To many in Iran this was supposed to be an election of firsts: the first time candidates engaged in vigorous debates on television, the first time a candidate’s wife became such a dynamic voice in a campaign, and what many were hoping – the first time an incumbent President was elected out of office. During the two-week campaign season, there was a buzz and excitement about the elections not seen in years. The urban elite had grown disillusioned with Iranian politics after witnessing the limits of change under reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who ruled from 1997 until 2005. Voter malaise set in as they came to view the presidential elections as only a nominal change in leadership with power ultimately in the hands of the clerical establishment.
However, the widespread repercussions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s populist, hard-line policies proved that, to a certain degree, elections do matter. With increased repression at home, a reeling economy, and an excessively confrontational stance on the world stage, many segments of Iranian society were ready for change. Their hopes were personified in Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was a veteran of the 1979 Revolution, but had stayed out of politics for the last 20 years. In the final days of the campaign, millions of Iranians took to the streets, many sporting green ribbons that became a symbol for Mousavi, and many declaring their determination to vote for the first time. It seemed odd that a bland technocrat such as Mousavi, who was Prime Minister from 1980 to 1989 and responsible for the purging of political dissidents, would become the voice for the reformist camp.
Yet it is precisely because of Mousavi’s competent management of the economy during the Iran-Iraq war and his ability to bridge the conservative-liberal divide through a return to the true principles of the Revolution, that he was seen as a viable candidate. With a surge of support among women, youth, and the urban middle class (groups that would normally stay home on election day but felt they had a large stake in this election) it looked like Mousavi had a real chance of defeating Ahmadinejad. The excitement led to record turnout of 85 percent, a factor that should have allowed for a Mousavi victory or at the very least for a second-round runoff. But like all things in Iran’s opaque political structure, the outcome proved to be unpredictable.
A few hours after the polls closed on Friday, Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won around 63 percent of the vote. Immediately, opposition leaders cried foul and began cataloguing a list of election violations and irregularities in the vote. Indeed, the fact that results were announced so quickly, that the results came in blocks of millions of votes rather than being announced province by province, that Ahmadinejad did equally well in rural and urban areas, and that the other three candidates lost their own home towns, seemed to suggest that improprieties took place. Yet, it does not necessarily mean there was widespread fraud.
After all, we can’t discount the idea that Ahmadinejad may just be that popular. His unabashed excoriation of the corrupt clerical elite and his populist policies resonate with many people, particularly those who have not benefited from Iran’s vast oil wealth. Moreover, regardless of how contentious some of his comments may be, he has an undeniable charisma that Mousavi lacks. Nonetheless, Mousavi supporters feel they’ve been robbed and have taken out to the streets in the largest demonstrations since the revolution.
In fact, fraudulence in an Iranian election cannot come as a real surprise since the process has always been subject to official manipulation – albeit to a limited degree. Improprieties take place both before the election – out of 479 candidates who registered to run for president this year, only 4 were ruled eligible by the powerful Guardian Council (an unelected body comprised of six clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and six jurists nominated by the judiciary) – and during the election through ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and the cancellation of votes. Yet, as Suzanne Maloney of The Brookings Institution explains, “never in the Islamic Republic’s history has an election been stolen as explicitly and unabashedly as Friday’s was.”
It does seem peculiar that the clerical establishment would open up the political space to such an unprecedented degree before the election only to crush it with such vehemence. Perhaps Ayatollah Khameini had been so certain of an Ahmadinejad victory that he panicked when things went awry. There is speculation that as the numbers started coming in Friday and it became clear that Mousavi was winning, the Interior ministry informed Khameini, who then ordered the Electoral Commission to quickly falsify the counts. Hence, the sloppiness of the rigging. Also, it seems that the clerical establishment underestimated the unflinching zeal of the opposition. After all, when Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi alleged various improprieties in the 2005 elections, the reformist constituency was so apathetic that no one protested. At a recent event on the Iranian elections at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, various scholars predicted that if there were accusations of fraud, there would certainly be disgruntlement, but no protests. So the government and Iranian pundits alike were not expecting people to come out in such droves.
Khameini’s shift from unequivocally supporting the election results by calling it a “divine assessment” and “the miraculous hand of God” to then ordering an inquiry into voter fraud is also bizarre (the Guardian Council has since ordered a limited recount). Could this be an indication of internal cleavages in the ruling establishment? In some ways both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad are just front men in a much larger power struggle between Ayatollah Khameini and the Revolutionary Guard on the one hand, and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and pragmatic conservative clerics, on the other. Speculation that tensions were escalating between the various centers of power became evident when Rafsanjani issued an open letter two days before the election criticizing Ayatollah Khameini for remaining silent in the face of “insults, lies and false allegations” by Ahmadinejad. Yet after this brazen questioning of the Supreme Leader, Rafsanjani is nowhere to be seen. Could his obscurity signal the end of his political career? Or could he be surreptitiously trying to plot against Khameini? According to rumors circulating on the blogosphere Rafsanjani is in the holy city of Qum seeing if he has enough votes in the 86-member Assembly of Experts to remove Khameini from power.
These internal fissures have only bolstered the people’s defiance against the regime. Despite the blocks on communication, the arrests, the beatings, and even the deaths, the people want justice and have showed no sign of backing down. As an editorial in the New York Times notes, “If the clerical establishment thinks it can crush this movement it must remember, the mullahs have had a tight lock on Iran up to now. But they should not forget what happened when the Shah lost his people’s trust.”
Published Date: June 19, 2009