Iran election a ‘competition for who is most sycophant’

Iran’s upcoming June 18 presidential election is shaping up as a race among hard-liners on who can demonstrate the most loyalty to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to an Iran expert.

“The criteria has become so strict by the Guardian Council to qualify as candidates, that it is actually adding to the illegitimacy of the elections,” said Iran Observer owner and IDC lecturer Meir Javedanfar. “It is really undermining the legitimacy of the elections. It is really making it look like a competition between who is the most sycophant of the system, instead of who is the most qualified to address the peoples’ problems and the Iranian peoples’ challenges.”

Though the president still must defer to Khamenei, the position often carries significant day-to-day power regarding Iran’s economic affairs, and sometimes control over its diplomatic positions.

Iran expert Dr. Raz Zimmt, a fellow at INSS and an editor at the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, agreed with Javedanfar that predictions at this point were difficult, but was willing to give some very initial estimates.

Zimmt said that there is no clear leader between the reformist or pragmatist camps, which gives the hard-line camp its biggest advantage in years.

Though there could be competition within the hard-line camp, especially with a variety of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials vying for the presidency, Zimmt said the initial front-runner could be Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi was defeated by current President Hassan Rouhani in 2017, but garnered almost 16 million votes, close to 40% of the total vote, and Rouhani cannot run again having finished his second term.

However, like most candidates, Raisi has not yet officially declared his intentions. Multiple potential candidates, including Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and a former mayor of Tehran, have said they would drop out if Raisi runs, said Zimmt.

Raisi is much less committed to the 2015 nuclear deal with the world powers and may work to indirectly undermine it.

Raisi, whose constituency is the hard-line clerical class, is allied with the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and may even be in line as successor to Khamenei.

Regarding the so-called pragmatist camp that accepts most of the foundations of clerical rule in Iran but is more open to negotiating certain issues with the West, Zimmt said the potential candidates are weaker than in the past.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has repeatedly said he will not run, though Zimmt thought that if he was running he might have had a real chance, and been able to press for some improvements in running the country.

Zarif though is hard to pin down, and could always make a last-minute change.

Zimmt said that another possible pragmatist candidate could be Iranian First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, though Jahangiri is weaker now as a candidate than he might have been four years ago because he is associated with Rouhani, who himself has been blamed by many Iranians for the poor economic situation.

“Even if he runs, he is not seen as someone who could achieve any great changes,” said Zimmt.

Besides those potential candidates, Zimmt said that former parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani might have a chance as a candidate bridging the hard-line and pragmatist camps.

He would have his work cut out for him to convince the pragmatist and reformist camps to support him as the lesser of all evils.

“Larijani is much more conservative even compared with Rouhani,” said Zimmt, so it is not clear that he could garner pragmatist and reformist support, and doubtful that he could compete with Raisi for a majority in the hard-liner camp.

Zimmt was skeptical of reports that the IRGC, or former IRGC officials, would succeed at taking the presidency.

Many reports have talked about former IRGC official Saeed Mohammad, who at 53 is much younger than other top candidates.

But Zimmt said he might be disqualified by the Guardian Council as not having spent a sufficient cooling-off period since retiring from the IRGC, and for not having reached a sufficiently senior IRGC rank.

Mohammad was a top IRGC economic official, which might not be as easy to translate into political currency as it would be if he were a military commander.

Regarding other former IRGC officials who might compete, Zimmt said they would not necessarily foreshadow a greater IRGC takeover, as most of them have been out of the organization for 15-20 years.

Muhammad Ahmadinejad has also declared his candidacy, but Zimmt expected him to be disqualified as he was in 2017. Ahmadinejad fell out of favor with Khamenei in 2011 in the last couple of years of his presidency.

The Guardian Council will rule in late May on who can run.