Iranians are going to the presidential elections more openly than expected

Iranians go to the polls on Friday to elect a new president from a field of six candidates, including a still-unknown reformer who hopes to shake the conservatives’ lead.

These presidential elections, originally scheduled for 2025, were organized within weeks to replace President Ebrahim Raissi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19.

The elections come in a delicate context for the Islamic Republic, which must simultaneously cope with internal tensions and geopolitical crises, from the war in the Gaza Strip to the nuclear issue, five months before presidential elections in the United States, its declared enemy. .

The election campaign, which began impartially, proved more competitive than the previous one in 2021, thanks to the presence of reformer Masoud Pezeshkian, who established himself as one of the three favorites.

His two main opponents are the conservative speaker of parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, and Saeed Jalili, an ultra-conservative former nuclear negotiator.

This remarkable closeness could lead to a runoff, which has only occurred in the 2005 presidential election since the founding of the Islamic Republic 45 years ago.

To have a chance of winning, Masoud Pezeshkian must expect a high level of participation, unlike the 2021 presidential election, which saw a record 51% abstention when no reformist or moderate candidates were allowed to run.

On Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Iranians to “come out in large numbers”, fearing a more than likely low participation rate compared with the 41% recorded in last March’s legislative elections.

According to Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG), the future president will have to face “the challenge of preventing the gap between state and society from widening.” To date, none of the candidates “has presented a concrete plan to solve these problems,” he said.

Reformist Pezeshkian, 69, a widower and family man, assured voters that some of the problems facing Iran’s 85 million people could be “improved.”

However, some voters say the doctor-turned-MP lacks government experience, having only served as health minister for about 20 years.

By contrast, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, at 62, is a political veteran who spent a career in the Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic Republic’s powerful ideological army.

For his part, Saeed Jalili, 58, who lost a leg during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, has attracted some of the Islamic Republic’s most ardent supporters by bolstering Tehran’s steadfast resilience in the face of Western powers.

At the other end of the spectrum is Masoud Pezeshkian, who advocates rapprochement with the United States and Europe to lift sanctions that have hit the economy hard, and has received the support of former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the architect of the nuclear deal reached with the Great Powers in 2015 .

The reformist also calls for a solution to the pressing issue of compulsory hijab for women, one of the causes of the massive protest movement that rocked the country in late 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for non-compliance. Dress code.

“For 40 years we have tried to control the wearing of the hijab, but we have only made the situation worse,” Pezeshkian lamented.

Most of the remaining candidates took a cautious stance on the issue, saying they were strongly opposed to the introduction of a morality police.

One certainty of the election is that the next president will be a civilian, not a Shiite cleric like the two previous presidents, Hassan Rohani and Ibrahim Raissi.

Therefore, he cannot be seen as a potential successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 85 years old and has led Iran for 35 years.