The decision by the reformist candidate Mohammadreza Aref to withdraw his candidacy – and in effect open the path for the centrist Hassan Rowhani to become the unified candidate of both the centrists and reformists – is an important development in Iranian politics.

Its impact will reach beyond this election.

This isn’t only because the centrist and reformist forces, currently led by former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, respectively, have done what the conservative forces failed to do.

After all, the conservatives – or the array of forces known as the “Principlists” in Iran, also began with the idea of coalition-building in mind.

The trio – former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran mayor Mohmmad Baqer Qalibaf, and former Parliament Speaker Gholamreza Haddad Adel – had agreed that only one of them would stand on Election Day.

Today, however, only Haddad Adel has dropped out without specifying his preferred candidate.

Beyond Velayati and Qalibaf, other principlist candidates, including nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaie, remain in the race.

So now a splintered principlist field faces a candidate that has the backing of significant political and social forces; a candidate who may, just may, become president if the Iranian electorate decides to vote in larger than expected numbers and, of course, there is no ballot box-tampering.

Just this thought, for me, represents an amazing turn of events in Iran’s ongoing election saga.

But even if this form of strategising does not yield success for whatever reason, the process that led to this alliance is an important one, one that may have a lasting impact on Iranian politics.

Why? Well, first and foremost, it was a process that was initially pushed by the rank-and-file and then deliberated upon by a committee of Khatami advisors at the top.

In an interview with Mehr News, Ahmad Masjed Jamei, Khatami’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance, explained that after Hashemi Rafsanjani’s disqualification most committee members were thinking they would not participate in the election in an organised fashion.

Their views, however, changed because “news from the provinces” suggested that people “expected” the reformists to participate and choose one candidate to support in order to increase his chance of winning.

So by creating subcommittees, with identified membership, they began working on different tasks.

One subcommittee began talking to candidates as well as well prominent centrists such Hashemi Rafsanjani and former presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri.

Another developed an independent mechanism for polling to see which candidate is doing better as he presents himself to the public through state-controlled media as well as campaign rallies.

This resulted in the reformist decision to support a candidate who is not explicitly running as a reformist because of his better chances.

It took a day or so to convince Aref but once Khatami publicly stepped in and asked him to step aside, Aref did as he had said he would if the reformist leader made the request. Aref is now being declared a man of honor and his word.

And yesterday, both Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani came out in strong support of Rowhani.

Khatami released a video in which he asked people to vote, to create a wave.

He said not voting is of no use, even in a very flawed electoral system.

He shunned idealism and explained why the choice was “rationally” made in the face of the Guardian Council’s disqualification of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Khatami is usually framed as a timid leader who has a hard time leading.

This time around, though, the reluctant leader was moved to action with pressure from below and coordination and advice by a group of aides, all in a rather public and transparent way.

There was no guarantee that it would work. In fact, many assumed that it would not. But it was tried and led to results.

The message is clear: there is a good sector of the Iranian society that wants the reformists to stay in politics, not by only lamenting what is being done to them, but by actively strategising to counter the array of tactics and maneuvers that are marshaled to prevent their rightful claim to political power.

This alliance – win or lose – is a declaration that the centrists and reformists are here to stay and cannot be purged.

The traditional approach to rejection – which essentially involved going to one’s corner and merely lamenting the unfairness of the electoral process – was not practised this time, in Masjed Jamei’s words, because of pressure from below, which demanded participation in the competition for power.

In both Aref and Rowhani’s rallies, the call for unity was loudly demanded, as was the call for Khatami to lead and help bring about the alliance.

Well, Khatami did it, using a rather deliberate and transparent process that took time and made many rank-and-file reformists nervous.

But he, and the process he relied upon, came through with a big bang, allowing him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Hashemi Rafsanjani who also said yesterday that even Nateq Nouri, who was the so-called system’s candidate in 1997 and lost to Khatami, will support Rowhani.

Meanwhile, the Guardian Council’s spokesperson, Abbasali Kadkhodai, had a meeting with representatives of the 6 remaining candidates, assuring them that “every vote will be read”.

We will have to wait and see.

But even if every vote is read, Rowhani’s success is not guaranteed if reformist and centrist voters – the most disaffected voters after what happened in the 2009 election – do not come out and vote.

In any case, an example of what successful politics on the part of those seeking change in Iran can look like was just put on display for future reference.

With the disqualification of former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by a vetting body, the Guardian Council, Iran’s presidential campaign is opening with many in the country in a state of shock.

Although the eight qualified candidates offer somewhat of a choice given their different approaches to the economy and foreign policy, the disqualification of Rafsanjani has once again raised the spectre that the conservative establishment intends to manipulate the electoral process in such a way that only a conservative candidate will win when voters cast their ballots Jun. 14.

Rafsanjan’s candidacy, which received solid support from former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, had created hope among a section of the Iranian population — unhappy with the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — that a real contest over the direction of the country was possible.

In his first statement after declaring his candidacy, Rafsanjani had made clear that returning the country towards “moderation” and away from the “extremism” that had taken hold in both domestic and foreign policy was his objective.

His stature and name recognition had immediately catapulted him as the most formidable candidate against the conservative establishment.

The possibility that the Guardian Council would disqualify a man who is the appointed chair of the Expediency Council and an elected member of the Clerical Council of Experts was deemed unfathomable to many.

In the words of conservative MP Ali Mottahari, who had pleaded with Rafsanjani to register as a candidate, “if Hashemi is disqualified, the foundations of the revolution and the whole system of the Islamic Republic will be questioned.”

Rafsanjani’s unexpected disqualification poses a challenge for his supporters, who include centrists, reformists and even some middle-of-the-road conservatives such as Mottahari: who, if anyone, will they now support in the election?

The slate of approved candidates includes two individuals — former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani and former first vice president Mohammadreza Aref — who hold mostly similar views to Rafsanjani.

In fact, both had said that they would withdraw if Rafsanjani’s candidacy was approved. But neither is as well known as the former president and they will now have to compete against each other in attracting likeminded voters.

Rowhani has chosen to run as an independent, while Aref is running as a reformist. While Rafsanjani’s candidacy had energised and unified the reformists and centrists, the campaign of these two lesser known candidates may be cause for disunity and/or voter apathy.

A third candidate, Mohammad Gharazi — who may also have centrist tendencies — is even less known throughout the country.

He served first as the minister of petroleum and then post, telegraph, and telephone in the cabinet of then-prime minister Mir Hossein Mussavi — now under house arrest after his 2009 presidential bid — and then in Rafsanjani’s cabinet when he served as president.

But since 1997, Ghazari has not held public office. Furthermore, no one really knows his views or why he was qualified when several other ministers with more recent experience were not.

Reformist supporters, already distraught over the previous contested election and continued incarceration of candidates they voted for in 2009, may see Rafsanjani’s disqualification as yet another sign that their vote will not count.

Apathy or abstention in protest among supporters is now a real issue for the centrists and reformists. This challenge may — and only may — be overcome if one of the candidates agrees to withdraw in favour of the other and the popular former reformist president Khatami throws his support behind the unified candidate in the same way he did with the candidacy of Rafsanjani.

But even this may not be enough. The reality is that the low name recognition of both candidates limits the impact of such political manoeuvring and coalition-building by the reformists, especially if the conservative-controlled security establishment makes campaigning and the spread of information difficult. Already Aftab News, a website affiliated with Rowhani, has been blocked.

This leaves the competition among the other five candidates who come from the conservative bloc. One, former presidential candidate, Mohsen Rezaee, is also running as an independent and is both the most likely to last until Election Day and the least likely to garner many votes.

It is the competition among the other four conservative candidates — Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former Parliamentary Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel, and current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili — that will in all likelihood determine the fate of the election.

If Rafsanjani had been qualified, there would have been an urge for unity among these candidates since, without such unity, the former president could have received the 50 percent plus one necessary to win in the first round.

Now, however, the same forces that had prevented the conservative candidates from rallying behind one candidate remain in play.

Polls published by various Iranian news agencies, although not very reliable, uniformly suggest that Qalibaf is the most popular conservative candidate because of his management of the Tehran megapolis and the vast improvement in the delivery of services he has overseen there.

But Qalibaf’s relative popularity has not yet been sufficient to convince other candidates to unite behind him. This may eventually happen after televised presidential debates if he does well in them and if Velayati and Haddad Adel drop out in his favour since, from the beginning, the three of them had agreed that eventually the most popular should stand on Election Day.

But there is no guarantee that this will happen. Velayati in particular has ambitions of his own and has implied that Leader Ali Khameni’s preference should be given at least as much weight as polls, giving rise to speculation that he is the Leader’s preferred candidate despite clear signs that he has not been able to create much excitement even among conservative voters.

Convincing the hard-line candidate Jalili to drop out in favour of Qalibaf will be even harder.

In fact, from now until Election Day there will probably be as much pressure on Qalibaf to drop out in favour of Jalili as the other way around in the hope that a unified conservative candidate can win in the first round, avoiding the risk of either Rowhani or Aref making it to the second round where the top two candidates will have to compete on Jun. 21.

Jalili is the least experienced — and well known — of all the conservative candidates and, in a campaign in which economy is the number one issue by far, there are real concerns regarding whether he is experienced enough to manage Iran’s deep economic problems.

But his late entry in the presidential race, minutes after Rafsanjani entered it, has also given rise to speculation that he, instead of Velayati, may be the Leader’s preferred choice.

What is not a subject of speculation is the fact that Jalili takes the hardest line of all the candidates.

His campaign slogan of “hope, justice, and resistance” suggests that he is the most likely to continue current policies, although perhaps with less bombast and populist flair than the current president.

As such, Jalili stands apart from the other seven candidates who will campaign on the need for both change and competent leadership.

Jalili jumped into the race at the last minute as a hard-line counter to Rafsanjani’s call for moderation. Ironically, with the latter’s disqualification, he now stands alone as the candidate whom others will try to mobilise voters against.