Tag Archives: tehran

Rowhani, Qalibaf appear to lead polls to top Friday’s vote, advance to June 21 runoff

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Polling is an inexact science in Iran, so most polls should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Iran Flag Icon

But the field poll data coming from the U.S.-based Information and Public Opinion Solutions is more reliable than most, even though it’s not based in Tehran, because it conducts daily telephone interviews with a sample of over 1,000 potential voters within Iran.

The bottom line is that a runoff seems increasingly likely and, although that runoff seems likeliest to be a faceoff between conservative Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and moderate Hassan Rowhani, that’s by no means a certainty.  I continue to believe that any of the five leading candidates could ultimately wind up in the runoff, especially if former longtime foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati withdraws from the race in the next 48 hours in favor of Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, which remains a possibility, given that both candidates are viewed has having the closest ties to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader since 1989.  That’s especially true if you believe that the 2009 presidential vote was subject to massive electoral fraud — in such case, it seems possible that Rowhani could be excluded through chicanery.  But despite the fact that he’s the most reformist of the six remaining candidate, Rowhani is the only cleric in the race, he has a solid relationship with Khamenei.

The latest results show Rowhani moving for the first time into the lead with 26.6% of the vote at the same time that former presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami have endorsed him.  Rafsanjani, a political moderate, had registered to run for president in the election, but he was disqualified by the Guardian Council, a 12-member body close to the Supreme Leader that certifies candidates to run for office in Iran.  The reformist Khatami, who had supported Rafsanjani’s presidential bid, indicated his support for Rowhani after his former vice president Mohammad Reza Aref dropped out of the race on Monday in favor of Rowhani.  Rowhani’s support has steadily increased from a poll last week that showed him with just 8.1%.  (Online polls have shown Rowhani and Aref with much wider support, but those seem skewed toward wealthier, more urban voters likelier to support more liberal candidates like Rowhani and Aref).

For the first time in an IPOS poll, the more ‘principlist’ conservative mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, has slipped into second place.  Despite Qalibaf’s position as a conservative, he’s been a relatively popular mayor and is expected to do well among voters in Tehran, which is home to over 12 million of Iran’s 75 million people.  Last week, however, Qalibaf held a much wider lead with 39% of the vote, though his lead seems to be shrinking as more undecided voters (57% of all voters last week) ultimately choose a candidate to support:

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The third-place candidate, according to the poll, is Mohsen Rezai, whose support seems to be incredibly stable — 16.3% today and 16.6% last week.  Rezai, the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, is seen as a more independent-minded conservative, and he pulls much of his strength from rural Iran and from within Iran’s military forces.  Continue reading Rowhani, Qalibaf appear to lead polls to top Friday’s vote, advance to June 21 runoff

The incredibly shrinking president: Ahmadinejad’s subdued role in Iran’s presidential race

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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has never been one to shrink from a political battle — not during his breakthrough 2005 presidential campaign to his heated, not in his routine, over-the-top attacks against the United States and Israel, and not in his more recent fights with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over personnel and other policy disputes.Iran Flag Icon

Ahmadinejad is limited to two consecutive presidential terms and therefore is not eligible to run for reelection in this month’s presidential race, so it was always certain that he would fade somewhat to the background as the race focuses on the six candidates hoping to succeed him.  But it’s staggering to note just how minor a role Ahmadinejad has played in the campaign, especially in light of the fact that he was very recently attempting to boost Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, his chief of staff, to the presidency, thereby giving Ahmadinejad a key role in Iranian affairs even after his own administration ends.

But the Guardian Council refused to permit Mashaei, to run for president earlier in May when it also disqualified former president Hashemi Rafsanjani as well.  When Ahmadinejad tried to make Mashaei Iran’s first vice president in 2009, Khamenei made a rare and direct intervention into domestic politics to overrule the decision and ordered Ahmadinejad to replace Mashaei.  Since his reelection four years ago, Ahmadinejad’s growing rift with principlists loyal to Khamenei have increasingly isolated him within Iran’s domestic political sphere.

One of the reasons why Mashaei is believed to be such a unique threat to the Supreme Leader is that he’s been willing to champion a form of Persian nationalism that harkens back to the time before Shi’a Islam took root in what’s now modern-day Iran.  Mashaei’s ties to Ahmadinejad were forged three decades ago, when Mashaei served in the Revolutionary Guards and in Iran’s intelligence ministry during the 1980s war with Iraq.  He joined Ahmadinejad’s city government when Ahmadinejad became Tehran’s mayor in 2003, and he held a key advisory role during Ahmadinejad’s first presidential term.

But there are other reasons why Khamenei and his conservative ‘principlist’ allies have been wary of Mashaei, including conciliatory comments towards Israel — he once remarked that Iranians are friends of Israelis.  Furthermore, in a country where presidents are required to have religious as well as political credentials, religious conservatives have called Mashaei a ‘deviant’ due to Mashaei’s relatively relaxed views on matters such as the role of music and dancing in Iranian life to the wearing of the hijab.  Ahmadinejad responded to Mashaei’s disqualification by claiming that Mashaei was ‘wronged,’ adding that he hoped Khamenei would intervene and call upon the Guardian Council to reconsider its decision, but those calls have been met with silence from both the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council.

Since then, however, Ahmadinejad has remained uncharacteristically subdued, in a way that mirrors the relatively quiet role that the unpopular former U.S. president George W. Bush — a longtime Ahmadinejad foil — played in the 2008 presidential election.

Although critics of Iran’s political system have charged that the eight candidates approved by the Guardian Council are all conservatives (the field has now whittled down to six after two hopefuls dropped out earlier this week), they nonetheless represent a fairly wide range of generational, clerical and ideological diversity.  Moreover, Ahmadinejad’s turbulent eight years in office have as been the target of much criticism throughout the election campaign, including as to his handling of Iran’s sputtering economy, growing inflation, widespread unemployment, and the way in which he’s isolated Iran’s position internationally, which has led to economic sanctions that have only exacerbated Iran’s economic woes.

None of the candidates in the race seem incredibly inclined to embrace Ahmadinejad.

The one potential exception is Saeed Jalili, Iran’s current negotiator with the P5+1 international powers over Iran’s nuclear energy program.  Heralded as a frontrunner by the Western and Iranian media alike, Jalili is the closest thing to an incumbent in the race, and he’s absorbed criticism from both principlist candidates (such as Ali Akbar Velayati, a top international adviser to the Supreme Leader) and reformist candidates (such as Hassan Rowhani, who took a more conciliatory tone as Iran’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005). Continue reading The incredibly shrinking president: Ahmadinejad’s subdued role in Iran’s presidential race

And then there were six: the dwindling Iranian presidential field

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It’s been a fast-paced 36 hours in Iran’s presidential election, with two of the eight approved candidates exiting of the race following Friday’s third and final presidential debate. Iran Flag Icon

Monday brought news that Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel would drop out of the election, reducing the number of conservative ‘principlists’ competing for votes in the first round of the June 14 presidential race.  Haddad-Adel, who served as the speaker of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles) from 2004 to 2008, and whose daughter is married to the son of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, did not specify an endorsement for any particular candidate, though he previously belonged to the ‘2+1 Principlist’ coalition that included former longtime foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and his exit from the race will likely mean fewer votes spread among Velayati, Qalibaf and Iran’s current top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili (pictured above preparing for a recent presidential debate).

Today brings the news that Mohammad Reza Aref will also drop out in favor of moderate candidate Hassan Rowhani, which gives moderates and reformists a chance to unite behind one candidate.  Aref, who served as communications minister and vice president under former reformist president Mohammed Khatami, allegedly ended his presidential bid after Khatami asked him to step down.  Khatami has now endorsed Rowhani, who is seen as more of a moderate than a reformist.  Rowhani is very close to former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was controversially disqualified in May to stand as a candidate in the current election by the Guardian Council.  It’s a development that wasn’t entirely unexpected, and to the extent reformists and moderates don’t boycott the election entirely, it is very good news for Rowhani, who can try to unite to reformist and moderate camps in the hours ahead of Friday’s vote.

So where does that leave the six-candidate field?  Realistically, it’s a five-man race.  Though he remains a candidate, it’s hard to believe that Mohammad Gharazi could win.  Although he served as Iran’s oil minister from 1981 to 1985 and as communications minister from 1985 to 1997, he’s a leftist in the mould of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as prime minister in the 1980s before his resurrection as a reformist presidential candidate in 2009.  He’s run a campaign focused largely on economic management and controlling inflation.

The remaining five — three principlists, another independent conservative and a reformist/moderate — are not so much vying to win outright on Friday so much as vying to win one of two spots in a runoff that will be held on the following Friday, June 21 in the event that no candidate wins over 50%.  If that happens, as seems likely, there’s really no way to know who will emerge in the top two spots.  Though polling is not incredibly reliable in Iranian elections, a recent telephone poll by the U.S.-based IPOS indicates 57% of Iranians have not yet decided but, among those who have, Qalibaf has a wide lead of around 40% against the remaining four candidate essentially tied for second between around 10% and 20%.  That generally corresponds to other field polls, though Rowhani has led other similar polls.  Rowhani has led the lion’s share of unscientific online polls since the campaign began in earnest, but those are even less reliable indicators of true support.

So what are the chances for each of those five candidates?  Here’s a look at the pros and cons of each candidate, and how each would shape up in a potential runoff.  Continue reading And then there were six: the dwindling Iranian presidential field

A look at the eight presidential candidates approved by Iran’s Guardian Council

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Provided that the Guardian Council’s decision stands and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani is not permitted to run for president in the June 14 election, who are the eight remaining candidates from which Iranian voters will choose? Iran Flag Icon

Despite the rejection of the candidacies of both Rafsanjani, the current chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, chief of staff to incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Guardian Council approved eight candidates that include both conservatives and liberals, including two figures who were part of the administration of reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

So if Rafsanjani and his supporters ultimately accept the outcome, the race won’t necessarily lack for drama or intensity.  With eight candidates in the race, at least initially, the election could well go to a runoff on June 21 if no candidate wins over 50% of the vote, though there’s reason to believe some of the candidates will fall aside as conservatives in particular unite around one or two candidates.

Without further ado, here’s a look at each of the eight approved candidates and their chances to become Iran’s next president. Continue reading A look at the eight presidential candidates approved by Iran’s Guardian Council