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Iranian Presidential Elections, 2013 ﻭﺣﺪﺓ ﺍﻟﻔﻜﺮ ﺍﻟﺴﻴﺎﺳﻲ ﺍﻟﻤﻌﺎﺻﺮ Unit of Contemporary Political Thought www.kfcris.com A monthly report issued by the Unit of Contemporary Political Thought for the analysis and evaluation of crucial events in the Islamic world Iranian Presidential Elections, 2013 - Factions, Personalities and Contrasts in the late post- Khomeini period. - Run-up to 2013 Elections. - The New President: Background Profile and Relationship with other bodies. - The New President: His views on Iranian Foreign Policy Perspective (in terms of the regional neighbors). - Rowhani and Nuclear Issue Issue 3, June,2013 © KFCRIS, 2013 or over three decades, presidential elections in FIran have been a defining moment of transition in different political periods of the Islamic Republic. A unique state institution, the presidency in Iran is at once hampered by constitutional restrictions on the power and authority of its incumbent and a desired target for factions internal to the political regime and ambitious politicians alike. The eleventh presidential elections of the Islamic Republic were held on June 15 2013 and presented several marked differences with respect to the previous presidential contest of 12 June 2009. The most visible of these was the absence of any sizable instances of violence, both before and after the poll, and of any intra-elite strife. None of the campaign teams furthermore produced complaints on broad or systematic fraud, and accepted the results swiftly. All of this is in marked contrast with four years ago, when two of the four final candidates, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, voiced concern about the possibility of wide scale falsification of the electoral results prior to the vote and then effectively never recognized the validity of the results released by the Interior ministry, setting off the wave of protest, strife and inner-regime crisis that are yet to be fully resolved. This issue of Masarat will focus on the recent presidential elections to better predict the future of Iranian foreign policy and its nuclear program. 4 Elections: “Presidents of Iran (1989-2013)” Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Mohammad Khatami Elections Rafsanjani is a centrist, pragmatic and conservative poli- Khatami is a reformist politician and the 5th President tician and the 4th president of Iran from August 1989 to of Iran from August 1997 to August 2005. Khatami won August 1997. by 70% of the votes. He was re-elected to a second term in June 2001. Policy Rafsanjani’s clout and influence within the political By the time Khatami won a landslide in the elections system had derived, during the Eighties, from the fact of 1997, the Islamic Republic’s political elite was divided that he was seen as the necessary conduit for inner-re- into two broad and heterogeneous umbrella definitions: a gime stability by both of the emerging factions. When group called jenah-e rast, or “right-wing faction”, and one thrust into a powerful executive position, Rafsanjani correspondingly called jenah-e chap, or “left-wing faction”. at once was bereft of the support of a dedicated faction Once in power, Khatami fell prey to limitations and ob- within Parliament, a factor which led to a long period stacles similar to those which had hampered Rafsanjani’s of repeated obstruction by the left-wing parliamentary quest for authority. Despite having a clear and well-organ- majority, which sought to stymie Rafsanjani’s economic ised group of inner-elite supporters, which later assumed the plans, most prominently his attempts to secure foreign name of “reformists’, Khatami was not the head of any party, financing for the state’s reconstruction efforts and his at- nor did he share the more radical outlook of some of the key tempts to woo the exiled entrepreneurs of the Shah’s era. elements of the reformist group. Program Nuclear Iran worked with Russian institutions to improve Germany, France and the United Kingdom (EU-3) Iranian missiles and allowed IAEA inspections to visit played a key role in persuading Iran to suspend enrichment nuclear sites. activities. Iran declared that it will cooperate with the IAEA by signing a protocol to report to the agency on its activities and to allow its inspectors to visit nuclear sites in the country. Policy Foreign Rafsanjani played a key role in improving ties with Khatami improved Iran’s relations with Western coun- Arab countries. He also tried to establish relations with tries as he was known to be a supporter of a “dialogue some Western countries. among civilizations”, hence, pushing for conciliation in- stead of confrontation. Foreign Policy: Issue 3, June,2013 Foreign Policy: Mohammad Khatami: 5 Mahmoud Ahmadinajad Ahmadinejad was a populist and rambunctious political up- start who had suddenly become Tehran mayor in 2003 and who embodied the style of life and aspirations of the lower middle Hassan Rowhani class. Through notorious and well-timed slogan, he managed to garner enough inner-elite and popular support to defeat Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom had entered the race assured of an easy ride to victory. He was the 6th president of Iran from August 2005 to Rowhani, a moderate conservative, won more than 50% of August 2013. He was re-elected to a second term in 2009. the vote. By 2005, the weakness of the reformist factions to effectively Rowhani’s regional policies are to be seen as sharp change govern the country had become apparent to the electorate, which with respect to those hitherto pursued by both Ahmadinejad aspired, once again, to perform a clean break with the past. For and Jalili in style as well as partially in substance, but a sharp reasons similar to the ones which led to a build-up of support for U-turn from the objectives nurtured by the Islamic Republic in Khatami in 1997, namely that of punishing the incumbent faction theaters such as Iraq and Syria should not be expected. and starting a new era, voters turned, with less enthusiasm, to Mah- moud Ahmadinejad. Rowhani is expected to make use of his considerable reputa- Despite emerging as the candidate of choice of the right- tion within Western capitals to strike a deal on the nuclear issue, wing in the elections of 2009, Ahmadinejad lack of synergy although through the guiding principle of instilling “confidence” and cooperation with nearly all other state bodies came to a rather than backtracking on achievements such as the enrich- head between 2011-2013, when the president was repeatedly ment of uranium. He will also rely on the trust he accrued in his hampered by the rise of inner-regime criticism to his rule. stint as chief nuclear negotiator to compel the European nations to resume negotiations with Iran at the foreign minister level. After the elections, Iran appointed Ali Larijani as the Chief Ira- nian nuclear negotiator and removed seals on its uranium enrich- As his recent books, “National Security and Nuclear Diplo- ment equipment in Isfahan. In 2006, Ahmadinejad declared that macy” and “National Security and Economic Development” at- Iran managed successfully to enrich uranium. test, he is also by far the incoming president with more direct ex- perience in the international arena, and appreciation of the need to adopt active diplomacy to safeguard Iran’s national interest. He is likely to use his first trip abroad, which shall most During his first four years, the president sought to stamp his probably be the UN General Assembly in New York in Septem- authority across the state system by laying off hundreds to top- ber, to attempt to mend fences with European countries such as level state managers and administrators and by engaging in a Great Britain, and reopen the respective embassies. robust foreign policy rhetoric which sought to assert him as the most prominent politician of the Muslim Third World. Foreign Policy: Issue 3, June,2013 www.kfcris.com 6 Factions, Personalities and Contrasts in the late post-Khomeini period n order to understand the reasons for such different outcomes between the two successive Ipresidential elections, a look at the ideological rivalries and conflicts which have charac- terized Iranian domestic politics during the past decade is necessary. The rise to power of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 accentuated the growing divide between Khomeini’s followers which had been seeded while the founding father of the Islamic Repub- lic was still alive and had blossomed in the de- cade following his death in 1989. By the time Khatami won a landslide in the elections of 1997, the Islamic Republic’s political elite was divided into two broad and heterogeneous um- brella definitions: a group called jenah-e rast, or “right-wing faction”, and one correspondingly called jenah-e chap, or “left-wing faction”. Fac- tion is a term which has to be used with care: despite coalescing around a set of common goals and outlooks, the constituent elements of each faction rarely maintained or upheld orga- nizational unity and often were bereft of a cen- tralized command structure, such as a central committee or council tasked and entrusted with taking decisions for the rest of the jenah. In- not rooted in the corresponding Western politi- stead, the various parties and groups belonging cal ideologies but rather in the economic realm. to a given faction come together in the run-up The right-wing mainly emerged from within the to key events such as presidential elections, to ranks of the mercantile associations which sup- jointly back a candidate, or to create a loosely- ported and buttressed Khomeini’s rise to power. allied electoral list for parliamentary elections. They included bazaari elements and social con- Furthermore, the right-left denominations are servatives. Despite their “right-wing” moniker, Issue 3, June,2013 7 these groups at times exhibited less xenophobia MPs by the Guardian Council.
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