What's Next for Iran?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

In the lead-up to the May 19 Iranian presidential election, most observers maintained that the electorate would be focused on one main issue.

Did the lifting of economic sanctions on the part of the United States following the nuclear agreement signed by Tehran with the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany in 2015 improve the economy sufficiently to have made the deal worth the cost?

Incumbent president Hassan Rouhani’s political fortunes would depend on the answer made by the millions of Iranians who had suffered under the restrictions.

He ran in 2013 on a platform promising to reinvigorate the economy by forging the nuclear deal, ending or easing sanctions, and opening the country to foreign investment and ideas.

His more “moderate” approach to relations with the West was in contrast to his often acrimonious and bizarre predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who delighted in being a provocateur.

Rouhani’s main opponent, Ebrahim Raisi, a powerful conservative cleric, is remembered for his role in the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners, mainly members and supporters of the Marxist opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran or Mojahedin-e-Khalq.

Raisi accused Rouhani of capitulation to the U.S. in the nuclear negotiations, allowing the entry of Western consumer goods under the cover of economic liberalization, and of allowing the spread of Western culture in Iran.

He appealed primarily to poor and deeply religious Iranians, many of whom felt left out of Rouhani’s post-sanctions vision for the future.

In the end, Rouhani prevailed, with 57 per cent of the ballots cast, soundly defeating his chief opponent, who received 38.5 percent. The turnout was more than 70 percent.

“You have put Iran back on the road to progress,” Rouhani stated to his voters after his victory. Clearly, Iranians have endorsed his economic and political plans, but are they working?

True, billions of dollars have poured into the country after reaching the nuclear agreement. All manner of international businesses have been flocking in, eager to make deals.

Yet many middle-class Iranians are still frustrated by the years of high unemployment, inflation (which was above 40 percent when Rouhani was elected), declining living standards, and widespread corruption.

Prices are still rising by over seven per cent a year and unemployment remains at 12.5 per cent overall, and close to 30 per cent for people under 25.

Ordinary Iranians also chafe over the fact that about 80 per cent of the economy remains under state ownership, dominated by the powerful military, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the all-powerful Shia clergy. Both these groups have accumulated astronomical wealth.

As well, the Iranian clerical elite retain the final say, under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now in his 28th year as the country’s Supreme Leader, on Iran’s domestic politics and international relations.

The Islamic Republic’s hybrid democratic-theocratic constitution, with its checks and balances, on paper provides for a measure of popular sovereignty, yet the position of the Supreme Leader ensures that a theocrat is in ultimate control.

Candidates for all offices must prove their utter loyalty to the Supreme Leader. The unelected twelve-member Council of Guardians vets candidates for presidential and parliamentary elections. It also reviews all new laws to ensure they are properly “Islamic.”

“We are all merely facilitators of this regime,” Mohammad Khatami, the “moderate” president who served from 1997 to 2005, once remarked. The election will change none of this.

Misagh Parsa, a sociology professor at Dartmouth College, in her book Democracy In Iran: Why it Failed and How it Might Succeed, published last November, traces the country’s increasing inequalities in wealth and income, corruption and cronyism, and a “brain drain” of highly educated professionals.

But the hard-liners will not give up real power easily and have managed to quash pro-democracy activism at every turn since 1979, especially during the violence that erupted during the 2009 election that allowed Ahmadinejad to remain president.

Khamenei has veto power over all policies, while Rouhani has been unable to even secure the release of reformists from house arrest.

Will Rouhani manage to break the hard-line monopoly on the state-run radio and television, and increase freedom of press?

The Islamic Republic will in the next few years face a more important struggle, that of who will succeed the 77-year-old and ailing Khamenei. This will not be resolved at the ballot box and in fact Raisi, as a major religious figure, remains a potential successor to Khamenei.