Iranians vote today in the run-off round of a presidential election offering a choice between a veteran hardliner and a reformist who has backed pragmatic cooperation with the west – but against the backdrop of an expected low turnout that critics say reflects opposition to the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s two identities were on display in the final rallies of the campaign as the two presidential candidates offered contrasting visions of their country’s prospects, focused on whether sanctions have trapped Iran or are just a broken western lever that can no longer inflict damage to the economy.
The contest has become distilled into an increasingly sharp choice: on the one hand Saeed Jalili, for two decades close to the centres of power and the 85-year-old supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and on the other Masoud Pezeshkian – a reformist outsider with a subtle appeal.
Jalili says Iran has bypassed sanctions. Pezeshkian and his effective running mate, the former foreign minister Javad Zarif, claim that sanctions mean Iran has been bypassed.
Jalili’s campaign used the giant Imam Khomeini Mosalla mosque for its final event – a slick hi-tech cinematic mass rally. From the atmosphere it would have been hard to have known that in the first round of the elections a week ago only 39% voted and Jalili had been beaten into second place with 1m fewer votes than Pezeshkian.
Videos of the Jalili campaign broadcast on six giant screens gave the impression of a leader that is being mobbed and praised wherever he goes, while mini-drones ran along lines in the ornate roof transmitting footage of the crowd’s enthusiasm as celebrities sang in Jalili’s praise, including a female actor who argued the hijab empowers women.
Traditional songs were sung and slogans chanted in praise for Qassem Suleimani, the former leader of the Revolutionary Guards Quds force killed in Iraq by the Americans. The crowd waved the flashlights on their phones when told Jalili was on his way and by the time there was a first glimpse on one of the screens of a shock of Jalili’s white hair, the volume of cheering meant it took at least five minutes between him being hoisted by his bodyguards on stage and the opening lines of his speech.
He said in his address that the election result would not affect Iran for just four years but possibly for 40, portraying his rival as a man that had no confidence in his own nation and repeatedly attacking Pezeshkian’s claim that the country is trapped in a cage.
“The nation does not see its country as a cage but like Martyr Suleimani it sees the country as a sanctuary.
“The enemy knows that this nation is a civilisation maker and that it gets what it wants and can become a model for the world. The enemy admits Iran is the most powerful country in the region and if hundreds of rockets are fired at Israel, the enemy dare not respond.”
Pezeshkian’s rally later that evening in the open air Haidarnia stadium was perhaps half the size – a younger wealthier crowd arriving independently on foot and willing to tell the heavy police presence they did not want the “morality police” around here. Women and men mixed together in the stands and on the pitch, and hardly a single chador was in sight, even if most women wore the hijab.
A heart surgeon with a record of opposition to the suppression of the women, life, freedom! protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, Pezeshkian knows he is entering a minefield if he is elected. He has staked a huge amount on his personal integrity to try to convince abstainers it is worth voting and that as president he can effect change. He knows voters’ experience of eight years of Hassan Rouhani, an earlier reformist, was of a president seemingly powerless in the face of the so-called shadow government.
“If I try my best and if for any reason I cannot fulfil my commitments I will withdraw and ask people to withdraw their votes and I will no longer take part in politics,” Pezeshkian pledged.
His supporters have argued on social media that abstention will only lead to worse censorship online, more girls being beaten, more professors fired and more migration of young people. “Those who think they send a message by not voting are making a mistake. If your message was meant to be heard by the authorities it would have been heard by now,” one said.
Dr Ebrahim Mottaghi, the head of the faculty of law and political sciences at Tehran University, said he believed Pezeshkian would win, with a small increase in turnout. “It is like a domino because more people realise after the first ballot in which Pezeshkian came first that he can win the presidency.”
Khamenei on Wednesday rejected the claims that a 39% turnout was an expression of opposition to the system. Mottaghi’s explanation was more subtle: that Iran was in a phase of transition. “Just as there is a gen Z in US and the UK, there is a new generation here that criticise everything, and cannot match themselves with the patterns of politics and authority here,” he said.
“They live like in the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, alienated and indifferent to their fate. Gen Z in the US support Gaza because the authorities support Israel, but Gen Z here are indifferent to the killing and genocide of the Palestinians. Discourse is no longer through the mosque or family but instead through social networks. Instagram is banned in Iran but 90% of young people use it. It has restricted social coherence throughout the Middle East.
He argued many voters feel their vote makes no difference. “As in The Stranger, voters feel they have no power to choose so they become indifferent.”