Rouhani for president, again
Result likely to safeguard global nuclear agreement
IRANIANS yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory yesterday on state television.
Rouhani secured 57% of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38% for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.
Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.
Raisi, a protegé of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.
The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear programme.
And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran.
Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.
The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces. “The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran. “Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”
The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former US president Barack Obama. – Reuters