The sparsely attended parliamentary elections to the 11th ‘Islamic Majles’, and elections to the ‘Council of Experts’ charged with electing the next Iranian Supreme Leader, were conducted in a sombre atmosphere on 21 February, and inevitably yielded the exact results they were orchestrated to produce.
With moderate and progressive elements represented by the Rouhani government hugely discredited for ‘over-promising and under-delivering’, especially since the re-imposition of harsh U.S. economic sanctions in the aftermath of America’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, the overwhelming triumph of anti-U.S., hard-line conservatives generally opposed to the nuclear deal was preordained.
The only unexpected factor was the unprecedented level of manipulation on the part of the Khamenei camp to eliminate the presence of all dissenting voices either in parliament or more importantly in the Council of Experts, which is expected to play a crucial role in the forthcoming succession battle.
In an election marked by the lowest participation level in the 41-year history of the Islamic Republic (42.5% overall with only 26% in Tehran province), the Guardians Council – charged with vetting the credentials of candidates on the basis of their commitments to the tenets of the Islamic Republic as prescribed by the current Supreme Leader – had earlier ensured a conservative landslide championed by radical hardliners, by rejecting the credentials of more than 7000 reformist candidates wanting to contest seats in 290 districts around the country. In the end, the reformist presence of 140 was reduced to 19 with the conservative hardliners increasing their representation to 220 (with 40 independents and another 11 seats being decided in the second round).
Many in Iran had foreseen such an outcome as far back as May 2018, when President Trump first sealed the fate of the reformists by pulling the US out of the nuclear deal, and more recently sanctioning the killing of Ghassem Soleimani. Ironically, Trump’s unilateral exit from the JCPOA, and his harsh sanctions policy referred to as ‘Maximum Pressure’, not only strengthened Iran’s hardliners but thwarted U.S. attempts to secure a ‘new and better deal’ that addresses key additional issues such as Iran’s so-called ‘malign behaviour in the region’, or its ambitious long-range missile programme.
Nonetheless, notwithstanding U.S. frustrations at the impasse, the fact remains that the Iranian nation, owing to Khamenei’s intransigence, is losing revenues equivalent to 150-200 million dollars per day. Although ordinary Iranians might take some solace at their narrow escape from a full bloodied and devastating war with the U.S. – a war they could not have hoped to win – they fully realise their leaders are incapable of solving the root causes of their daily sufferings through rampant inflation, unemployment and corruption, for which the new conservative majority has no remedy other than brutal repression.