Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reason to worry. The presidential elections held in Iran were conceived and designed by the system as a competition between two of its wings - the pragmatic-conservative, represented by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the religious-principalist, whose favorite was Said Jalili. However, the victory of the reformer Masoud Pezeshkian, a long-time member of parliament in the country's Mejlis and a heart surgeon by profession, edited the accounts of the country's political engineers.
Pezeshkian's success alone is not a cause for Khamenei's headache. Iran's new president will have to function against the backdrop of an institutional environment dominated by the hardliners stationed in the country's Majlis, the Supreme National Security Council and the Ayatollah himself. This is a balance of power that cannot be won by Pezeshkian. In chronological terms, the president of Iran has always lost the battle with the Ayatollah and the latter's institutional extensions, as the experience of the reformer Mohammad Khatami, the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the moderate Hassan Rouhani shows. Moreover, Pezeshkian repeatedly stated in the campaign that he will be faithful to the political framework set by the system. The reformer does not even have a serious political and electoral back that he can rely on, unlike the mentioned previous presidents, which makes him even more vulnerable to the arbitrariness of the hardliners in the country. And in the example of the Islamic Republic's recent history, control of the presidential institution by reformist or moderate forces is also not anathema, insofar as it provides the system with some flexibility, especially when someone has to pay the price for the regime's mismanagement. It was in this way that both Khatami and Rouhani bore responsibility for policies that were far from their doing. When the problems in the economic and political management in the country are many, it is convenient to have a scapegoat. In this sense, Pezeshkyan will enter in already well-worn shoes, and the system has thrown a controlled "fire" another time.
Therefore, Ali Khamenei's reasons for concern do not come from Pezeshkian, but from elsewhere. The point is that the broad coalition between conservatives and hardliners, whose common foundation is shared support for the Islamic republic's theological underpinnings, simply did not work in this election. Although the loser of the first round, Ghalibaf, supported Jalili, he did so half-heartedly and with the apparent lack of any enthusiasm (against this background, his campaign manager said he would vote for Pezeshkian). The misunderstanding between Ghalibaf and Jalili was so insurmountable that even the mediation services of the head of the foreign policy unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ismail Kaani, failed to quell it during the election campaign. Ahmadinejad, who is already in serious conflict with the Ayatollah, demonstratively found an excuse not to vote, going in the meantime on a working visit to Turkey. People close to Ali Larijani also declared their support for Pezeshkyan, which was probably a form of protest against the former speaker of the Parliament not being allowed to participate in the presidential elections. In fact, the data has yet to show what the electoral behavior was in the second round of people who identify with the system and would otherwise have voted for one of Ghalibaf, Ahmadinejad and Larijani. How, for example, did the voters of the former president react from the period 2005 - 2013, bearing in mind that they, on the one hand, are socially conservative, but on the other hand, being from the lower strata of the social stratification, pay the most -the big economic cost of managing the status quo? And while we should not get ahead of the coming empirics, Jalili's results indicate that quite a few supporters of the system boycotted the ayatollah's candidate (either by not voting, by undervoting him, or even by supporting his reformist opponent). And this is important for Ali Khamenei, since it was Jalili who was ideologically closest to him among the candidates allowed to compete. That is, it was a test for the Ayatollah himself. The question then is that if Ibrahim Raisi's victory three years ago was a success for Khamenei, then Jaili's loss must be a success for Khamenei as well.
Pezeshkian's victory is not a function of some electoral eruption expressing the anti-Semitism attitudes of the country's population. They, the people who are against the system, don't vote en masse anyway and even criticize the reformers who participate in the electoral process. Nor decisive for Pashinyan's success was the support that the heart surgeon and parliamentarian received from iconic reformist figures (such as former President Khatami) or that of moderate politicians such as Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif (especially the latter was the driving force behind Pezeshkian's campaign, as the latter otherwise he failed to impress with his performance in the regular televised debates).
The triumph of the heart surgeon is the result above all of the lack of sufficient motivation among the electoral cores of the supporters of the system, the aforementioned conservatives and hardliners. In the presidential elections scheduled for 2021, Ibrahim Raisi won decisively with 48.5% voter turnout (since the 1990s, in presidential elections in the country, it has varied between 57% and 85%). It was then a bitter victory for the system and its favorite for president, as on the one hand the Ayatollah's candidate finished first, but on the other, it happened against the backdrop of a growing electoral boycott by Iranian citizens. That is, Raisi's victory three years ago deepened the rift between legalism and legitimacy of Iran's political system.
But Jalili's loss yesterday demonstrates something else. For once, the percentage of people dissatisfied with the government - embodied by the ayatollah and his recently anointed head of the presidential institution - has increased, even though this same electorate continues to identify with the system. Second time, if Khamenei's favorites have lost presidential elections before, it did not happen with such a low voter turnout, which usually guarantees the success of the hardliners. Taken together, these two things mean the following: Jaili's loss is the result not so much of the (standard) discontent of reformers in the country, but of conservatives and hardliners. This is not an external but an internal protest for the regime. This is also the quiet rebellion against which Khamenei is facing. And here the baton is not a solution.
If we can summarize, it was the Ayatollah who registered a triple loss in the just held presidential elections in Iran. Once again, a low voter turnout for the country of about 49-50% in the second round (given that Ali Khamenei meanwhile again declared that every vote in the elections, regardless of who was cast, is a vote "for" the Islamic Republic) . The second time, his favorites - Jalili and Ghalibaf - suffered defeats. And to lose with relatively widespread apathy of the electorate means the following: people do not believe in the choice given to them, and the majority of citizens who do go to the polls vote against those who take away their choice to the greatest extent . Third time, dissatisfaction with the status quo emerged, but this time coming from the people on whom this status quo relies electorally.
And if a major part of the balance sheet of the past presidential elections concerns the condition of the conservative and hardliner conglomerates in Iran, rather than that of the reformers, who remain disunited and weak, including because of the latter, Pezeshkian's success should not be downplayed. In fact, the clash of the runoff between him and Jaili was between the two extremes permissible for the system: the first wanted its "loosening", the second - its additional tightening. In this sense, the reformer's victory is a clear message from the people to their political leaders. Especially against the background of the fact that Pezeshkian was thrown into the elections as a "straw", and it turned into a rod in the hands of the Iranians.
However, it would be naïve if Massoud Pezeshkian's success is burdened with unjustified expectations. He ran a cautious campaign in which he promised more freedom - either in browsing the Internet or in wearing the hijab. However, it is debatable whether this will also be according to his capabilities, as he will be placed between the hammer (Ali Khamenei) and the anvil (the conservative-principalist majority in the Majlis). And judging by the experience of politicians like Mir Hossein Mousavi, who promise more freedom in Iran, they end up rather losing theirs.