By Kaveh-Cyrus Sanandaji
Middle East Center, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Divisions in Iranian conservative political ranks formalized this week as Mohsen Rezai announced he will lead a pragmatic-conservative coalition as its presidential candidate in the upcoming June poll. During the 2008 parliamentary elections, fissures emerged in the conservative ranks as elements of the once unified right expressed their discontent with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration and formed the moderate-conservative Grand Principlist Coalition, headed by Rezai, Ali Larijani and Mohammad Bagher-Ghalibaf. The coalition subsequently gained control of the Eighth Majlis in the elections and has since proven to be a staunch and effective opponent of the incumbent President.
The pragmatists’ takeover of the legislature was clearly a move toward their goal of securing the presidency. All three leaders of the coalition competed in previous presidential elections, and as the June 2009 elections approached, they became increasingly more vocal in their criticism of Ahmadinejad’s administration. The relentless attacks led many leading principlists to question the continued viability of Ahmadinejad’s radical, populist-Islamic conservative trend.
Following the Iranian New Year holiday, conservatives engaged in internal politicking on the best strategy to defeat the reformists, leading to a delay in official candidacy announcements. Rather than narrow the rift among conservatives, this period facilitated its expansion as the conflict between Ahmadinejad and the Eighth Majlis became more pronounced. Rumors circulated that the internal negotiations were not going Ahmadinejad’s way, since leading factions like the Combatant Clergy Association had failed to reach a consensus on his candidacy. Rather than dispel these rumors, Ahmadinejad’s media advisor, Ali-Akbar Javanfekr, seemed to confirm them when he announced in mid-April that the President would likely seek re-election as an independent candidate.
During this same period, pragmatic-conservatives announced their intention to present a coalition ticket. With prominent factions abandoning their attempts to forge unity around Ahmadinejad’s candidacy, influential groups such as the Development and Justice Party of Islamic Iran endorsed this alternative approach. Rezai emerged as the candidate best positioned to lead the coalition, given Larijani was firmly entrenched as Speaker of Parliament and Qalibaf was rumored to be seeking a second term as mayor of Tehran.
Rezai’s initial announcement was rejected by the Expediency Discernment Council, but he was able to use his extensive political capital – particularly in the bazaar, clergy, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s inner political circle and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – to successfully lobby for his candidacy. He officially announced his nomination at the end of April. The acceptance of Rezai’s nomination could indicate that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is tacitly permitting the division between moderate and radical conservatives as he gauges where public opinion will swing.
The coalition led by Rezai promotes a pragmatic reform agenda that seeks national reconciliation and economic development through the amelioration of Iran’s foreign relations. Although Rezai was an ardent revolutionary during the formative years of the Republic, he has in recent years presented himself as a competent technocrat. His coalition believes Iran’s managerial model needs revision and many of the economic and development problems can be solved by leveraging various elites’ experiences.
Though specific posts have yet to be determined, Raja News has reported that Ali-Akbar Velayati, the special advisor to the Supreme Leader, and Ghalibaf have accepted to serve as Rezai’s vice presidents. Moreover, Rezai has named Davood Danesh-Jafari – Ahmadinejad’s former economic affairs and finance minister who was dismissed during a cabinet reshuffle presumably over disagreements with the President – as his campaign manager with the likely intention of re-appointing him to the Finance Ministry. But despite Rezai’s declared intention to include reformists in his coalition, none have joined the ticket. With former president Mohammad Khatami and other leading reformists squarely backing Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy, it seems highly unlikely that Rezai and his conservative camp will be able to attract any reformist politicians.
Though pragmatic conservatives and reformists share a uniform criticism of Ahmadinejad’s failed populist policies, Rezai’s solutions markedly differ from the reformists. While the pragmatists’ agenda is fiscally oriented, it is explicitly linked to the amelioration of foreign relations, which they perceive as a necessary precondition for attracting foreign direct investment, job creation and overall economic growth. In an interview with Press TV in November 2008, Rezai stated that rather than continuing a confrontational stance, it would be mutually beneficial for Iran and the United States to engage one another on issues such as creating regional stability (presumably vis-à-vis Afghanistan and Iraq) and tackling the growing drug-trade problem in Afghanistan.
The pragmatic coalition is also a proponent of structural reforms, particularly concerning factional and electoral politics. On numerous occasions, Rezai has discussed his desire to re-institutionalize political parties as a means of improving the candidate selection process currently dominated by the Ministry of Interior and Guardian Council. To reduce the influence of a few interest groups in presidential and parliamentary election outcomes, Rezai wants to replace the vetting process with a party-driven candidate selection process, similar to the U.S. primary system.
It is still too early to determine how effective Rezai’s proposed agenda will be in attracting voters. However, dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad’s administration alone will not be enough to secure an outright election victory. Even with Rezai’s extensive political capital among the IRGC, which reportedly gave Ahmadinejad the necessary margin for a second-round victory in 2005, it is unlikely that the IRGC will shift its support entirely to Rezai in the first-round. More realistically, this base will be divided between the two candidates, depriving both of a clear majority.
Although the center-right coalition may pull principlist votes from Ahmadinejad and its economic policies may appeal to fiscally-oriented centrist voters, it is unlikely to attract support from notable reformist leaders or the now re-energized traditional reformist base. If Rezai hopes to achieve a first-round election victory, he must convince middle-class voters (particularly women and youth) and peripheral ethnic minorities of his ability and desire to ameliorate their social conditions. Since announcing his candidacy, Rezai has reached out to ethnic minority and youth voters by, for example, promising to incorporate “ethnicities” into his cabinet and to reduce mandatory military service from two years to one year.
However, it is unclear how much his statements will resonate with these voters, particularly given the reformists’ and Mousavi’s established popularity within these groups. Rezai may also face difficulty in building inroads given the stigma associated with his earlier revolutionary activities as one of the founders and later commander of the IRGC.
In sum, the introduction of a more moderate leaning, principlist is certain to impact the dynamics of the tenth presidential election. Though at this stage it seems the pragmatic coalition is more likely to impact Ahmadinejad than the reformists – by diluting the conservative support base and failing to attract reformist votes – Iran’s electoral politics remain unpredictable. Rezai’s candidacy has the potential to increase overall turnout, prevent any one candidate from securing a first-round victory and force a second-round runoff. Only time will tell, though, how this election drama will play out.
Pictured above: Mohsen Rezai, leader of a pragmatic-conservative coalition in the 2009 Iranian presidential election.
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Published on May 8, 2009
