Politico: Iran’s leadership rigs an election — and still loses

The orchestrated vote now looks like a flop in terms of bolstering the regime’s legitimacy, however, thanks to the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history and growing concern that the government played down the scale of a coronavirus outbreak rather than risk empty polling stations. Coronavirus has now killed eight people in Iran, the biggest death toll outside China. [...]

Since Friday night, Tehran has dithered over releasing even the “official” turnout figure in the vote for the 290-seat assembly, but Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli on Sunday put it at a record low of just under 43 percent. This is way beneath 62 percent in 2016 and the 69 percent who turned out in the vote of 2000, which proved a big win for the reformist camp of President Mohammad Khatami. (Turnout in the last presidential election in 2017, when Hassan Rouhani beat the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, was 73 percent.) [...]

In the aftermath of the vote, Iran suddenly announced a sweeping crackdown to try to stop the spread of the disease. It announced the closure of schools, universities, cultural centers and cinemas. Several sports fixtures will be canceled while several big sports matches will be played without spectators. Even a Tehran district mayor tested positive for the disease. Turkey, Pakistan, Armenia and Afghanistan have closed their borders with Iran, or limited transport.

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The Conversation: Iran’s leader is losing his grasp on power. Does this mean diplomacy is doomed?

This was Rouhani’s greatest achievement and riskiest gamble. He faced the ire of hard-liners in Iran who continue to have a formidable presence in the parliament, as well as the security and judicial system.

They accused Rouhani of selling out Iranian sovereignty and betraying the ideals of the Islamic revolution by scaling back Iran’s nuclear program and subjecting it to an unprecedented international monitoring regime. [...]

This realisation has seriously undermined Rouhani, who appears to have adopted the language and posture of the hard-liners in relation to the US. It is unclear if this can save him in office, or embolden his critics who seem to be gaining significant momentum. [...]

Iran’s recent breaches on uranium enrichment and stockpiles were incremental steps to exert pressure on European leaders to adhere to their promises of sanctions relief. This strategy was predicated on the assumption that Europe has more to lose with the collapse of JCPOA than a rift with the United States. It can only be described as a desperate move, showing that Rouhani is fast running out of options.

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Associated Press: Analysis: Iran supreme leader comments signal strategy shift

Since first publicly accepting the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, Khamenei issued a warning not to trust the U.S. A letter he sent to Rouhani in October 2015 said the deal had “numerous ambiguities and structural weaknesses that could inflict big damage on the present and the future of the country.” [...]

Their immediate ouster, however, is unlikely. Khamenei had similarly worsening relations with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformist President Mohammad Khatami in their second terms. Zarif himself publicly tendered his resignation in February after not attending a surprise meeting in Tehran between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Khamenei, only later to agree to stay on. [...]

Analysts believe Iran in part may be playing for time, waiting to see if Trump will be re-elected in 2020. Rouhani’s own term runs out in 2021, allowing Khamenei to swap out “discredited negotiators” like Zarif, said Mehdi Khalaji, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is Shiite theologian by training, Khamenei also could send negotiators from the Guard, rather than from the presidency, to allow them to negotiate on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which the paramilitary force controls.

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Foreign Policy: Iran’s Next Supreme Leader Is Dead

Most Iranians remember Shahroudi as the head of the country’s notorious judiciary between 1999 and 2009, a period spanning Mohammad Khatami and then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s diametrically opposed governments. During this time, Shahroudi presided over a witch hunt against reformist parliamentarians and newspapers, students and intellectuals, human rights activists and, at the end of his tenure, the pro-reformist Green Movement protesting against the fraudulent elections that handed Ahmadinejad a second term. [...]

On the other hand, Shahroudi was also credited with introducing some reforms, including reinstituting the separation between judges and prosecutors abolished by his predecessor Mohammad Yazdi, suspending stoning as capital punishment, and proposing a bill granting more legal protection to minors. Around the time of his death, reformist-leaning newspapers such as Shahrvand depicted him as an “iconoclast judge of judges” (qazi ol-qazat-e sonnat-shekan), and official government media outlets including the Islamic Republic News Agency-owned Iran called him “progressive.” [...]

Shahroudi, who like Khomeini and Khamenei wore the black turban marking him as a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, didn’t just possess the required religious scholarship to become supreme leader, the sort that placed one in high standing in Tehran and Qom’s politically charged environment, if not in Najaf. Instead, his unique selling point as potential supreme leader lay as much in his cross-factional appeal among the Iranian establishment as in the continuity he represented—two assets critical to Iran’s future political stability. Unlike Khamenei and many hard-liners, Shahroudi maintained reasonably good ties with all four of Iran’s existing factions: conservatives, neoconservatives, moderate conservatives, and reformists. This was reflected in his 2011 appointment to head a custom-created, five-man body known clunkily as the Supreme Council for Dispute Resolution and Regulation of Relations Among the Three Branches of Government, a response to the spiraling tiffs between then-President Ahmadinejad and an increasingly irate parliament. While an undisputed conservative of the cloth, he was also open enough to earn the grudging respect of the conservatives’ rivals. [...]

But the hard-liners’ longtime stranglehold on the key levers of military, judicial, media, and clerical power will now leave little room for Iran’s reformists and moderates, among them current President Hassan Rouhani, to weigh in on the succession process. Shahroudi’s death thus paves the way for hard-line candidates, notably from the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, the Assembly of Experts, and the judiciary’s top ranks. Barring the 91-year-old ultraconservative head of both the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts, Ahmad Jannati, two other candidates stand out: outgoing judiciary chief and newly appointed Expediency Council head Sadeq Larijani and, of late, Ebrahim Raisi—the current custodian of Mashhad’s powerful Astan Quds Razavi foundation, a 2017 presidential contender, and the rumored next chief of judiciary. Compared to Shahroudi, both clerics have far less patience for their moderate and reformist rivals, who in turn are less likely to accept them in Khamenei’s wake.

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Haaretz: Does Iran Really Want to Destroy Israel?

Not all Iranian analysts bought this explanation. The Iranian daily Kayhan accused Zarif of distorting Khomeini’s words and of departing from the goals of the Islamic revolution, which, the paper said, includes the destruction of Israel. Other commentators quoted other Iranian leaders who spoke of Israel as a cancer that must be destroyed and Khamenei’s statement from 2012 that Iran would assist any country or group that would fight the Zionist state. [...]

The moods, criticism of the regime or political and diplomatic analyses published in Iran, which do not follow in the spirit of official declarations, hardly ever reach the public in Israel. “We read the Israeli newspapers translated into English. We know who the Israeli politicians are, we follow the Netanyahu investigations and try to understand Israeli society,” an Iranian journalist wrote Haaretz, communication with whom is by roundabout emails. But in Israel, only a handful of scholars and intelligence people read the Iranian newspapers, although some of the important ones appear online in English or Arabic. [...]

Not all Iranians are busy all day long with nuclear bombs, missiles, Israel, Hezbollah or sanctions. Since November, the musical “Les Miserables” has filled the theaters in Tehran every day of the week, although the cost of a ticket – $20 – is prohibitive for most Iranians. The actresses are not permitted to uncover their hair, their singing is accompanied by background voices so they are not singing solo, which is against the law. But the director, Hossein Parsaee, has seen to impressive lighting, artificial snow and a live orchestra. He is even proud of the fact that Khamenei has given his stamp of approval to the show when he said: “Victor Hugo’s book is wonderful. A book about love and compassion.”

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Foreign Policy: Iran and the United States Can be Friends

Top figures such as Rouhani or Zarif who dare question this orthodoxy face severe censure from inside the regime. When Rouhani was in New York in September to attend the United Nations General Assembly, his entourage went to great lengths to avoid even an accidental meeting between Rouhani and Trump. It was likewise clear from Rouhani’s Sept. 25 U.N. speech that he was fixed on one thing only: reassuring his hard-line rivals in Tehran that he had no intention of courting an American president whose administration has put forward a list of 12 concessions Tehran would have to make before sanctions can be removed. [...]

Rouhani—understanding both pressures—is looking for ways to take the America issue off the table. Rather than blaming the United States for the poor state of relations between the two countries, he has called on Trump not to be misled by the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Iranian opposition in exile. The subtext is clear: Third-party actors are spoiling relations between Tehran and Washington. It might seem like a cop-out, and it is, but it is also an overture of sorts. In fact, Rouhani and other first-generation Islamist revolutionary leaders who are guilty of having deliberately manufactured an American boogeyman are best placed to start looking for ways to break this spell. [...]

But one week later, it appears that all the goodwill was lost. Pro-Khomeini militiamen returned to the U.S. Embassy not as the rescuers, but now joining forces with the assailants. The attack had little to do with dogma; if the presence of the United States in Tehran was doctrinally anathema, it makes little sense that the Islamists would have waited almost 10 months after the shah had left Iran before storming, and this time holding on to, the U.S. Embassy. Rather than ideology, it was growing competition for power in Tehran that paved the way for this event. [...]

At the time, three benefits stood out. First, the hostage crisis predictably led to the resignation and later marginalization of the “liberal” Islamists who surrounded Bazargan and were more loyal to him than the supreme leader. Second, the seizure suddenly put the United States on the defensive and forced it to reckon with Khomeini as the Shah’s only true successor. Third, the bulk of the radical leftist youth initially supported the take-over of the embassy, allowing Khomeini to peel off support from rival revolutionary factions.

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Jacobin Magazine: Sadr, Sectarianism, and a Popular Alternative

The victory of Sadr’s “March for Reforms” alliance should be read in two ways. First, Iraqis have expressed their disgust at the country’s sectarian political system, social inequalities, and decrepit public services. According to the Iraqi government, absolute poverty levels reached 22.5 percent of the total population in 2014. Other estimates put the number even higher: some claim that nearly 10 million Iraqis, or well over a quarter of the country, live in abject poverty.

The second major reason for Sairoun’s first-place finish is discontent with the sectarian ruling class, an outgrowth of the US and British-led invasion. The sectarian ruling class is composed of all the various heads of ethnic or sectarian-based political movements in the country. The Shi’a fraction of the political and economic elite has been by far the dominating actor since 2003, gaining nearly absolute control over the state’s institutions and resources. This isn’t to say that Iraqi Shi’a are a privileged community — the vast majority have not benefited economically from their leaders’ political dominance and have suffered from the corruption and dysfunction of the state public services. [...]

Still, an electoral alliance between the various protest camps wasn’t a forgone conclusion. Iraqi Communist Party secretary-general Raid Jahid Fahmi said that in preparation for the elections, his party and the Sadrists agreed to focus on the issues that unite them — fighting unemployment and corruption, opposing foreign influences in Iraq — rather than those that don’t: namely, women’s rights and secularism. The Sadrists, for example, have not mobilized against the “Jaafari law,” which would have allowed women as young as nine to marry. [...]

In its election program, Sairoun emphasized anti-terrorism, anti-corruption, national reconciliation and unity, a new electoral law, improved governance, and guaranteed access to human and social rights (education, social security, decent living standards, and housing). The program was short on specifics, remaining vague about how to fight corruption or political sectarianism, the militarization of society, or regressive economic policies.

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The New York Times: Trump Bets Sanctions Will Force Iran to Bargain. There’s No Plan B.

Beyond betting that Iran’s leaders will return to the negotiating table, and seek a better deal, once they feel the sanctions’ bite, the president appeared to acknowledge that he has no Plan B for dealing with Tehran. [...]

On Wednesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ultimately approved the terms of the 2015 deal, declared that his country will need 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity for its power grid. He did not explicitly suggest resuming uranium enrichment, but for years Iran insisted that its nuclear program was for civilian use — even though it was already buying fuel from Russia to power its one major reactor.

After Mr. Trump announced his decision, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany on Tuesday reaffirmed their support for a United Nations Security Council resolution that formally endorsed the accord. The European leaders asserted that the resolution was the applicable international law governing the Iranian nuclear problem — a way of suggesting that the United States is the first country to violate the accord.

They also noted that Mr. Trump’s own intelligence officials — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when he was serving as C.I.A. director — have said he saw no evidence that Iran had violated the deal.

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Deutsche Welle: Half of Iran wants to drop headscarf laws: government report

The government of Iran published a three-year old study on Sunday night illustrating growing public distaste for the obligatory hijab just days after police confirmed that dozens of women had been arrested as protests against mandatory Islamic head covering gained momentum.

The study compares data from 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2014 — and illustrates the staggering decline in support for the legal restrictions on women's clothing, one of the major changes pushed during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. [...]

Another interesting data point shows the drop in support for even more restrictive religious clothing. In 2006, 54 percent of those questioned thought that women should wear a chador, a garment that wraps around the entire body, revealing only the face. By 2014, however, that number had dropped to 35 percent. [...]

While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the protests on foreign agitators, Rouhani instead insisted that the government listen to what the demonstrators had to say.

Tehran's chief prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri has similarly blamed the anti-hijab protests on influence from enemy agents.

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Haaretz: For Once, Netanyahu Is Rooting for Iranian President Rohani

Netanyahu tried hard to convince the world that Rohani was just a more user-friendly face for the same radical regime, calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But the international community was eager to engage with Iran and was simply relieved to be facing Rohani and his silver-tongued foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Yet now, after trying to brand Rohani and his circle as an integral part of the regime, no different or better than the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Netanyahu – at least in private – has got to be rooting for Rohani.

Over the last few days, Israel has been running a concerted campaign against Iran’s alleged plan to manufacture and upgrade missiles on Lebanese soil. It began on Sunday with a highly irregular article, written by IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis and published on Lebanese opposition websites, claiming that “Lebanon is turning into one big missile factory. ... Iran and Hezbollah are currently trying to build a precision missile factory.” It continued on Monday with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman warning in the Knesset that “we know the sites for building and upgrading missiles in Lebanon, and we know the people who are involved in the manufacture.” [...]

Now, thanks to Lieberman, the threat level has become personal, with Israel basically saying that if it so chooses, it can assassinate Iranians involved in missile production. And Netanyahu has upped the stakes, saying that if necessary Israel will attack. Lieberman, however, admitted that the last thing he wants “is to get into a third Lebanon war.” And here at least he was telling the truth: Neither him nor Netanyahu believe it would be in Israel’s interest to embark on another all-out war to dislodge Hezbollah, which is why they are pinning their hopes on Rohani. 

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The Atlantic: The Lessons of Iran's Protests

There are several reasons Iran’s economy hasn’t taken off in the way Rouhani had promised. For one, uncertainty over the fate of the nuclear agreement in the United States has given pause to U.S. companies that might otherwise want to invest in Iran; European companies are nervous that if the U.S. withdraws from the agreement, U.S. law will then target international companies that invest in Iran. The Trump administration maintains the agreement is deeply flawed, and that it does not address many concerns about Iran’s missile program, its support for militant groups, its human-rights record, and its military adventurism in Yemen, Syria, and other places—actions the U.S. says diverts money away from the Iranian public. Supporters of the nuclear agreement say the accord was not meant to address those issues. They say sanctions against Iran for those activities remain in place.

But perhaps more important than the uncertainty over the agreement are Iran’s own demographics. Half of all Iranians are under the age of 30. More people are entering the workforce each year than jobs exist or are being created. This all but ensures that a country with near universal literacy—with no gender disparity—will continue to have double-digit unemployment for the foreseeable future. [...]

The protests were able to spread because of, among other things, the penetration of the smartphone—more than 40 percent of Iranian households have access to at least one—which enabled Iranians to use messaging apps to spread the word about the demonstrations. Although the protests spread to Tehran, the capital, they never really took root there. They have also mostly fizzled out elsewhere largely because of the government crackdown. These demonstrations did not come close to the scale of the pro-democracy protests of 2009 that were crushed by the regime. They had no obvious leaders and no clear demands and, as Barbara Slavin,  director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, wrote, they came “largely from the regime’s working-class base, not the effete wealthy of north Tehran. They are demanding cheaper food, more jobs and less government corruption.” [...]

This is ultimately what could imperil the Iranian regime. Rouhani’s economic promises have yet to materialize. This gives his government hard-line critics ammunition. The protests, as Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in Politico, have weakened the president. Khamenei and the hardliners view Rouhani and his supporters, he wrote, as harbingers of popular insurrection. Come the next election, in 2021, Khamenei, who has ultimate say over who can run for office, might grant his imprimatur only to hard-line candidates, leading to another period of political repression and economic hardship. All this as Iran’s population continues to grow, with few new jobs, and more international isolation.

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Jacobin Magazine: Behind the Iran Protests

Iran’s rate of inflation has fluctuated immensely in the past decade, and now stands at 17 percent. Scandals involving corrupt politicians and businessmen embezzling millions of dollars have erupted over and over again, angering citizens who are living month to month. Although Iran has a generally low rate of poverty, 4.7 percent in 2016-17, unemployment, particularly for youth and women, is above 30 percent. This, coupled with unfulfilled economic expectations — especially regarding the foreign investments that were supposed to flow after the signing of the Iran nuclear deal — were a powder keg. Rouhani and his administration hinged their strategy to improve the economy on sanctions relief and European investment in the country. Given Donald Trump’s promise to “rip up the nuclear deal,” foreign banks are now reticent to fund investment in Iran, and European companies are wary of entering a market that may be sanctioned further by the US Treasury.  [...]

It’s hard to overstate the factionalism of Iranian politics. Long a feature of the Islamic Republic, differing factions within the Islamic Republic have often publicly fought and debated one another on policies and directions for the country. During Rouhani’s terms as president, the hard-line elements in the regime have attempted to create obstacles for him and his administration at every turn. Especially since their embarrassing loss in the May presidential elections, hard-liners have attacked Rouhani at every opportunity. For his part, Rouhani has attempted to curtail the economic power of hard-line institutions and has sought to push the Revolutionary Guards out of politics, with little success.

In the middle of this fight, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made a surprise comeback. In November 2017, Ahmadinejad started issuing provocative statements against corruption and began to ask why, if the country’s money belonged to the people, the government was targeting funding for the people’s welfare. Using social media as his main tool of communication, Ahmadinejad issued threats against Iran’s judiciary, challenged Iran’s supreme leader by not backing down when asked to, and revived the populist message of his presidency, attacking the rich and corrupt. On Wednesday, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that “a former leader of the country” had provoked people to protest. Some in Iran are now reporting that Ahmadinejad is being investigated.

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Foreign Affairs: When Is It Time to End Sanctions Programs?

Sanctions have become popular with U.S. policymakers in recent years thanks to their success in changing Iran’s behavior. First implemented against Iran in 1996 but significantly stepped up between 2010 and 2012, U.S. sanctions helped shrink GDP by nine percent between 2012 and 2014, depress the value of its currency, and deepen its unemployment rate. Those effects convinced Tehran to enter into negotiations over its nuclear enrichment program. Successes such as this have encouraged U.S. officials to use so-called smart sanctions—or highly targeted sanctions programs against specific individuals, entities, and transactions as opposed to broader, less-focused programs—which leverage the United States’ primacy in the global financial system to shut down targets’ ability to do business. The most recent U.S. programs build on this success. Each, however, fails to offer a road map for its own end, a potentially fatal flaw.

Without clear goals, the United States risks enshrining sanctions indefinitely and making negotiations fruitless. The sanctions imposed on Russia in August 2017 are the worst among the new programs in this respect. Lawmakers’ desire to block President Donald Trump from unilaterally lifting the sanctions led them to create checks on the executive branch’s sanctioning authority. The new legislation codified into statute previous White House-created executive orders—including restrictions on the country’s energy, financial services, and munitions sectors—from 2014, in response to the Ukraine conflict, and from the end of 2016, in response to malicious Russian cyber activity. This codification means that Congress, not the president, will have the ultimate power to repeal the measures. The legislation also instituted a review process that allows Congress to reject even minor changes to the sanctions. [...]

Political considerations often complicate plans to lift sanctions. U.S. officials invariably call for further economic pressure during crises—for example, after a North Korean missile launch—without thinking about how to eventually ease that pressure down the line. In these situations, politicians present an aggressive sanctions posture to confront the enemy and to appeal to constituents demanding a strong response but underplay planning for the end of sanctions for fear of signaling weakness or lack of resolve. Policymakers also must be disciplined in distinguishing the conditions the United States’ targets must meet for Washington to lift sanctions. If Russia complies with the Minsk agreements, for example, U.S. policymakers should lift the sanctions, regardless of the country’s continued human rights abuses. And more missile tests by Iran should not be not a basis to reimpose sanctions meant for its nuclear program.

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Al Jazeera: The energy factor in the GCC crisis

As several experts have previously noted, the tension arose briefly after the Riyadh Summit, when US President Donald Trump assured Saudi Arabia of his commitment to the region in the face of the "Iranian threat". The US' hope of forging an impenetrable GCC shield against Iran fails to appreciate the centrality of the energy question and exhibits a narrow sightedness based on the pursuit of self-interest. It is, therefore, predestined to fail.

Similarly, the ensuing Saudi-led blockade against Qatar is destined to eventually subside and give way to normalised relations in spite of the current tension. As a sign, perhaps, that energy trumps political antagonism, it is noteworthy that shortly after the rift, Qatar announced it would not disrupt liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which runs through the Dolphin pipeline. [...]

On the Qatari side of the field, its discovery in 1971, which coincided with the state's year of independence, has been crucial for state building and sovereignty recognition. It is no wonder, then, that in addition to being the single most important contributor to the country's GDP, natural gas has also indirectly driven many foreign policy choices for the small state even where monetary returns are not directly involved. This includes foreign aid, mediation and education initiatives, to name but a few. [...]

In 1996, Qatar sought to export its natural gas to neighbouring GCC countries. However, the project faced numerous obstacles pertaining to pricing, transit rights and border disputes. This cemented the view that Qatar should look beyond its neighbourhood for export markets, especially as prices were more lucrative on the international market. As a result, the sale of natural gas to key international players such as the UK, China, India and Japan has inexorably linked customers' energy security to the stability of Qatar.

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Politico: Trump allies push White House to consider regime change in Tehran

“The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who speaks regularly with White House officials about foreign policy. “I don’t see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism,” he added.

Cotton advocated a combination of economic, diplomatic and covert actions to pressure Tehran’s government and “support internal domestic dissent” in the country. He noted that Iran has numerous minority ethnic groups, including Arabs, Turkmen and Balochs who “aren’t enthusiastic about living in a Persian Shiite despotism.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to endorse subverting the Iranian regime during recent testimony about the State Department’s budget when Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked the diplomat whether the Trump administration supports “a philosophy of regime change” in Iran. [...]

National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton said that manipulating Iran’s internal politics is not currently a U.S. goal — nor among the “objectives” set in the initial stage of the White House’s routine Iran policy review. “An explicit affirmation of regime change in Iran as a policy is not really on the table,” Anton said. [...]

As a member of Congress, Trump’s CIA director, Mike Pompeo, last year publicly called for congressional action to “change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.” And Derek Harvey, the Trump National Security Council’s director for Middle East affairs, told an audience at the conservative Hudson Institute in August 2015 that the Obama administration’s hope of working with moderates to steer Iran in a friendlier direction was a “misread” of “the nature and character of the regime,” whose structure he said he has carefully studied.

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The Economist: The triumph of Iran’s liberals

Defeat is growing familiar to the hardliners. The last time they won was in the parliamentary election of 2012, and that they owed to a mass boycott by reformists. This time the hardliners campaigned particularly hard because they sensed they were not only picking a president, but also, perhaps, the next supreme leader (a more powerful post). The incumbent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 77. This presidential election may be his last. Formally, the Assembly of Experts selects a successor from among its 88 Muslim scholars. But the last time it did so, in 1989, it picked the then president. “The vote isn’t just about four years of presidency,” says a confidant of Mr Khamenei. “It’s about Iran’s future for 40 years.” Mr Khamenei is said to favour Mr Raisi as his successor; this will be harder to pull off following his drubbing. [...]

Can Mr Rouhani now fulfil his promises? Within hours of his victory, reformists whom the authorities had detained in the run-up to the election were released. His advisers also predict that he will appoint his first female minister, and perhaps even the Islamic Republic’s first-ever Sunni one. More radical change as well, they say, could be coming. Certainly, Mr Khamenei might have been happier had Mr Rouhani won by a less convincing margin.

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Politico: Iran’s president isn’t a reformer. He’s an enabler

In one of his rallies, Rouhani assailed his conservative rival Ibrahim Raisi by stressing that “the people will say no to those who over the course of 38 years only executed and jailed.” Here Rouhani was obliquely referring to one of the regime’s most contentious acts. In the summer of 1988, the aging founding leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in one last act of vengeance against his secular detractors, ordered the mass execution of political prisoners. The judiciary was to discharge its obligations and established a panel of judges soon knows as the “Death Commission” to carry out the killings. Raisi first came to national attention as member of that commission, which put to death thousands of prisoners in short order. Most of the executed were denied a proper burial and had their bodies dumped in mass and undisclosed graves. In the Islamic Republic’s cruel lexicon, these were called “cemeteries for the dammed.”

This was Raisi’s justice, but the burden was not his alone. The prison genocide was overseen by two officials — the then-president of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and the speaker of the parliament, the late Hashemi Rafsanjani. As a member of parliament at that time, Rouhani was well aware of what was taking place in the prisons. He chose silence. For the past three decades, the regime has sought to whitewash its past by making it taboo to publicly discuss this episode. Still, rumors abound, and that demented summer is enshrined in the collective memory. By invoking that episode, Rouhani challenged the core legitimacy of a theocratic state that insists on its religious pedigree and its concern for dispensing justice. Khamenei and the ruling elite who are implicated in that massacre are unlikely to easily forgive their newly reelected president for his opportunism. Not only must Rouhani have been aware of that episode, but his political ally and current minister of justice, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, was one of the more aggressive judges on the Death Commission. [...]

So it would be inaccurate to call Rouhani a reformist. He has always been part of a pragmatic cohort of Iranian leaders attracted to the so-called China model of offering citizens economic rewards in exchange for political passivity. During his campaign, he hinted at better times to come by claiming that he would succeed in lifting all the remaining sanctions on Iran. This is impossible, given Iran’s penchant toward terrorism, its human rights abuses and its imperial ravaging of the Middle East. The fact is that Iran has never been able to emulate China’s economic trajectory. A state drowning in corruption, with a history of mismanagement, Iran has always been plagued by the twin forces of inflation and unemployment. It is hard to see how the regime can meet the basic financial demands of its people as it insists on spending vast sums sustaining the Assad dynasty in Syria and menacing Sunni monarchy.

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Haaretz: It’s the West’s Turn Now That Rohani Has Won in Iran

No less important is the voters’ message to the conservative elites, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guard and the justice system, which must translate the people’s choice into a political and foreign-policy strategy. For them, the main question is how to brand their failure. Did the public choose Rohani because of the 2015 nuclear agreement with the big powers, which the supreme leader also supported, or was Rohani elected to advance human rights, an issue on which he clashed with the conservatives? [...]

An Iranian president must constantly negotiate with his country’s parliament, military and ideological and economic elites. He can form coalitions to advance his cause and must be able to look the supreme leader in the eye. Rohani has shown an impressive ability in most areas, and considering the broad support he won in the election, Khamenei is the one who has to prove he isn’t acting against the people’s will; that is, sabotaging Rohani’s initiatives. [...]

Now it’s the West’s and especially Europe’s turn to make Iran a diplomatic and economic partner and face up to Trump’s brutal policy that speaks in the language of sanctions. Iran will remain a suspect state and be examined under a microscope. But now that most Iranians have declared their intentions, it’s time to rethink the paradigm that has shaped the world’s policy toward the country.

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The Washington Post: Iran’s president faces a tough fight for reelection

Nevertheless, the election campaign in Iran is exposing curious divisions. In televised debates, Rouhani has sparred with his more hard-line rivals, deeming them “extremists.” He has accused Iran's influential Revolutionary Guard Corps of attempting to sabotage the 2015 nuclear deal signed with world powers. And, at his rallies, Rouhani's supporters have chanted for the release of the country's two most prominent reformist leaders, who remain under house arrest. [...]

Rouhani, a former cleric who is hardly a reformist himself, surged to power in 2013 with the support of voters eager for a moderate leader who could lead Iran away from the legacy of his firebrand predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani sought to bring Iran out from its deepening isolation with the nuclear deal, which imposed strict curbs on the country's nuclear capabilities in return for an easing of sanctions. But sluggish economic growth has cooled enthusiasm for his government. [...]

Rouhani's closest challenger, Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric who runs one of Iran's holiest shrines, has seized on widespread frustrations over an economy in recession. Not unlike Ahmadinejad in a previous era, Raisi has campaigned on a platform of populist nationalism — a “Make Iran Great Again” agenda, if you will — promising to triple handouts to the poor and create 1.5 million jobs while also taking a more confrontational stand against the West. Another hard-line candidate, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said 5 million jobs would be created under his watch.

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Al Jazeera: Iran's presidential election puts populism to the test

As with the first time he ran, in 2013, Rouhani, a "moderate", is battling "hardline conservatives", Judge Ebrahim Raisi (protegee of the Supreme Leader), and military heavyweight Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the current mayor of Tehran. [...]

Today, another label has slipped in quietly to describe Rouhani's rivals: Populists. However, unlike in the West, where populism has been used in relation to US President Donald Trump, French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen or Italian Beppe Grillo, in Iran the populists aren't overturning the establishment; they are the establishment. It's Rouhani, the reformist, the liberal internationalist, who represents the opposition. [...]

Despite Rouhani's record of raising GDP growth to 7 percent, and rescuing the economy from falling into hyperinflation as a result of Ahmadinejad's ill-managed statist policies (today, according to the IMF, inflation is around 9.2 percent), Qalibaf and Raisi accuse him of failing to deliver the promised rewards of sanctions relief.  [...]

Although touted at the time as a "win-win", the nuclear deal with its accompanying sanctions relief has lost its lustre in Iran. Rouhani's rivals accuse him of signing away Iran's sovereign rights and appeasing the West. It is time, say both Raisi and Qalibaf, to stop compromising and to start pursuing a foreign policy that protects Iran's interests and prestige. Neither has officially rejected the JCPOA, but they condemn Rouhani for succumbing to US and European duplicity. International banks, they point out, still fear US fines if they offer Iran financing, the US Congress is plotting further sanctions in response to Iran's missile tests - even though they're not precluded by the JCPOA, and Trump's administration is cozying up to Iran's biggest rival, Saudi Arabia, as Washington has put "Iran on notice" while it reviews US policy towards Tehran.

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