of the Islamic regime but was also an instrumental, behind-the-scenes driver of the Green Movement, the reformist opposition that was brutally crushed in 2009. Two of Mr Rafsanjani’s children have served stints in jail recently (his son Mehdi over alleged bribery charges and his daughter Faezeh over alleged anti-regime propaganda). And he had been warned by hardliners to stay out of the race.

At the other end of the political spectrum, another anti-establishment candidate, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, a close aide and relative of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, has also registered as a candidate. He makes no secret of his anti-clerical views and his role would be to extend the unruly incumbent’s leadership long after his second and last term in office expires.

It will become clear in the next few days whether these candidacies will survive a vetting by the Guardian Council for their Islamic credentials.

It will be more difficult to disqualify Mr Rafsanjani, who was, after all, reappointed to another important regime body, the Expediency Council, by Ayatollah Khamenei, last year. To throw out Mr Mashaei, whose nomination as vice-president by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad had been opposed by the supreme leader, would be much easier. But it might also be beneficial for the leader to keep both in the race, in the hope that they might divide the anti-establishment vote.

Given that both men know the supreme leader was not keen on their candidacy, their decision to register at the weekend was further indication of Ayatollah Khamenei’s weakening authority.

Instead of serving their intended purpose of renewing the legitimacy of Iran’s theocracy, elections have become the only means of challenging it. Indeed, no sooner had Mr Ahmadi-Nejad been reinstalled, in what the opposition claimed was a hugely rigged election in 2009, than he became a problem for the supreme leader, openly standing up to him and looking to form his own independent base of support within the regime.

Many analysts assume that, however much excitement Mr Rafsanjani and Mr Mashaei have injected into the electoral exercise, the vote will be massaged if need be to bring in a loyalist, with Saeed Jalili, the top nuclear negotiator and candidate, one of the most likely to become the next president.

But that could come at a higher cost than four years ago, and mark another chapter towards the regime’s own gradual self-destruction.

True, many Iranians might look around a turbulent region, particularly at Syria, and draw the lesson that taking to the streets again is too risky an adventure. But there is no guarantee how people will react, particularly when economic grievances are so profound.

“If you pull the trick once, next time the other side is aware of that trick. So can you still pull it?” says Trita Parsi, author of A Single Roll of the Dice, a book about US diplomacy with Iran.

For the outside world, fretting above all about Iran’s nuclear programme, the election has been, until now, a sideshow that needed to be out of the way for the supreme leader to focus on negotiations.

Mr Rafsanjani, who is known as a pragmatist with an entourage of competent technocrats, would, in theory, be a welcome choice in the west. In reality, though, the prospect of more infighting within the regime could further harden the policies of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Western governments would prefer a pragmatic president, says Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. But, he adds, they also need one with good relations with the supreme leader and therefore the ability to influence negotiations. The view of outsiders, however, is irrelevant to the regime – as might, sadly, be that of Iranian voters.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.