Iran: 2009's Year of Living Dangerously (Part 1)

A special analysis from EA's Mr Smith:

When Iran entered 2009, most observers thought that the year --- which marked the 30th anniversary of the Revolution that swept away the Shah's regime and the 20th anniversary of "post-Khomeini Iran", the unwieldy political arrangement that emerged in the aftermath of the death of the founding father of the Islamic Republic --- would also see a lacklustre confirmation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second Presidential term.

As Iran exits the year, it is reeling from its worst-ever political crisis, one that has finally undermined the halo of sanctity built over the persona of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the past two decades and has finally witnessed the collapse of the fragile factional equilibrium that held sway for the past decade.

After half a decade of carefully pasteurised electoral lists produced by the Guardian Council, there were serious doubts about the population's appetite for electoral politics. Iranian history, however, always remind us that change is sudden and abrupt rather than gradual and predictable. Conscious of their eroding influence in state affairs and their descent into oblivion in the eyes of public opinion, reformist political leaders were determined to make a last stand, one that had to rely upon the return to the scene of its most prominent figure.

Shortly before the anniversary of the Revolution's triumph, February 11, former President Mohammad Khatami, still loved by the urban middle classes, succumbed to the incessant campaign carried out --- largely through the Internet --- by his youthful supporters. He announced that he would "seriously" enter the Presidential campaign. The declaration seemed to fulfil Khatami's earlier promise that either he or the hitherto obscure Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a darling of Ayatollah Khomeini in the Eighties who had estranged himself from politics ever since the death of his mentor, would join the race.

For reasons unknown, Mousavi did not keep to this informal pact and stand aside for Khatami. Several weeks later, he suddenly announced the end of his political lethargy and his intention to register as a candidate for the 12 June elections. An embarrassed Khatami was forced to withdraw from the race shortly afterwards, with the prospect of three heavyweight reformist candidates --- former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karroubi had long announced his presently in the race --- weakening the reformist chances.

Mousavi's re-entrance into the mainstream was an enigma to many. Notwithstanding his long absence from day-to-day politics, his particularly bad relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei throughout the late 1980, with Mousavi's departure from the scene once he was defeated by the present Supreme Leader in a struggle over the reform of the Constitution, meant that any forced co-habitation with Khamenei would not be a happy one.

After a long Internet-based prologue and the start of campaign meetings in March and April, Iran's presidential race picked up pace about three weeks before June 12. Indeed, it was proving to be different. Suddenly the whole nation's squares were ablaze with incessant debate on the virtues and fallacies of each candidate. Popular participation in hustings and meetings was unprecedented, considerably higher than even Khatami's quasi-mythical victory back in May 1997. When the administration of Tehran's Polytechnic (Amir Kabir University), the nation's most politicised campus, denied Karroubi the use of their premises for a campaign event, the 72 year-old cleric was lifted into the campus for an impromptu sermon within the university mosque. It was there that the slogan "Marg bar Diktator" ("Death to Dictator") re-echoed where it was conceived a generation earlier.

A few days before the elections, another innovation of political campaigning had a lasting effect on the emerging contest. For the first time ever, Iranian television featured US-styled debates between the political candidates. The detached criticism that marked the previous presidential campaigns was replaced by the unearthing of latent tension and hatred.

Anxious to prove his position of defender of the common man against the vicious tentacles of the likes of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad claimed --- in his highly-anticipated debate with Mir-Hossein Mousavi --- that he was the victim of a plot hatched by Rafsanjani and executed by Mousavi and Karroubi. The association of the head of the Assembly of Experts and the two candidates was, however, a clumsy move. Karroubi had fiercely criticised Rafsanjani on many occasions during the past two decades, while Mousavi was anything but an ally of the then-Majlis speaker during the 1980s. It was and still is impossible to gauge the effect of Ahmadinejad's accusation on the population.

The last days before the vote transformed the streets of Tehran and other major cities into a never-ending open-air carnival. At 6 or 7 p.m., acting as though a switch had suddenly turned them on, tens of thousands of people would descend upon the capital's main thoroughfares in cars, on motorcycles, or on foot to campaign for their candidate. The equally-divided crowds of the first few days of campaigning soon developed into large crowds for either Mousavi or Ahmadinejad --- Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei appeared to be lagging behind in the final stages of the campaigning. Rather than being based on distinct electoral programmes, the campaign took the form of a clash of personalities, with voters left to chose the candidate that best embodied their own social position and aspirations. Mousavi's calls for the removal of limits to the "flow of information", his statement that Iran should stop being an enemy of many foreign powers, and, most importantly, his defiant calls against the "lies" and "unaccountability" of Ahmadinejad were decisive in shoring his support for him amongst a vast segment of the urban population.

On the eve of the vote, virtually all analysts and journalists were placing their guess on a run-off between the two major candidates. The exception was the management of the Karroubi-owned Etemade Melli newspaper, who over the course of the last few days before the vote was repeatedly warning observers in private that "things had been arranged to ensure a first-round Ahmadinejad victory". A similar warning was given, before a single vote had been cast, to one of the major international news agencies in Tehran by another source well-placed inside the regime. Etemade Melli devoted most of the front page on the eve of the vote to an article, "We Shall All Remain Awake on Friday Night". It was an implicit reminder of Karroubi's "nap" at 5 a.m. on the night the votes were counted in the first round of 2005, which allegedly cost the cleric the chance to compete in a run-off with Rafsanjani (a run-off that would have precluded any Ahmadinejad Presidency).

June 12 began as a hot, sticky day in Tehran. At the last minute, Mir-Hossein Mousavi reverse his decision to vote together with Rafsanjani and Khatami at Ayatollah Khomeini's residence in Jamaran, North Tehran, and cast his ballot instead at a mosque in Shahr-e Rey, an old and humble area of South Tehran. His smile ended as soon as he took to the podium to deliver a short post-vote speech. In it he claimed, at 10:30 a.m. on Election day, that irregularities were already taking place across the country.

Ahmadinejad voted in Afsariyeh, West Tehran. For the rest of the day, people turned out in droves to cast their votes in all areas of the capital. Turnout was especially strong in middle-class areas whose desertion from the ballot box had helped Ahmadinejad become Mayor of Tehran in 2003 and President in 2005.

As nightfall descended, the news was not quite what was expected. Reformist supporters had already gathered outside the Interior Ministry, and Mousavi emerged for a press conference, during which he dared to claim that he was the victor of the bitterly-fought contest, and that any other result would be the product of fraud.

As the night wore on, the official returns would not show a Mousavi victory. Indeed, they would not even point to the run-off predicted by almost all observers. Not only would the gap between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad widen, the President would easily hurdle the 50 percent required for a first-round victory. To the shock and dismay of the reformist supporters and voters, Ahmadinejad was declared the winner on 13 June.

Comments

[Catherine]

Good summary. I was there from 1 to 13 June (in Tehran as well as many small towns/cities/villages in northwest and northern Caspian), and it's true that the televised debates had a galvanising effect on people who hithertoe weren't involved in the election, and even helped change peoples' preferences to another candidate. It was something absolutely unheard of - candidates slinging mud at each other and accusing other sacred cows in the political establishment (and their relatives) of crimes and in particular of corruption - all live on TV. We watched several debates with Iranian hotel staff and guests and also once with the family of a friend, and people were totally riveted. After AN's accusation of corruption against Rafsanjani and his family there was basically no other topic of conversation the following day. People were actually more outraged at the fact that An had openly made the accusation on TV than about whether it was true or false. After this point we began to see an increase in in voter preference for Mousavi.