Arash Azizi: “Iran has taken a turn that hardly anyone could have seen coming a few short months ago. For years, Iran’s reformist faction has languished in the political wilderness, banished there by hard-liners more aligned with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and by a disillusioned electorate convinced that its votes did not matter. Few imagined this year that the reformists were about to make a comeback and elect a president for the first time since 2001. Yet on July 5, this is precisely what happened.
“Masud Pezeshkian, a physician and longtime member of Parliament, defeated the ultra-hard-liner Saeed Jalili in a runoff with 54.8 percent of the vote. Turnout was extraordinarily low in the first round and only somewhat higher in the second, according to the official numbers—meaning that Pezeshkian will become president with a smaller share of eligible voters than any other president in the history of the Islamic Republic. For many of those who did come out, the main motivation was not love for Pezeshkian, but fear of his rival.
“In effect, Iranian citizens sent two negative messages this election week: Those who didn’t vote demonstrated their rejection of the regime and its uninspiring choices. Those who did vote said no to Jalili, who represented the hard core of the regime and its extremist agenda.
“Khamenei could have avoided this outcome by simply not allowing Pezeshkian to run. The Guardian Council, an unelected body, vets all candidates for office and is ultimately loyal to the supreme leader. So why did Khamenei allow this election to become a binary choice pitting Jalili, whose vision dovetails with his own, against a representative of the reformist faction, which has proved more popular time and again?”
I don’t buy it. As the SS says, he would not have allowed the reformer to run. Sources outside of Iran seem to generally agree that this guy is a reformer in name only, that he’s actually as hardline as the rest of them.
Necessary_Studio1975 on
Iran is inevitably going to get occupied by the US in the future so it doesn’t really matter none of this does.
3 Comments
Arash Azizi: “Iran has taken a turn that hardly anyone could have seen coming a few short months ago. For years, Iran’s reformist faction has languished in the political wilderness, banished there by hard-liners more aligned with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and by a disillusioned electorate convinced that its votes did not matter. Few imagined this year that the reformists were about to make a comeback and elect a president for the first time since 2001. Yet on July 5, this is precisely what happened.
“Masud Pezeshkian, a physician and longtime member of Parliament, defeated the ultra-hard-liner Saeed Jalili in a runoff with 54.8 percent of the vote. Turnout was extraordinarily low in the first round and only somewhat higher in the second, according to the official numbers—meaning that Pezeshkian will become president with a smaller share of eligible voters than any other president in the history of the Islamic Republic. For many of those who did come out, the main motivation was not love for Pezeshkian, but fear of his rival.
“In effect, Iranian citizens sent two negative messages this election week: Those who didn’t vote demonstrated their rejection of the regime and its uninspiring choices. Those who did vote said no to Jalili, who represented the hard core of the regime and its extremist agenda.
“Khamenei could have avoided this outcome by simply not allowing Pezeshkian to run. The Guardian Council, an unelected body, vets all candidates for office and is ultimately loyal to the supreme leader. So why did Khamenei allow this election to become a binary choice pitting Jalili, whose vision dovetails with his own, against a representative of the reformist faction, which has proved more popular time and again?”
Read more here: [~https://theatln.tc/o4uaLH5q~](https://theatln.tc/o4uaLH5q)
I don’t buy it. As the SS says, he would not have allowed the reformer to run. Sources outside of Iran seem to generally agree that this guy is a reformer in name only, that he’s actually as hardline as the rest of them.
Iran is inevitably going to get occupied by the US in the future so it doesn’t really matter none of this does.