After a year of unofficial campaigning, the official segment of Iran’s presidential election started last weekend with 886 people registering as candidates.
Next weekend, we’ll learn how many will get to run. The decision rests with the Council of Guardians, a mullah-dominated “star chamber,” with a nod and a wink from the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei.
I think the council will approve 40 at most; then at least 30 of the survivors will withdraw in favor of the remaining “heavyweight” candidates. All four factions within the Khomeinist establishment will likely be allowed to have a man in the field.
One faction consists of pragmatists and self-styled reformists with a following among civil servants, businessmen and bazaar merchants angry with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s populist policies. This faction’s standard-bearer is Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an 80-year-old mid-ranking mullah who served as president from 1989 to 1997 and was instrumental in helping his successor Muhammad Khatami keep the faction in power for a further eight years.
Analysts see Rafsanjani as “the Iranian Deng Xiao-ping” after the Chinese Communist leader who put the People’s Republic on a new trajectory. Like Deng, Rafsanjani advocates a capitalist economy combined with tight political control.
Rafsanjani is also determined to re-orient Iran’s foreign policy away from the confrontational course set by Ayatollah Khomeini and continued by Khamenei. As speaker of the parliament, in 1985 and 1986 Rafsanjani established a channel of communication with the Reagan administration. His son Mehdi visited the White House and, according to the Iran-Contra commission, promised his US interlocutors to give America “all that is needed for close relations.”
Last month, Rafsanjani underlined his pragmatic approach to foreign policy by announcing that Iran “has no quarrel with Israel. . . . At most, if Arabs enter a war with Israel we could help them.”
This is in contrast with the Islamic Republic’s pledge to “wipe Israel off the map.”
In relations with the United States, Rafsanjani looks to Saudi Arabia as a model. This means that Tehran would respect US interests in the region. In exchange, Washington would accept the Khomeinist system as the political model best suited to Iran.
His age means that, if elected, Rafsanjani would be a one-term president. He’d hope to use the next four years to build a successor and clip the wings of Khamenei, who has publicly humiliated him on several occasions.
The next faction is that of President Ahmadinejad; its standard-bearer is Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a lifelong friend of the president known for his provocative catch-phrases. For example, he has declared that no political movement can be based on Islam.
“Islam belongs to history,” he says. “Modern man has moved beyond religion and needs new ideas to build its future.”
Some suspect that Ahmadinejad is casting Mashaei as his Dmitry Medvedev, who served as a one-term president to allow Vladimir Putin to return as Russia’s president for a third term.
Mashaei has indicated he wants good relations with America and an end to Iran’s anti-Israel policies. “We want to be friends with the whole world,” he says. “We have no enmity for the Israeli people.”
To counter Khamenei’s Islamist discourse, Mashaei is trying to cast himself as an Iranian nationalist, recalling Iran’s pre-Islamic “great civilization.”
Both Rafsanjani and Mashaei are likely to fudge the nuclear issue by accepting a suspension of uranium enrichment and the closure of two controversial sites.
The third faction is Khamenei’s. It has fielded half a dozen would-be candidates, but will probably unite behind one in the end, most likely Saeed Jalili, who has led Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the outside world.
The fourth faction is that of technocrats allied with sections of the Revolutionary Guard. They’re angry with Ahmadinejad but reluctant to allow Khamenei absolute power. If their standard-bearer, Tehran Mayor Muhammad-Baqer Qalibaf, is eliminated, the faction will likely throw its weight behind Khamenei’s candidate.
The best estimates put the combined core supporters of the four factions at 10 to 12 million, out of 55 million eligible to vote. If the election is limited to the Khomeinist support base, Khamenei’s candidate will win. But if the silent majority turns up, anything is possible.
To attract the silent majority, Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad factions are trying to turn the exercise into a referendum on Khamenei’s leadership.