Iran began voting on Friday in a presidential election tilted in favor of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s hard-line protege, stoking popular apathy and triggering demands for a boycott.
While the contest is wide open due to President Hassan Rouhani’s inability to run again due to his term restriction, officials have prevented his friends and practically every reformist from participating.
As a result, observers believe Ebrahim Raisi, the hardline judiciary leader, is the clear front-runner. Former Central Bank director Abdolnasser Hemmati, the only candidate who supports Rouhani’s administration, has said that others in the race serve as proxies for Raisi, allowing the cleric to avoid criticizing him directly.
According to state-sponsored polling and commentators, Raisi is the clear front-runner in a field of only four contenders. If elected, Raisi would become the first serving Iranian president to be sanctioned by the US government even before taking office, for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, as well as his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary, which is regarded as one of the world’s top executioners.
Tensions remain high between the United States and Israel, which is suspected of carrying out a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and assassinating the scientist who established the country’s military atomic programme decades ago.
The polls opened at 7 a.m. local time (IST 8 a.m.) for the vote, which has been marred by widespread public apathy following the exclusion of hundreds of candidates, including reformists and those affiliated with Rouhani, by a commission appointed by Khamenei. From Tehran, Khamenei cast the ceremonial ballot, urging the population to participate.
Some more ’bout Candidates:
- Abdolnasser Hemmati
Hemmati, 64, led Iran’s Central Bank for several years under Rouhani and during the reintroduction of US sanctions following Washington’s unilateral exit from the nuclear deal with Tehran. Despite sitting in Rouhani’s ministry, he has described himself as an independent candidate on several occasions. Hemmati, an economist, has held positions in both commercial and government banks, as well as Iran’s state insurance agency. For a brief period, he also served as Iran’s ambassador to China.
In Iran’s brief election season, the technocrat drew attention by designating his wife, Sepideh Shabestari, as one of his representatives and top advisers.
- Ebrahim Raisi
Raisi, a 60-year-old hardline cleric loyal to Khamenei, has pledged to fight poverty and corruption. Raisi was described by Khamenei as a “trustworthy and highly experienced” individual, prompting speculation that he could be the supreme leader’s successor. He was defeated by Rouhani in the 2017 presidential election, despite receiving over 15 million votes. Following the defeat, Khamenei named the former law professor to lead the country’s judiciary. He’s waged a televised anti-corruption campaign there that has resonated with a people fed up with corruption. His candidacy has also reignited the debate about Iran’s mass executions in 1988, one of the worst chapters in the country’s post-revolutionary history that the administration has yet to acknowledge.
- Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi
Analysts believe Hashemi, 50, to be a low-profile conservative politician.
He has been a member of parliament since 2007 and is presently a member of the parliament’s board of chairman, which oversees the affairs of the legislature. Hashemi, an ear, nose, and throat specialist surgeon, has pledged to rebuild Iran’s stock market in his first three days in office, a difficult ambition given the market’s value has virtually halved in the last year.
- Mohsen Rezaei
Rezaei, 66, was a hard-line candidate in several elections and is a former leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Argentina has issued an Interpol “Red Notice” for his alleged role in the bombing of a Jewish institution in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people. The incident was denied by both Rezaei and the Iranian authorities. He was also chastised for reportedly mismanaging fights during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, as well as his strained relationship with Iran’s regular military. He is now the secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, which settles disagreements between parliament and the country’s constitutional body.
Turnout is projected to plunge to a new low after a lackluster campaign in a country tired of a harsh regime of US economic sanctions that has crushed dreams for a better future. In Iran, which has a population of over 80 million people, there are over 59 million eligible voters.
The state-run Iranian Student Polling Agency, on the other hand, predicts a turnout of only 42 percent, the lowest since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Fears of low attendance have some speculating that Iran is moving away from being the Islamic Republic — a government with elected civilian leadership controlled by a supreme leader drawn from the Shiite clergy — and toward becoming a country more strictly dominated by Iranians.
