Iranians return to polling stations today to decide whether hardline conservative Saeed Jalili or moderate reformist Masoud Pezeshkian will win more than 50 per cent of the vote and become their new president. In the June 28th round Pezeshkian received 10.4 million votes out of a total 24.5 million and Jalili took 9.47 million.

A former nuclear negotiator, Jalili ex-secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who advocates a tough stance against the West and its allies. He has pledged to reduce inflation, boost economic growth, and tackle corruption and mismanagement which have plagued Iran since 1979.

A surgeon, member of parliament, and former health minister, Pezeshkian has the support of former reformist presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammed Khatami as well as the Reformist Front. Half Azeri and half Kurdish, he is also backed by members of these minority communities. He seeks to re-engage with the public which has been alienated by decades of clerical rule and to revive the 2015 agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions which have harmed Iran’s economy and contributed to the high cost of living and unemployment. He also seeks to curb or abolish the morality police which ensures Iranians adhere to conservative social and cultural strictures but has said he would not interfere in foreign affairs.

The third main candidate, former Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who gained 3.38 million votes, has called on his supporters to cast their votes for Jalili. This means Pezeshkian is likely to lose unless he garners votes from at least 3.5 million who shunned the first round.

Two other candidates Tehran mayor Alireza Zakani and government official Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi dropped out on the eve of the first round and urged their backers to vote for Jalili.

Only 39.9 per cent of the country’s 61.5 million registered voters took part in the first round, 1 million of whom either submitted spoiled or blank ballots. This was the lowest turnout in Iranian presidential and parliamentary elections since the 1979 establishment of the cleric-dominated government. The turnout for the assembly election in March was a miserable 41 per cent.

A snap election was called after ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in May. Eighty potential candidates submitted their names to the Guardian Council, a 12-member appointed body which vets all elected and appointed officials. Six were selected to run, five conservatives and one reformist. Pezeshkian was allowed to stand to increase voter turnout at a time alienation is prevalent and young Iranians chose to boycott the election.

Iranians have become increasingly resentful of the clerical system in the aftermath of country-wide protests following the death of the Mahsa Amini, 23, a Kurdish woman who died in 2022 after being arrested in Tehran by the morality police for failing to wear her headscarf (hijab) as mandated by law. Demonstrators who adopted the slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” were joined in demonstrations by labour unionists and others with grievances against the government. During several months of unrest, 550 were killed and t 12,500 arrested in a harsh crack down. Since then, the hijab has been elevated as a symbol of political correctness, piety and obedience to clerical rule, prompting Iranian women to go in public without the hijab to court arrest.

While Iranian presidents are the country’s top elected officials, they must defer to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, successor of the founder of the Islamic Republic Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He played off elected reformists and conservatives against each other with the intention of maintaining unelected clerical power, encouraging popular interest in politics, and high voter turnout which is seen as legitimising the system of governance.

Khamenei has increasingly curbed reformists and promoted hardline conservatives who have alienated the public. In 2021, the Guardian Council engineered the elevation to the presidency of Khamenei’s longstanding ally in an election in which only 48 per cent voted. This was the lowest turn-out until this years parliamentary and presidential contestsr. As Raisi, 63, was seen as the 85-year-old Khamenei’s choice of successor as supreme leader, Raisi’s untimely death came as a hard blow.

His absence has prompted speculation that Khamenei’s 54-year-old second son Mojtaba could succeed is father. While Mojtaba is said to wield strong influence behind the scenes, he is too young and too junior in the clerical hierarchy to assume his father’s position. Furthermore, Khamenei is apparently opposed to hereditary succession for either Mojtaba or Khomeini’s grandson Ali, who is a cleric based in Najaf in Iraq.

It is significant that none of the candidates for the presidency were clerics of note. Khamenei was president before becoming supreme leader. Consequently, there could be a scramble among senior clerics to succeed him.

While Iran’s domestic political situation remains conflicted, Tehran has promoted regional reconciliation. This began with Saudi Arabia and is proceeding with Bahrain – with which relations were broken in 2016.

Tehran has also kept up pressure on the West by backing its allies in the Resistance Front – Palestine’s Hamas, Lebanon’s Hizbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and Iraq’s Shia militias – in efforts to confront and contain Israel and its partners over Israel’s war on Gaza.

On the international level, Iran has joined BRICS – the group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – with the aim of aligning itself with the Global South. Iran has provided drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine and sold oil to China which is prepared to breach US sanctions.

After Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 agreement for limiting Iran’s nuclear programmed in exchange for lifting sanctions, Iran has defied the International Atomic Energy Agency by violating limitations laid down in the deal. There are concerns that if Iran its threatened by the US and Israel, Tehran could opt for nuclear weapons. If this threat is carried out, Iran could become the second regional power after Israel which possesses hundreds of nuclear warheads and bombs but has not developed nuclear energy for electricity as has Iran.

Photo: TNS