IRGC: Reformists Were not the Victors of the Elections

With the passage of a week since Hassan Rowhani, the reformists’ presidential choice, won Iran’s 11th presidential elections, the representative of Iran’s supreme leader ayatollah Khamenei in the Revolutionary Guards force tried to downplay the connection between the reformers and Rowhani and said, “Reformers were not the victors in the elections.”

General Yadollah Javani, the former head of the political bureau of the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed that Rowhani won the presidential race with just 250,000 votes and said, “If Mr. Rowhani’s rivals accepted the results of the June 14 vote and his victory as the next president immediately after the official announcement, it was because of the principlists’ views, and so it did not matter by how many votes he actually won.”

Speaking to Fars news agency, which is close to Iran’s security and military establishment, Javani continued, “If the principlists did not get the vote in the election, this does not mean that their competitor, which is the reformers, won the election. Reformers were not the victors in the election. The goals and principles that Mr. Rowhani pursued during the campaign indicated that he did not belong to the reformist movement, but that he is a moderate and supportive of respect for the law. And he has announced that he would use moderate forces among the principlists or the reformers.”

Javani compared the outcome of the results of this month’s elections with those in 2009 and asserted that while principlists comfortably accepted the results of this election and congratulated the winner, the reformers did not heed to the law in 2009 and instead of resorting to legal ways to address their issues opted to engage in street battles for the purpose of creating challenges for the regime and annulling he election.

These remarks contrast with even what Fars news agency published and posted in the first hours after the ballot boxes were closed on election day. The news agency put the candidates into 3 distinct groups: reformers, independents and principlists, and put Hassan Rowhani’s name in the reformists camp., Mohsen Rezai and Mohammad Gharazi in the independents group and Saeed Jalili, Ali-Akbar Velayati and Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf in the principlist group.

Furthermore, in the course of the presidential campaign, the principlist groups always portrayed and presented Hassan Rowhani to belong to the reformist camp and criticized the group vehemently.

Just days before the vote, Aref who is close to the reformists withdrew in favor of Hassan Rowhani. Well placed reformist groups and associations all announced their support for Rowhani and this included well-known reform leaders such as former president Mohammad Khatami, his Advisory Group, Hashemi Rafsanjani, etc.

The numbers that Javani quotes are in complete contrast to those that the ministry of the interior, which is responsible for implementing the elections, has published. In those reports, Rowhani’s votes far exceeded the votes of all principlist and independent candidates put together. Commentators attribute Javani’s remarks, and those of other principlists, to be aimed at boosting the morale of principlists and their supporters who suffered an unexpectedly and gross defeat at the June 14 polls.