In the perennial electoral battle between principlists (conservatives) and reformists, Iranian reformists have once again won handsomely.
Iran’s President Hasan Rouhani was reelected in a landslide on Saturday – with at least 56.88 percent of the votes according to the latest count at time of publishing and a projected vote share of 20 million votes (he got 18.6 million in 2013).
In the end, as predicted, it was all about turnout; over 70% in the main cities, with around 78% in Qom – the religious heart of Shi’ism. A low turnout would have benefitted hardliners and their reliable 20% “true believer” electoral base. Twenty-nine percent of the Iranian electorate is composed by 18-to-29 year olds, who are very enthusiastic about voting.
History will also register that Iran – a complex mix of theocracy and democracy – went to the polls and once again chose a reformist, open to the world, exactly as President Trump started his first foreign trip, in the Muslim world, by visiting a totalitarian theocracy, Saudi Arabia, that is obsessed with fomenting a Sunni-Shi’ite divide.
Follow the leader
The rector of the sanctuary of the 8th Shi’ite imam Reza in Mashhad, conservative Hojatoleslam Ebrahim Raisi – a possible candidate to succeed Ayatollah Khamenei as Supreme Leader – was simply no match for Rouhani.
The Supreme Leader’s own wishes have, in fact, been a mystery all along. Khamenei did not explicitly endorse Raisi, on the record. But he did attack Team Rouhani on many recent occasions.
Raisi is a hardliner who has been carefully groomed by the IRGC (the Revolutionary Guards) as a future Supreme Leader. This major loss in the presidential race does not exactly enhance his CV.
Rouhani, for his part, never backed down. During the campaign he went after not only the IRGC but even Raisi’s judicial credentials.
When Rouhani was first elected, in 2103, the country’s economic crisis – mostly caused by UN and US sanctions – was acute and there was no nuclear deal on the horizon. Rouhani and his team – led by his extremely able foreign minister, Javad Zarif – delivered the deal on July 2015 in Vienna, despite Khamenei repeated warnings about the impossibility of trusting any promise from Washington.
Team Rouhani was unable to deliver on the economy – after all, the post-deal benefits in terms of global trade and investment will take a long time to bear fruit.
His administration remains dependent on at least US$140 billion in foreign investment flowing in to modernize the country’s energy industry, transportation and telecoms, with most of that investment coming from Asia. According to the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, only US$13 billion materialized in 2016.
Iran is, de facto, once again doing deals with the West, yet it remains under threat from US banking/financial sanctions, which block crucial foreign investment necessary to stimulate the kind of economic activity that lifts the more than 700,000 young people who enter the country’s labor force every year along with it. It does not help that the Trump administration’s rhetoric is unmistakably anti-Iran.
Everything is not totally bleak, though. Unemployment, at 12.1% in 2012, was relatively stable at 12.45% last year (although youth unemployment remains at a high 30%). And inflation – at 27.3% in 2012 – was reduced to 8.5% in 2016.
Reform, not revolution
It’s always enlightening to remember Michel Foucault visiting Iran in late 1978, when the Shah was in the doldrums, and extolling the rise of “spiritual politics”. Iranian politics is shadow play; nothing is exactly what it seems.
Misinformed Western analysts tended to portray the encounter between Rouhani and Raisi as a sort of referendum between an autarchic “Russia-style” authoritarianism and a “Chinese-style” economic liberalism, without questioning the regime itself.
The reality is way more complex. In a nutshell, the principlists’ program was about the “resistance economy”, nominal egalitarianism, variations of “Death to America” and a promise of five million jobs and a deluge of handouts. Voters saw though it.
Rouhani for his part promises that Iran will eventually benefit from the fruits of an “inclusive globalization” (copyright Xi Jinping). It takes time to promote trade and investment, and to boost the middle class while promoting equality. That entails some key reforms inside the system – details of which he prefers to keep secret, for the moment (“I need a vote well over 50% to enact some stuff I have in mind.”) And it entails questioning some key fundamentals of the system as well.
Iranian voters are a fairly sophisticated bunch. Political elites must deliver – otherwise they’re kicked back to obscurity. It’s a delicate balance: even as a sizable majority wants serious, gradually evolving reforms, it also does not want more upheaval. Not after you have endured an Islamic revolution and its turbulent aftermath; the horrendous 8-year Iran-Iraq war; those somersault Ahmadinejad years; and, last but not least, the most draconian sanctions regime in the history of humanity, imposed by the West.
Team Rouhani, and its reformist allies in the Assembly of Experts, will now have a vast sway over who becomes the next Supreme Leader if Khamenei, now 77, dies in office during the new presidential term.
That, in itself, would signal transcendental change. For now, the task is to slowly but surely remodel the system from the inside, and develop Iran as a key node of the coming New Silk Roads Eurasian integration.
As usual, Pepe is very one sided. Iran’s future indeed rides with the BRI because China needs their assistance and resources in its overall plan. But Iran’s tension with the west is not due to the west’s behavior, but due to Iran’s behavior and attitude. While there may be war mongers in Iran and the west, the bulk of people are peace loving and would prefer peace. However, Iran does not prefer peace by its behavior and attitude as a country. Yemen, Syria, Gaza, South America offer up multiple examples as does Iraq, Israel and others. Seeking peace is a two way street that starts with building trust. Iran acts like it is not interested in anything that gets in the way of a return t the glory of Persia. But it should check out Xi Jinping’s brilliant strategy as embodied in the now apparently new achronism BRI.
How can it be possible to lay tragedies of Yemen and Syria at Iran’s door? This is the doing of the US and its proxy KSA. As for Gaza, it is really wild to to somehow claim that Iran, and not Israel, is responsible for the tragedy of the Palestinian people. South America?!
My God, man, which universe do you inhabit?
Art….that is really ridiculous!! America has been the main fomenting nation of death to millions and invasion after illegal invasion in the Middle East – all the while backing Saudi and Israel, two of the most egregious nations on the planet to the hilt! I want whatever you are smoking! Sheesh! Brainwashed much?
Galen Linder Obviously a different one than you. I will accept that excuse for your low information condition.
Don’t smoke… Bad for your health. But I do read lots of news from a variety of sources, including obviously one common with you.
Reformist or not, the neocon Zionists is still determined to Cut off your head because you are so dangerous as the greatest terrorist State according to the neofascist Trump.
I think you’re being one sided here Art. It shows either a poor grasp of history or malice to misinterpret it. Allen Dulles, Sullivan & Cromwell, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Chase Manhattan Bank and the CIA were all very much involved in what defined Iran’s foreign policy towards the west in the following decades, with its 53′ Iranian coup. This has been openly admitted by the CIA (see here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup).
The large bulk of war mongers actually reside in the west, as most of the last large scale wars were dreamed by man sitting in London, Washington and Tel-Aviv. It’s also incorrect on your part to state Iran attitude as not peaceful; as one only need to open a list of the last conflicts involving Iran to confirm this is untrue. The last one was in 1988 when Iraq (under the CIA backed Saddam Hussein) invaded Iran. Please note that Saddam’s involvement with the CIA dates back to 1959 when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi prime minister General Abd al-Karim Qasim. I will not get into the details of how the CIA back-stabbed Saddam, after the US ambassador gave him the go-ahead to invade Kuwait, only to denounce it and create the pretext for the first Gulf War in 1990 (under the guidance of another CIA asset, Bush Sr. – Please read “Family of Secrets” by Ross Baker to further your knowledge in the CIA’s role behind US presidents).
Now if we want to get to the bottom of why Iran is public enemy number one we would have to go further back.
It predates WWI, and is deeply embedded in the history of Zionism. In reality “International Capital” was responsible for both World Wars (the first one to stop the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad so International Capital could maintain/preserve the major Atlantic oil shipping routes) and the second one as a consequence of the first and the major repatriation payments demanded by the Allies from Germany, Hungary and Austria.
WWI was specially pushed by Zionism, so they could get Palestine in turn. The Balfour document is a perfect example of the reward given for their actions behind the scenes. The election of 1912, with Woodrow Wilson was a masterful operation to split the ticket, and then put their man into power. He then gave them what they wanted, especially the Federal Reserve Act. It was the Federal Reserve that then allowed bank money creation to fund America’s entry into WWI, while simultaneously allowing private debts to expand.
Now Iran is therefore an existential enemy of Zion, and as a consequence of the US, as it stops Israeli expansion militarily (Hezbollah), and it has further aligned itself with strategic partnership with both Russia and China. The wailing against Iran is because they are now an unmovable wall that has stopped further expansion of Zion project that began around 1895. (See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Zionist_Congress)
To conclude, all the nations you used as an example of bad behavior by Iran are easily rebutted, as Yemen is very much a KSA war (www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-yemen-military-idUSKBN16Y2NW) with funding by both the US and the UK (See the Trump 480B $ deal, and this http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-civil-war-two-charts-uk-arms-deals-saudi-arabia-air-strikes-bombing-second-anniversary-a7652071.html).
Syria on the other hand was a US, Saudi Arabian, Turkish (Only interested in the Kurdish problem) and Israeli project that converged in multiple points (oil, geopolitics, Israel Greater Project, water, Golan Heights etc.) South America has been a hotbed of foreign powers for the last 50 years, especially by the West and lead by the US.
I’m not even going to into what a mess Israel made out of Gaza.
Just a few humble questions for those that show here knowledge in this topic : In how many wars are involved Iran and in how many are involved the so called "west" ?…..".Iran’s behaviour and attitude" ?.. toward the west ?"…is the west’s peaceful "behaviour" that provoke Iran’s "tension with the west"?…how?…in what sense ?…
I think you’re being one sided here Art. It shows either a poor grasp of history or malice to misinterpret it. Allen Dulles, Sullivan & Cromwell, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Chase Manhattan Bank and the CIA were all very much involved in what defined Iran’s foreign policy towards the west in the following decades, with its 53′ Iranian coup. This has been openly admitted by the CIA (see here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup).
The large bulk of war mongers actually reside in the west, as most of the last large scale wars were dreamed by man sitting in London, Washington and Tel-Aviv. It’s also incorrect on your part to state Iran attitude as not peaceful; as one only need to open a list of the last conflicts involving Iran to confirm this is untrue. The last one was in 1988 when Iraq (under the CIA backed Saddam Hussein) invaded Iran. Please note that Saddam’s involvement with the CIA dates back to 1959 when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi prime minister General Abd al-Karim Qasim. I will not get into the details of how the CIA back-stabbed Saddam, after the US ambassador gave him the go-ahead to invade Kuwait, only to denounce it and create the pretext for the first Gulf War in 1990 (under the guidance of another CIA asset, Bush Sr. – Please read “Family of Secrets” by Ross Baker to further your knowledge in the CIA’s role behind US presidents).
Now if we want to get to the bottom of why Iran is public enemy number one we would have to go further back.
It predates WWI, and is deeply embedded in the history of Zionism. In reality “International Capital” was responsible for both World Wars (the first one to stop the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad so International Capital could maintain/preserve the major Atlantic oil shipping routes) and the second one as a consequence of the first and the major repatriation payments demanded by the Allies from Germany, Hungary and Austria.
WWI was specially pushed by Zionism, so they could get Palestine in turn. The Balfour document is a perfect example of the reward given for their actions behind the scenes. The election of 1912, with Woodrow Wilson was a masterful operation to split the ticket, and then put their man into power. He then gave them what they wanted, especially the Federal Reserve Act. It was the Federal Reserve that then allowed bank money creation to fund America’s entry into WWI, while simultaneously allowing private debts to expand.
Now Iran is therefore an existential enemy of Zion, and as a consequence of the US, as it stops Israeli expansion militarily (Hezbollah), and it has further aligned itself with strategic partnership with both Russia and China. The wailing against Iran is because they are now an unmovable wall that has stopped further expansion of Zion project that began around 1895. (See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Zionist_Congress)
To conclude, all the nations you used as an example of bad behavior by Iran are easily rebutted, as Yemen is very much a KSA war (www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-yemen-military-idUSKBN16Y2NW) with funding by both the US and the UK (See the Trump 480B $ deal, and this http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-civil-war-two-charts-uk-arms-deals-saudi-arabia-air-strikes-bombing-second-anniversary-a7652071.html).
Syria on the other hand was a US, Saudi Arabian, Turkish (Only interested in the Kurdish problem) and Israeli project that converged in multiple points (oil, geopolitics, Israel Greater Project, water, Golan Heights etc.) South America has been a hotbed of foreign powers for the last 50 years, especially by the West and lead by the US.
I’m not even going to into what a mess Israel made out of Gaza.