03.03.2016

Iran’s Elections : Winners and Losers

Yassamine Mather analyses the results of elections to the majles and Council of Experts

‘Reformists’ and ‘moderate conservatives’ have made major gains in Iran’s parliamentary elections, according to results published by Iran’s ministry of interior.

In the elections for the Council of Experts, whose main task in the next period will ironically be to nominate Iran’s next supreme leader - in other words, the country’s next dictator - ‘reformists’ around Hashemi Rafsanjani and president Hassan Rowhani made major gains. Just as significantly, of the three main conservative figures in the Council of Experts targeted by the ‘reformists’ in Tehran, two influential ayatollahs lost their seats, while the third, Ahmad Jannati, was relegated to bottom of those elected. Conservatives have lost their dominant position in this all-important council and the elections will make some difference to the politics of the country. However, it should be noted that, even by the standards of a number of sham polls worldwide, these were far from free.

The government claims that 55 million of Iran’s 80 million people were eligible to vote and, according to the ministry of interior, some 60% did so on Friday February 26. The turnout was higher than expected mainly because ‘reformist’ leaders tried to make this a referendum against the more conservative factions of the regime. However, in the capital the turnout was less than 50%.

Of the 12,000 people who registered to run for office, the nominations of 5,200, mostly ‘reformists’, were rejected by the Guardian Council. The GC was carrying out its right, laid down in article 99 of the constitution, to apply “approbation supervision”: the right to judge the ‘suitability’ of candidates. Under this provision every nomination is vetted and both secular candidates and ‘reformists’, including ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s own grandson, were barred from standing.

It is as if in the UK a body composed of representatives of the monarch and the Church of England plus civil servants routinely barred candidates on the basis of their politics (too liberal, too leftwing) or their personal lifestyle (divorced women, those who drink too much or posted jokes on social media …) this would leave a number of very boring rightwing conservatives (both capital and small C), including a good number of Blairites and maybe a few Lib Dems.

No illusions

This raises the question, why did so many Iranians participate in the elections, given the limited choices available?

The answer is clear. Iranians look across the country’s borders to the devastated ‘failed states’ of Iraq and Syria. They note what has happened in Libya. The choices they made reflect the desperate situation in the region, where a choice between corrupt, anti-democratic leaders (as opposed to worse and more corrupt ones) is preferable to US-led regime change scenarios. There are clearly those in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the US administration who hope to divide the country into regional semi-statelets and so resolve the ‘Iran problem’ once and for all. Many Iranians are concerned about national unity and sovereignty and they do not wish to see a divided Iran, which would lead to the creation of yet another failed state, plagued by interminable civil wars. Having said that, Iranians are well aware that their leaders are corrupt. For example, very few Tehranis have any illusions in their former president, Rafsanjani - a man who made a fortune thanks to the position he occupied in the leadership of Iran’s Islamic republic.

For all the obvious shortcomings of these elections, it is clear that many Iranians made use of the limited opportunity to show their dissatisfaction with the more conservative factions of the regime by inflicting a humiliating defeat on them. Iranian opposition forces in exile - both right and left groups, many with illusions about the propriety of elections in western countries - have been pointing to these shortcomings and to a certain extent they are right to do so. However, it is ironic to hear those who have supported western military intervention in Iran castigating their compatriots for having participated in these elections - as if such military intervention would have heralded anything better.

Iranian members of pro-Zionist think tanks and those who benefit from neo-conservative Republican regime change funds for the day-to-day running of their TV and radio stations, would do well to look at the current US presidential elections and the role of money/capital in the nomination of Republican and Democratic candidates, not to mention the role of media outlets such as Fox TV, before condemning their compatriots for using the limited opportunity presented by Iran’s clerical rulers to express their opinions. In this respect Hamid Dabbashi, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University, is right to say:

While the control of the elections in Iran is a matter of crude and blatant engineering by the ruling factions, in the US the oligarchical machination of money and power limits the choices that people have, habitually setting one faction of the ruling elite against the other ... what is important about the Iranian elections is the resolute ingenuity of Iranian people to outmanoeuvre a deeply corrupt and illegitimate ruling regime and their kindred souls among the treacherous expat oppositions trying to mobilise a US or Israeli military strike against Iran.¹

As election fever took over the Iranian capital, senior ayatollahs tried to damn their opponents by pointing to the wealth accumulated by their relatives. Supporters of supreme leader Ali Khamenei listed accounts held by Rafsanjani’s offspring, while Rafsanjani’s supporters published details of the wealth accumulated by Khamenei’s sons and daughters in Iran and abroad. At least now we know a bit more about the way corruption has helped rulers of the Islamic Republic combine political with financial gains.

The elections also marked a kind of rehabilitation for the leaders of the 2009 protest movement, as Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi were allowed to participate in the voting - a mobile ballot box was sent to where they are held under house arrest. Apparently in Karroubi’s case, it arrived at 1am in the morning after voting had closed and he refused to cast his vote on the basis that it is illegal to do so after the deadline! But this has given rise to rumours that, following his electoral gains, Rowhani might now be in a good position to demand an end to their house arrest - a promise he alluded to during the election campaign.

The hard-line conservative camp, mainly composed of those loyal to the former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who is accused of involvement in major corruption and embezzlement of public funds - lost badly. Supporters of president Rowhani entered the elections under the title, List of Hope, while the ‘reformists’ stood on a joint list with ‘moderate conservatives’ - many of whom have split with the more hard-line conservatives because of their opposition to Ahmadinejad.

So in the 290-seat majles (parliament) Rowhani is likely to face less opposition to his programme, although ‘reformists’ still do not have a majority despite taking all 30 seats in the capital. Although the second round of elections will determine the final results, it is clear that hard-liners will be the main losers. According to the semi-official news agency Isna, this is the position after the first round - ‘reformists’: 83 seats; ‘moderate conservatives’: 78; independents: 60; religious minorities: 5.

What will change?

First of all, let us be very clear that all factions of the Islamic regime are pro-capitalist - the overwhelming majority are in fact the political representatives of the bazaar.

The ‘reformist’ factions and to a certain extent their new ‘moderate conservative’ allies are in favour of further integration into the capitalist global order. They might occasionally recite anti-US slogans, but as a group they favour closer relations with the west, which is why they supported the Iran nuclear deal with the blessing of the supreme leader.

Rowhani and his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, have already sent very clear messages to international capital. Iran is open for business and its labour force - intimidated by years of recession, mass unemployment and the regime’s brutal repression - will accept low wages, poor conditions and vicious exploitation. These overtures are also being backed up by practical examples, such as the vicious attack by the paramilitary Basij on a group of striking factory workers in Kalaleh - an assault brazenly reported by pro-regime media outlets as one of a number of exercises by this militia in preparation for future actions against protesting workers.

In terms of democracy, the ‘reformists’ are in favour of political freedoms for their supporters within the confines of the Islamic Republic, but they have shown that they are just as capable as Ahmadinejad of keeping dissidents in prison. They have so far failed to make any serious attempts to release their former allies, Moussavi and Karroubi, from house arrest and they are definitely in favour of continuing the clampdown on workers’ rights - the large-scale arrest of labour activists opposed to their neoliberal agenda is proof of this. Their liberalism is very limited: they are opposed to aggressive interference by organs of the religious state in private lives, since the activities of the Islamic moral police can cause embarrassment when they visit European capitals. The westernised urban middle class is their main constituency and they do not want to alienate this group.

The ‘moderate conservatives’ share many of the ideals of their reformist allies, although, of course, they are more reactionary when it comes to religious issues, including the wearing of the hijab. For their part, the ultra-conservatives - those who openly opposed the nuclear deal and rapprochement with the west - employ anti-US and anti-western slogans in support of their nationalist position favouring independent Iranian capital. Many of them and their financial backers benefited enormously from the years of sanctions, making good use of their connections with the security services to sell goods confiscated by the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) or imported illegally on the black market. Their proposed ‘economy of resistance’ is in fact a demand for an autarky, where such corrupt practices can flourish. The fact that the Iranian people have so clearly rejected them is therefore positive.

An outburst from ayatollah Sadeq Larijani soon after the results were announced summarises the ultra-conservative stance. Repeating an accusation that dominated the headlines of the rightwing press in the run-up to polling day, he claimed that ‘moderates’ and ‘reformists’ had formed a “British list” and worked with “American and English media outlets” during the election campaign: “Is this type of coordination with foreigners, in order to push out these figures from the Council of Experts, in the interests of the regime?”²

In these new circumstances, at a time when gains made by the ‘reformist’ factions of the regime have left them in a strong position to pursue neoliberal economic policies, at a time when most sanctions have been lifted, it is our task to refocus the work of Hands Off the People of Iran. We need to give Hopi a different emphasis, possibly reflected in a different name and style of work.

In contrast to so many others, Hopi has been implacable in its commitment to the principle that, in Iran as elsewhere, the only consistent anti-war, anti-imperialist and democratic force is the working class. Now is the time to step up our solidarity with the beleaguered workers’ movement of Iran, as the reactionary regime - having made important concessions on the international stage - looks to consolidate its repressive hold on domestic power.

Notes

1 . www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/02/tale-elections-iran-united-states-160217061655476.html.

2 . www.middleeasteye.net/news/reformists-elected-assembly-experts-iran-2108836539.