Iranian hardliners urged to unite ahead of presidential election

A leading mouthpiece for the Iranian regime has called on fundamentalists running in Friday’s election to unite and get behind a single candidate amid concerns that reformist support for a moderate challenger could give him a last-minute boost in the contest.

“Fundamentalist candidates should sit down together as soon as possible . . . to choose one among themselves as the candidate of all fundamentalists,” Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the state-run newspaper Kayhan, wrote on Wednesday. Mr Shariatmadari was appointed to his post by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

His comments came a day after two former presidents associated with the opposition reform movement threw their weight behind Hassan Rohani, a former chief nuclear negotiator, in a belated attempt to boost his candidacy.

The opposition, which was crushed in 2009 after protests against the alleged rigging of that year’s presidential vote, remains under intense pressure. But it has nonetheless sought to show it is still politically relevant and can disrupt the regime’s plans for an election that leads smoothly to a fundamentalist victory.

Although there is virtually no time left to mobilise popular support for Mr Rohani, his emergence as the opposition’s sole candidate appears to have made fundamentalists anxious. Some reports in Iran’s domestic media, including on fundamentalist news websites, suggested Mr Rohani had gained a sudden momentum.

Thousands of Mr Rohani’s supporters turned out for him in central Tehran on Wednesday evening – the last hours before the official deadline to stop campaigning – handing out leaflets and chanting: “We don’t want a fundamentalist government” and “Reforms, reforms, the winner of the election”. Police did not intervene.

Citing opinion polls, even though these are not particularly credible, some reports have put Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, mayor of Tehran, ahead of Saeed Jalili, Iran’s most senior nuclear negotiator and the man thought to be Mr Khamenei’s preferred presidential candidate.

But Mr Jalili and Ali-Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister, have denied they have any intention of withdrawing from the race.

Iran’s election will be the first since the unrest that followed the 2009 vote, which posed the biggest internal threat to the Islamic republic since its inception in 1979. It also comes as Iran is in sensitive talks with world powers over its nuclear programme and is struggling with the impact of international sanctions.

On Wednesday, the supreme leader said high turnout would “disappoint the enemy [the west] and ease [international] pressure”. He insisted a new president with “firm and strong [electoral support]” could better resist western powers.

Analysts say, however, that the regime’s desire for the “right” outcome – that is, for a hardliner to win – is stronger than any wish to see a president elected with a true mandate and popular legitimacy.

The candidacy of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the reformist-backed former president, was rejected by the vetting body. Mr Rafsanjani said this week that his disqualification, which shocked many Iranians, had come after a top security official reported that as many as 70 per cent of voters would cast their ballots for him.

On Wednesday, Mohammad Khatami, another former president who, along with Mr Rafsanjani, endorsed Mr Rohani, called on his supporters to create “a wave [social movement] that would make changing the results no longer possible”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.