Election time in Iran: what to watch
Iran’s parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections are tomorrow, and although Iran’s conservative Guardians’ Council has already stacked the deck heavily in favor of conservatives and against moderate and reformist elements, there is still plenty to watch for as Iranians go to the polls. Which they’re expected to do in heavy numbers, according to a new public opinion poll, something that seems like it should work to the benefit of moderates although there’s no way to say that for certain (and, if history is any guide, we’ll never really know the official turnout figures because the Iranian government will fudge the numbers). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is the face of moderate politics in Iran, and he’s quite popular these days in the aftermath of concluding a nuclear accord with the United States and the rest of the P5+1, even though Iran’s economy is in precarious shape. He’s also on the ballot, running for a seat in the Assembly of Experts, and has been working with fellow moderate (and former Iranian president) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to get more moderates elected to both parliament and the Assembly.
That same poll that is predicting high turnout and showed that Rouhani is broadly popular (67% approval rating) found that Iranians are less enthused about the two conservative-dominated bodies that are being filled in tomorrow’s elections, another possibly good sign for moderate challengers:
According to the survey, 43% of Iranians disapprove of the current parliament, which contains many holdovers who came to office under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Only 28% had a favorable opinion of the body. A near majority of 48% was somewhat or completely dissatisfied with their own representatives in parliament, which was elected four years ago prior to Rouhani’s 2013 victory.
Iranians were more ambivalent about the Assembly of Experts, a body of largely elderly clerics theoretically tasked with supervising the supreme leader and choosing his successor when he dies — a distinct possibility given that Khamenei is 76 and suffers from prostate cancer. According to the poll, 40% approved of the current assembly’s performance while 36% had no opinion. Only 10% could accurately name its chairman, an elderly cleric named Mohammad Yazdi.
As I noted above, the Guardians’ Council has already tilted the electoral field toward conservatives by simply disqualifying nearly all reformist candidates and many moderates from standing for office. A total of about 12,000 people filed to run for parliament, and the Council disqualified nearly half of them. Around 800 people filed to run for the Assembly, and only 161 of them were allowed to actually run. The list of disqualifications included would-be Assembly candidate Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a move that may actually have damaged the Guardians’ Council’s standing with the Iranian public.
Whatever reformist candidates remain in the field have opted to thrown in with moderates, with the two groups united in support for the nuclear deal, instead of boycotting. Under normal conditions, in most countries, the weakness of the Iranian economy would bode poorly for anybody tied to the incumbent government, so you’d expect moderates to do poorly. But Rouhani’s high approval rating suggests that he’s not being blamed for the economy, and so that bit of conventional wisdom may not hold in this case. Ultimately it may come down to whether voters believe that Rouhani can fix the economy, now that the nuclear sanctions have been lifted (though, with oil prices being what they are, it’s not clear that anybody can fix the Iranian economy in the near term).
Iran’s conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ostensibly stays above all this petty political stuff. But in reality Khamenei is a political actor, and in the past couple of days he’s subtly been trying to discredit moderates by warning Iranians of the possibility of US “interference” in the election. This gets people thinking about voting for strongly anti-US candidates and may preempt charges of electoral fraud by moderates by casting them as American agents of chaos. It also might be effective — another recent public opinion poll shows that while Iranians are happy about the nuclear deal (and thus Rouhani, for negotiating it), they don’t trust the US government to abide by its terms. On the other hand, that poll did show that a majority of Iranians (59%) want “Rouhani supporters” to win the elections.
Elections to the 290 seat parliament are important — a less hardline parliament means more space for Rouhani to implement his domestic agenda (although even an outright reformist parliament would be subject to being overriden by the Guardians’ Council and the Supreme Leader), and a more hardline parliament means Rouhani will struggle to get much done before he has to stand for reelection next year. But the Assembly elections are more significant. Usually the 88 seat Assembly of Experts does little or nothing (technically it can overrule the Supreme Leader, but in practice that never happens), but with Khamenei in his mid-70s and reportedly not in great health, there’s a good chance that the next Assembly will get to perform that body’s one major function: selecting a new Supreme Leader. Now, the Assembly doesn’t pick a new Supreme Leader in a vacuum, and outside voices, especially among the clerical elite and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, will have input into the process. But a more moderate Assembly likely means a more moderate successor to Khamenei.
The key figure here is Rafsanjani, who used to chair the Assembly and would like to chair it again. Rafsanjani is one of the Islamic Republic’s “founding fathers,” and shepherded Khamenei’s succession as Supreme Leader when Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. But he’s identified as a moderate now (whether that’s because he’s changed or because Iranian politics have gotten more conservative is a matter of interpretation) and has been attacked pretty viciously by hardliners for supporting, at least tacitly, the Green Movement after the disputed 2009 presidential election. Rafsanjani would like to see Khamenei replaced (after his eventual passing, of course) by a council rather than another individual, but it’s highly unlikely that this election, even if it goes very well for moderates, will give him enough votes in the Assembly to pull off a major change like that.
The elephant in the room is the possibility of electoral fraud. There’s always a possibility that the clerical regime (although really it’s become the clerical-Revolutionary Guard regime as the IRGC has accumulated more and more political and economic power) will manipulate the results to its liking, but the regime needs to be careful about that. Iranians are still cognizant of the shenanigans that went on in 2009 that led to the creation of the Green Movement, and the massive number of candidates disqualified by the Guardians’ Council only raised concerns about the election’s legitimacy.
