Supreme Leadership Redefined

Iran’s 2013 Presidential Election – Part II

By Nader Uskowi

With nine weeks left for Iranians to elect their next president, the political factions and a score of presidential hopefuls have started their campaigns in earnest. Surprisingly, no major figures from left to right have yet emerged as the consensus candidates to replace Ahmadinejad. The growing fragmentation of Iranian politics even as the election nears could have many reasons but chief among them could be the weakening position of the supreme leader in arbitrating disputes among political factions. Ironically this development appears to be the legacy of supreme leader’s celebrated victory in his direct intervention in the presidential election of 2009.

In this segment of our series on the upcoming presidential election, we examine a supreme leadership that has been redefined since 2009, and the effect of this transition on the election.      

Supreme Leadership Redefined

The 2009 presidential election in Iran resulted in a dispute among major power figures in the country over the election result, pitting a former prime minister and a former speaker of Majlis against a sitting president and their powerful supporters within the political elite of the country.

In older days of the Islamic Republic, the representatives of different political factions facing as serious a crisis would seek counsel and the help of the supreme leader for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. 

In 2009, Khamenei broke with that 30-year tradition of being the arbitrator of last resort and openly sided with the sitting president and his supporters. Karrubi would later famously recall that whenever there were serious disagreements within the regime (“nezam”), they would go to Khomeini and later Khamenei and the supreme leader would somehow resolve the issue. But post-2009 disputed election, he could not go to Khamenei, Karrubi said, because the supreme leader was now part of the problem.

Supporting a political faction at expense of others was something Khomeini, and Khamenei in his first twenty years, had tried to avoid. Khamenei’s fateful decision to side with Ahmadinejad against Mousavi and Karrubi was a game changer. The supreme leader was now one of the political actors among others, albeit a more powerful one; but not anymore the regime’s arbitrator of the last resort. The supreme leadership redefined would soon face open challenges by a number of powerful politicians unseen in the history of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei won the day in 2009, but the supreme leadership ended up at its weakest position since the victory of the Islamic revolution more than three decades ago.

A recent complaint by MP Mohammad Hassan Asefri about the new realities somehow sums up the transition. “In the past years, the orders of the Supreme Leader went as far as printing banners and holding gatherings, but unfortunately no efforts were made to obey his guidelines,” said Asefri. (IRNA, 25 March)

What we are witnessing in this campaign supports the observation that the office of the supreme leader has lost its key mission, that of being the last arbitrator of disputes and the unifying force in the country. The right’s inability to field a unity candidate and its growing fragmentation only weeks away from the election would not have happened in the past.

Even Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the influential ultraconservative theologian and the leader of the Stability Front (“Jebhey-e Paydari”) coalition, has recently expressed serious concerns at Khamenei’s lack of ability to unite the “principlists.” Yazdi fears that the disunity would play into the hands of moderates, reformists and Ahmadinejad’s “deviationists,” the other three factions competing with the right to capture the presidency.

The Rafsanjani Factor

Two currents of thought and their corresponding figureheads and political factions have dominated the Iranian politics since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989. Khamenei represented the left-leaning old-school revolutionary radicals, believing in the supremacy of the state in all things political, economic, cultural and personal. “I am not a diplomat, I am a revolutionary,” said Khamenei famously in February, a quarter of century after the death of the leader of the revolution. Rafsanjani, on the other hand, became the chief proponent of reforms from above, believing in major economic reforms, the power of private enterprise and the normalization of relations with the West.

Khamenei and Rafsanjani became not just the figureheads of two competing ideologies, but also the political titans of a country coming out of a decade of war and revolution. For those of us who have experienced China’s Cultural Revolution, we can probably compare the two heavyweights to Mao and Deng Xiaoping respectively.

Khamenei won the day in 2009 when he intervened on behalf of Ahmadinejad against the wartime premier Mousavi. But ironically four years later, Rafsanjani, and not Khamenei, could be the kingmaker in the upcoming election.  

Rafsanjani gets his support from all who are dissatisfied with the current economic situation in the country; the drastic loss in value of the national currency, severe limitations imposed by sanctions on Iranian traders, near collapse of private industrial sector, lack of access to global banking, high inflation and unemployment, and a rate of economic growth currently at zero. The bazaar, led by the old guard, powerful people like Asgharoladi, are lining up behind Rafsanjani, trying to draft him to run for another term as president, or pick a surrogate to form the next government.

The current balance of forces, however, would require an agreement between Khamenei and Rafsanjani on the upcoming election. Unless Rafsanjani decides to run himself, a list of compromise candidates, people like Mohsen Rezaie, is expected to be discussed between the two in the coming days.

In the next segment, we will examine the strength and weaknesses of major political factions, including the Stability Front of Mesbah, traditionalist coalition led by Qalibaf, Velayati and Haddad, the reformists and former president Khatami, as well as Ahmadinejad’s camp and his political confidant Mashaie.

Photo: Iranian politics from left to right: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (Leader.ir/ISNA)

Iran’s 2013 Presidential Election Series:
Part I: Running for President
Part II: Supreme Leadership Redefined