Beyond the Headlines: Politics in Iran
Q&A with Peyman Jafari
Q: When we spoke back in September 2022 about the protests after the death of Jhina Mahsa Amini, you made an observation that for a revolution to occur, in addition to the change in the mentality of the population, it was necessary for “the inability of elites to rule in the old way.” You predicted there would continue to be these cycles of protest that “might lead to significant fissures within the political and military elites.” Two years later, with the election of Masoud Pezeshkian, is Iran in a “cycle of protest and change” or is something else occurring?
It’s hard to say, but the election certainly provides a snapshot of the political and social situation that has emerged in Iran almost two years after Amini was arrested for not fully following the state-sanctioned “Islamic” dress code and died due to police violence. I characterized the ensuing Woman, Life, Freedom protests as extremely pivotal due to their unprecedented challenge to the Islamic Republic and the radical shift in political and cultural mentality they both represented and fueled. But in my publications and talks, I disagreed with the premature characterization of the protests as an unfolding revolution that would quickly topple the Islamic Republic. My argument was as follows. Despite the enormous courage of the overwhelmingly young protesters on the streets, they did not develop a critical mass that could mobilize millions rather than tens of thousands to effectively challenge repression, as they lacked organization, leadership, a convincing alternative and clear strategies. Also, no significant fissures emerged among the political and military elites as they had become smaller but more coherent due to purges, and earlier domestic and foreign confrontations.
Now, what does the election say about where different sections of society and state, and the gap between them, stand today? The election shows three important societal trends. First, the turnout at the first round of the presidential election on June 28 was 40 percent, the lowest since 1979, and increased only to 50 percent in the second round on July 5, when the election polarized between Masoud Pezeshkian’s cautious call for change and Saeed Jalili’s ultra-conservatism. The trend of declining turnout since 2021 is due to growing apathy and election boycotts that reveal the intensification of the Islamic Republic’s dual crises of legitimacy and competency: a growing number of Iranians feel that their political, cultural, and religious values as well as their socio-economic interests are not represented by the political elites, which are also increasingly incompetent due to nepotism and corruption.
Second, while the pressure to boycott this round of elections was huge, nevertheless nearly half of the eligible voters (61 million) participated, and 54 percent of them (16.3 million) voted for Pezeshkian to prevent Jalili taking the country into a more conservative direction. They were also drawn to Pezeshkian’s promises: relaxation of social and cultural restrictions, by, for instance, reigning in the morality police that imposes the compulsory veil in the public space; improving relations with western countries by reviving the Nuclear Deal to remove economic sanctions; and thereby, improve the economy. The vote for Pezeshkian was by and large a vote for change, be it for reforming or dismantling the Islamic Republic. But those who voted for Jalili, 44 percent (13.5 million), supported or at least didn’t oppose his hardline defense of the status quo and conservatism. They, together with some who voted for Pezeshkian or who didn’t vote at all, form a small but still substantial social bulwark against radical political change. The “Fourth National Survey of Iranian’s Values and Opinions” conducted in November 2023 found that only 8.2 percent of Iranians is happy with the status quo, 61.6 percent favors change through reforms, and 30.2 percent thinks the system cannot be reformed.
Third, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests reflected a massive shift in cultural values, especially regarding the rights of women. They also have functioned as a catalyst of these changes: today, you can see relatively more women in the public space not wearing the headscarf, or wear it as they want, along with women who choose to wear it. The protests have also increased the self-confidence of many Iranians to voice their discontent openly, and they have infused a new sentiment in protests of workers and retirees, reflected in slogans about political freedoms and gender equality. The recent national strike wave of healthcare workers, overwhelmingly female, demonstrates this trend. At the same time, since the repression of "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests, there have not as yet been any large-scale political protests. Millions of Iranians who sympathized with the protests, witnessed its demise due to repression and the factors I mentioned above. While angry and frustrated, they are not very hopeful about the possibility of revolutionary change. Some of them also think that the outcome of such a change is still too uncertain, or fear that it might result in political and social chaos, or foreign interventions, that have devasted some of the countries in the region.
I think I can synthesize all these three points by describing the current situation as a fragile deadlock: most Iranians don’t believe in the long-term viability of the Islamic Republic, but neither do they believe in the short-term viability of revolutionary change. This is a fragile situation that might be destabilized by new events, creating new opportunities for protests. But for now, popular dissent expresses itself in a fragmented way: some continue political protests; some challenge the conservative dress code and cultural norms in the public space; some leave Iran to find a better life elsewhere; some boycott elections; and some vote for Pezeshkian hoping he will improve their conditions, even if slightly.
Q: What do the elections show about how the political elites operate and are dealing with the changes in society?
Let’s start with the fact that Pezeshkian was allowed to stand in the presidential election at all, while the Guardian Council had barred him, and dozens of reformist candidates, from standing in the parliamentary election just last March. The members of the Guardian Council have the power to vet candidates for elected positions and are directly and indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader (Ali Khamenei), who stands at the top of the political pyramid. Pezeshkian’s admission to the list of presidential candidates was widely and correctly attributed to Khamenei’s growing worries about the declining electoral turnouts as an indication of the state’s crisis of legitimacy. The fact that legitimacy, perceived or real, matters in Iran’s political system, makes its leaders to some degree responsive to pressures from below. In this case, streets protests, and electoral boycotts forced the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader to allow Pezeshkian to voice some of the popular demands in the political arena. Of course, they limit the impact of such pressures and manipulate their outcome by curtailing civil liberties, arresting dissidents and undermining the powers of the president through the judiciary, the military, and the state-media.
Nevertheless, Pezeshkian’s victory reveals another aspect of politics in Iran. Many analysts believed that Khamenei favored and would ensure that one of the two main conservative candidates – Jalili and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf – would win the election. Most of the observers pointed to Jalili as Khamenei’s favorite. Others, however, argued that Khamenei wanted Pezeshkian to win and somewhat mitigate the crisis of legitimacy. In both scenarios, Khamenei appears to pull all the strings, design a masterplan and execute it in disregard of everyone else. I think this is based on a misunderstanding of how the state works in Iran. Although Khamenei stands at its center, he operates within a wider political field that includes the president, the government, parliament, an extensive bureaucracy, the military, and political figures and their networks (factions), and clerical institutions that compete and negotiate in decision making processes. Though these are less powerful than the Supreme Leader, they are not mere pawns without agency and influence. During the first round of the presidential election, for instance, neither of the two main conservative candidates, Jalili nor Ghalibaf, withdrew in favor of the other to defeat Pezeshkian. After the election, their followers have attacked each other publicly. The factionalization within the conservative camp shows that the various elite actors have different ideologies, economic interests and social bases that push them in different directions. Though these differences shouldn’t be exaggerated, they shouldn’t be overlooked either, as they give rise to competition and conflicts that can develop a dynamic beyond the actor’s intentions.
Q: So how should we interpret the election of Pezeshkian?
His election reflects on the one hand the strategy of disgruntled Iranians to use any opening in Iran’s relatively closed political system to push for political change, and on the other hand it reflects the political reconsiderations and jockeying among the political elites that are responding to the accumulation of domestic and foreign pressures. These pressures are not new, but the strategy that they started following since 2020 has failed. That strategy was based on bringing the main political institutions – parliament and presidency – under the control of conservative factions, hoping to weather Iran’s intensifying crisis with a unified state.
This was mainly a response to President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Nuclear Deal in 2018, which had been signed in 2015 between Iran, US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. President Trump’s threats to tear up the deal from 2016 to 2018 prevented European companies from making any significant investments in Iran. And when the US withdrew from the deal in 2018 and imposed devastating economic sanctions on Iran, and other countries trading with Iran, the Iranian economy crashed as oil income dropped and inflation increased.
Lacking the economic means to retaliate against American economic sanctions, Iran flexed its military muscle demonstrating its ability to destabilize the oil exports of Saudi Arabia and other US allies in the region, and Iraqi militias allied with Iran intensified their attacks on US military bases in Iraq. Domestically, the US withdrawal from the Nuclear Deal undermined the moderate forces around Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021) and his reformist allies as they had tied their entire political project to the fate of the Nuclear Deal, promising its positive impact on the economy. When this didn’t happen, the population grew frustrated with the moderates and reformists, which were blamed by the conservatives and leaders of the Revolutionary Guards for making concessions to an unreliable US. The economic crisistriggered mass protests in December 2017 through January 2018, and another round of protests erupted in late 2019 in reaction to gas price hikes. Both protests were violently repressed.
The Supreme Leader’s strategy to unify power in conservative hands, and thus to increase authoritarianism and militarism, was a response to weather the economic crisis, growing protests, and foreign pressures. But while the Islamic Republic hasn’t collapsed under the weight of economic sanctions and protests – a flawed expectation among hawkish circles in D.C. – its economic problems and crisis of legitimacy has deepened. The authoritarian unification strategy led to two different reactions among reformists. Some were radicalized into rejecting the Islamic Republic, calling for election boycotts, and siding with street protests, while others have further moderated their rhetoric and demands as a “realistic” response to the existing balance of power. Pezeshkian represents this “realistic reformism” that on the one hand wants to be tolerated by the conservative-controlled centers of power, and on the other hand wants to deliver small improvements for ordinary Iranians.
The question is, of course, if he will be able to deliver even these small improvements as his power within the political system dominated by the Supreme Leader is limited. More importantly, small improvements might lessen but will not close the gap between large sections of the population and the state. Therefore, I think that we will continue to see, with up and downs, the continuation of the “cycle of protests.”
Q: Pezeshkian is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and was health minister under a previous reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. How do you think these two things affect his outlook? He also has a daughter and pledges to end patrols of the morality police. Are his experiences things that resonate with the younger generation?
His political outlook is surely shaped by these personal experiences that are common among members of the current political and military elites. When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, many young Iranians joined the army and the newly established Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to push back Iraqi forces. Many more were outraged that the US and its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia didn’t condemn Iraq, and even helped its army, when it was facing defeat. Resentful of the US and aware of Iran’s conventional military weakness, they drew the conclusion that Iran had to develop military self-reliance and support regional groups, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah that shared its opposition against American military presence in the Middle East.
Although Pezeshkian shares these ideas with other members of the “war generation,” he and others took a slightly different path after the end of the war in 1988. While still distrustful of the US and its allies, Pezeshkian and others want to establish a collaborative and non-confrontational relation with them. In the 1990s, they became also disappointed with the economic, social and cultural failures of the Islamic Republic. Pezeshkian and others started to see how society was changing rapidly, often through the eyes of their own daughters and sons. These changes gave rise to the rise of the so-called reformist movements in the 1990s, and the surprise election of the reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami in 1997. Pezeshkian joined Khatami’s first reformist government (1997-2001) as Deputy Minister of Health and his second one (2001-2005) as the Minister of Health. During the relative political and cultural opening of this period, newspapers flourished, the public space changed with the opening of parks, cafés and galleries, and women, students and workers started their own organizations and publications.
I think that Pezeshkian’s ideas have been shaped by his participation in Khatami’s reform government and his realization that Iranian society has changed. However, his ideas also have been shaped by the conservative backlash that undermined Khatami’s government. Reformist newspapers were shut down, intellectuals were arrested, and student protests were attacked. Pezeshkian also witnessed how this repression intensified, and how the reformists and Iran’s civil society at large were undermined following the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in respectively 2001 and 2003. The fear of war paralyzed many ordinary Iranians, while the conservatives instrumentalized the threat of war to militarize politics and to justify the repression of reformists and social protests. I think that Pezeshkian’s cautious or “realist” reformism, is shaped by these experiences.
Q: Pezeshkian is an Azeri who grew up in Kurdistan province speaking Kurdish. What does that suggest to you about his outlook or appeal?
During his election campaign, Pezeshkian spoke at gatherings in Iran’s Azeri and Kurdish provinces, addressing the audiences in their own language. He also called for the improvement of the position of ethnic minorities in Iran, in line with his more calls for relatively more inclusive policies. This is quite important due to discriminatory politics that have marginalized many Iranians from especially Arab, Kurdish and Baluchi backgrounds. But Pezeshkian has been silent on the rights of religious groups, such as Sufis, Jews, Christians and Sunni’s. More than any other minority, Baha’is have faced terrible discrimination and repression in Iran, but Pezeshkian has also remained silent on them. His silence is either because he agrees or is indifferent to the repression of these groups, or because he fears to cross the red line of conservative Shia politicians and clerics. On the positive side, he has appointed a Kurdish, Sunni minister in his cabinet, a unicum in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Q: The U.S. Attorney General has alleged that Iran attempting to influence our election through cyberattacks targeting both the Trump and Harris campaigns. Iran’s government denies the allegations. But do you think it’s likely they are attempting to influence the election, and if so, what do you think they are trying to gain by doing it?
While Iranian officials have denied these allegations, several sources, including Microsoft and the FBI have exposed election interference through misinformation and phishing by Iran-linked websites and hackers, which have mainly targeted the Trump campaign. As explained above, Iranian officials have been enraged by President Trump’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Deal and the economic sanctions he imposed on Iran. Their anger was further fueled by the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 at Trump’s order. They fear that Trump’s return to the White House will further increase the tensions with the US and lead to more American support to Iran’s adversaries – Saudi Arabia and Israel. There is also a tit-for-tat element involved as Iranian officials accuse media outlets and organizations directly or indirectly funded by the US of interference in Iran’s domestic politics. While Iran’s election interference has been limited and amateurish, it has increased in recent months and is part of a larger trend in which the role of other countries, including Russia, is visible as well.
Peyman Jafari's work focuses on the intersections of energy, labor and the environment in global capitalism, with a regional focus on the Middle East. He joins William & Mary from Princeton University, where he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. Jafari holds a PhD in history from Leiden University. His current book project examines the social history of oil during the highpoint of modernization in Iran in the 1970s, the 1979 revolution, and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. His next project, “Oil Frontiers in the British and Dutch Empires: Land, Labor, and Environment in the Making of an Imperial Oil Regime, 1890-1940,” is supported by a grant from the Dutch Scientific Council.
