Reformist Massoud has won in Iran's presidential election
Anybody can talk about what this means for West/China ties etc?
Below is the synthesis of what I heard from the Youtube channel of Wojciech Szewko, an interntional relations scholar specialising in the Middle-East and a former deputy secretary in the ministry of foreign affairs under a social-democrat government ~20 years ago. I used him to comment on the outbreak of Israel-Hamas conflict last year and generally consider him to be a reliable commentator with a decent degree of credibility and good knowledge of the matter.
Iran is an "illiberal democracy" which means that it is a state controlled by the Islamic authorities like the Guardian Council with the Supreme Leader in charge.However it does allow elections that are heavily influenced by the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council. Their primary power is approving candidates for elections. For example the popular nationalist and conservative former president Ahmadinejad, a member of the "principalist" faction (the other faction being "reformist") is not allowed to stand for election due to his various illegal/criminal economic relationships. This also means that the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian has been allowed to stand for election. However it is difficult to tell if it was a conscious choice by the Guardian Council acknowledging that he may win, or a miscalculation as all the polls indicated that a principalist was likely to win. Szewko has expressed no opinion on that however I lean - at least at this current moment - toward it being at least partly a miscalculation. However I don't think it was entirely a miscalculation, at least as it seems - and Szewko does indicate that - Pezeshkian is signalling that he wants to work closely with the Islamic authority. While his victory may be unexpected he clearly is not trying to be independent of the Guardian Council.
There was a huge drop in turnout in the 2021 election compared to the previous ones - from 73% in 2017 when reformist Rouhani won to 48% in 2021 when principalist Raisi won. That drop in turnout may be explained by the Guardian Council decision to heavily favour the principalist faction which led to an election with one faction's candidates participating. However in 2024 there was no great turnout in either the 1st or 2nd round - 40% and 50% respectively - despite reformist candidate being allowed to stand. The turnout did increase between the rounds which mostly allowed Pezeshkian to win over 50% votes.
The fairness of the electoral process is an open question. For example in Russia elections are completely fraudulent, apart from restrictions on participating candidates, but in Iran so far they were mostly influenced through formal process explained above. Results could have been rigged, except the "wrong" candidate won.
Pezeshkian is an Azeri, who speaks several languages including minority ones like Kurdish, and a medical doctor. He is also leaning heavily into the "problematic" demographics like women and young people. However he stresses economic issues primarily and whenever he speaks about the nuclear deal he presents it as an economic issue rather than a political or ideological one. He has also repeatedly and openly criticised the government's response to the various protests as excessive. Szewko made no comment on what this implies but I would emphasise that if the Guardian Council was looking to send a signal to the population as well as abroad that they're willing to take a less aggressive course it would be done in such an indirect manner.
It is difficult to tell whether the Guardian Council wanted to allow a reformist to run and lose, or whether they wanted to allow him to win if he got sufficient support. However I don't think he would be allowed to run if the Islamic authorities did not have a plan in place.
It may simply be that death of Raisi weakened the principalist faction internally and Reformists got the advantage temporarily. The contest is a genuine one and the Guardian Council is primarily concerned with fundamental matters. Principalists and Reformists are like Republicans and Democrats. They are part of the Overton window. They can change so much and only so much.
Note that hardliner Raisi was given a comfortable run in June of 2021, while US administration has shifted to Democrats in January while reformer Rouhani was the president since 2013, winning in 2017 during an extremely hostile administration of Trump. I think this was a clear reaction to Iran's experiences with Trump, as well as with the difficulties caused by ethnic unrest. The recent mass protests caused ostensibly by the religious police's brutal enforcement of hijab rules were in fact ethnic protests and the dead girl with family connections to Kurdish rebels/terrorists. The protests were therefore of completely different nature compared to how they were portrayed in the media in the west. The overall participation was also mostly caused by worsening economic situation.
Guardian Council is likely attempting to address some of the causes by enabling an Azeri reformer as president of Iran who is the head of government as Iran has no prime minister (abolished in 1989).
Let's also not forget about important events leading to the election.
- death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter accident - 19 May 2024
- retaliatory attack on Israel - 13 April 2024
Ebrahim Raisi died in a crash while returning in a group of three helicopters from a meeting with Azerbaijani president Aliyev during the opening of a hydroelectric facility on the border with Azerbaijan. The circumstances are extremely suspicious, but not unlikely to be a genuine accident. Iran views Azerbaijan's expansion into Armenian territory as a problem however it is not of primary strategic importance.
Iran's primary problem is of economic nature. The second most important problem is Iran's involvement against Israel, and potential escalation in Lebanon and Syria while the war has already put a heavy burden on the nation's economy. The war is not popular primarily due to its economic cost.
So the likely outcome of this election is that Iran sends a signal that they will stay out of the war with Israel apart from material support to their proxies in Lebanon. They are also sending a signal to the US and EU that they are willing to work on resolving sanctions, but this may be just a blunting of the effects of a potential second Trump presidency. Trump is going to force through that Project 2025 agenda and is overtly backed by the most rabid Zionist circles in the US (Israelis and not Russians, were the "foreign actor" in 2016 but obviously
that can't ever be mentioned aloud).
An Azeri reformer as president may also send a signal to Saudi Arabia.
Szewko doesn't see a change in Iran's general course. He expects that there won't be any radical shifts in strategic policy and that any work on resolving the sanctions will be focused on economic fallout of sanctions. He thinks the detente between Iran and Saudis is going to last for now and he repeatedly jokes about Iran building "its tenth nuclear warhead".
He does often speak in a manner that could be considered "conspiratorial" by the mainstream but he is always extremely precise and rational in his judgment and has a habit of using sarcasm and irony as a coping mechanism against the heavy-handed propaganda and censorship. So far in the most recent clips he indicated nothing that would lend itself to him thinking that this outcome is a "black swan" event in Iranian politics. So far he seems to indicate that it's just a soft realignment of the Islamic regime, with perhaps a few unexpected flairs.
But I would absolutely point to the possibility of Trump's win in November and Pezeshkian will absolutely be the worst person to deal with if you're planning to take a extreme anti-Iranian course. He will likely have support from everyone abroad, while remaining under close watch by the Guardian Council.
That's it for now. Hopefully it was helpful.
