Yesterday, Iran’s Guardian Council shocked the country by disqualifying the presidential candidacy of Rafsanjani, one of the architects of both the Iranian Revolution and the country that resulted from it. Thomas Erdbrink passes along [NYT] this succinct reaction from an Iranian citizen:
“They say a revolution eats its children,” said Mehdi, 27, a teacher. “But in the case of Rafsanjani, the revolution has eaten its father.”
Erdbrink makes a key observation with regards to what this election, on its current course, may mean for Iran:
Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic republic has been characterized by constant and often public competition among opposing power centers, a back-and-forth that gives ordinary citizens and private business owners the ability to navigate among the groups.
Barring further surprises, the winner of the June election will now be drawn from a slate of conservative candidates in Iran’s ruling camp, a loose alliance of Shiite Muslim clerics and Revolutionary Guard commanders. That would the presidency under their control and would mark the first time since the 1979 revolution that all state institutions were under the firm control of one faction.
Meanwhile, Iranian MP Ali Motahari, a Rafsanjani ally, has voiced his outrage over Rafsanjani’s disqualification in a public letter that has already been deleted off of some Iranian news sites:
“My strong assumption is that if Imam Khomeini were alive and he registered under a pseudonym, he would be disqualified, because sometimes he expressed criticism.” Although Rafsanjani has never publicly criticized Khamenei, after the 2009 contested elections Rafsanjani took a moderate tone with regard to the protesters, and it is commonly understood that the two are at odds over various political and economic issues of the country.
Motahari wrote, “You are informed that with the entry of Rafsanjani to the political scene, how much enthusiasm it created among the people and how much hope it gave them for reform and growth. With his disqualification, naturally, this enthusiasm and hope has disappeared.” He continued, “My recommendation is that with a [government decree], you approve of Rafsanjani’s” candidacy.[“]
Ayatollah Khomeini’s daughter has similarly asked Khamenei to reinstate Rafsanjani’s candidacy. Suzanne Maloney thinks through the regime’s reasoning:
However absurd the Islamic Republic’s vetting process has been in the past – and more than two dozen elections over the course of 34 years have provided plenty of fodder – the suggestion that a man who has been at the apex of power in the Islamic Republic since its inception no longer meets its constitutional standards for the presidency carries the farce to a new level.
Rafsanjani sits on the Assembly of Experts, which appoints Iran’s supreme leader, and leads its Expediency Council, which adjudicates challenges to proposed legislation. The determination that he is unfit for the presidency inevitably calls into question the credibility of these other institutions. The other rationale on offer— the aspersions on Rafsanjani’s advanced age (78) that were invoked by a number of conservative power brokers— is similarly insupportable. The Islamic Republic is, after all, a clerical gerontocracy. Rafsanjani may be closing in on 80, but he cuts a relatively spry figure among the Iranian political establishment, including by comparison with its late founder who seized power as a septuagenarian.
Regardless, Maloney doesn’t buy the idea that Rafsanjani would have been some kind of savior:
The image of the former president as an infallible architect of economic reform is in fact greatly exaggerated. He did spearhead the post-war reconstruction program against considerable domestic opposition, but his policies also instigated a destabilizing debt crisis and spiraling inflation. Rafsanjani’s reputation for personal enrichment, the ascendance of his sons and daughters and nephew, and the culture of crony capitalism that emerged during his tenure left deep resentments among ordinary Iranians whose share of the post-war spoils typically did not expand.
As part of an extended look at the complicated relationship between the Rafsanjani and Khamenei, Max Fisher highlights how Rafsanjani’s flirtation with the American oil industry during his presidency may have played a role in his disqualification:
Despite those years of post-presidential loyal service to the supreme leader, Rafsanjani is still closely associated with the signature foreign policy issue that appears so anathema to Khamenei: outreach to the United States. The supreme leader, after years of tension with his country’s president during Rafsanjani’s tenure, during Khatami’s more reformist administration and, finally, in the now-ending Ahmadinejad era that saw the two grapple for power, perhaps does not want to grapple with Rafsanjani again.
Marcus George rounds up Iran’s remaining pre-approved presidential candidates:
“All of the approved candidates are either loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei or are mostly irrelevant,” said Alireza Nader, an analyst at RAND Corporation. “Khamenei may still overturn the decision, but Rafsanjani’s disqualification shows that Khamenei is determined to wield all power. This appears to be a presidential selection rather than an election.”
BBC has a primer on the eight approved candidates.
(Photo: Iranian influential cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivers his sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University in the Iranian capital on July 17, 2009. By Ali Rafiei/AFP/Getty Images)
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