Iran’s presidential race lost one more candidate Tuesday but gained a new script: reformist leaders uniting behind relative moderate Hasan Rowhani to boost his once-improbable shot at victory.
Former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani fell behind Rowhani after a rival moderate bowed out in attempts to consolidate reform-minded forces battered by years of crackdowns.
The move forced hardliners and conservatives favored by the ruling clerics to consider anointing their own unity candidate or risk having Friday’s election slip away.
“Rowhani now has the best situation among the candidates,” said Saeed Leilaz, a Tehran-based political analyst. “He will win the election on Friday.”
But reformists still have major challenges ahead after former Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref’s withdrawal from the presidential race.
Rowhani’s backers must persuade their flock to go to the polls rather than boycott a vote many allege not to be free and fair. Iran’s election overseers last month pruned the list of would-be hopefuls to eight candidates, most of them loyalists favored by both the theocracy and the military.
Among those cut from the candidates list was Rafsanjani, angering many reformists who believed only he had the stature to defeat the hardliners. Rafsanjani praised Aref’s decision to withdraw in favor of his protege, Rowhani.
“Rafsanjani was really the only choice to re-energize reformists,” said Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian affairs analyst at Strayer University in Virginia. “Rowhani only got their support because he is seen as Rafsanjani’s man and a vote for Rowhani was a vote for Rafsanjani.”
Rowhani, a 64-year-old cleric and former nuclear negotiator, rejects outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s combative approach in world affairs and sides with Rafsanjani’s view that Iran can maintain its nuclear program and ease tensions with the West at the same time.
Although all key decisions in Iran are ultimately in the hands of the ruling clerics, Rowhani’s ties to the influential elder statesman Rafsanjani could give him more latitude to sway viewpoints if elected president.
But a significant number of opposition backers also say they are now more interested in a capable fiscal steward such as Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as Iran’s economy sinks under international sanctions and alleged mismanagement.
And more hardline candidates could well pull out of the race and rally around one of their own, such as current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Rowhani currently is set to face off against five conservative candidates including Jalili.
Beyond shaping the candidates’ list, Iranian authorities also have kept an extremely tight lid on any possible dissent. They keep close watch for impromptu political rallies and try to choke off the Internet and foreign-based satellite TV channels such as the BBC and Voice of America.
Nevertheless, Hamid Reza Shokouhi, an editor at the pro-reform Mardomsalari newspaper, said Aref’s withdrawal could boost turnout.
“It not only will move his supporters in favor of Rowhani, but it will also convince disappointed voters who didn’t want to vote,” said Shokouhi, adding that many had planned to boycott since “they saw no chance for either Aref or Rowhani to make it to the run-off because of the vote split.”
The election will choose a successor for Ahmadinejad, who under the law cannot run for a third term. It is also a major test for Iran’s clerically dominated establishment after Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 re-election. That vote unleashed the worst domestic unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Many university students and other reformists remain imprisoned following a massive crackdown.
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