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.

For Washington, obsessed with matters Iranian, it may be hard to accept a simple fact: Iran’s Jun. 14 presidential election is an Iranian event. If we attempt to make it about us, we will find ourselves on the same road that has previously led to multiple failures: Iran-contra; “goodwill begets goodwill”; and a non-existent two-track policy.  

In other words, we will continue the futility of the last three decades when we thought we could pick winners and losers in Iran’s elections or become involved in the country’s internal politics. If we do the same now, we will again get tied up in knots of our own bad assump­tions and uninformed decisions."In Washington, officials dismissed anything - reasonable or not - with Ahmadinejad’s fingerprints on it." – John Limbert

So what, if anything, should the United States do and say about Iran’s election?

First, we should shut up about everything but the basics and stick to the universal principles of good government.

We should not help the Islamic Republic make the election about us.

The ideologues in Tehran would love to paint a vote for this or that candidate as a slap in the face to “world arrogance” (the U.S.), or to portray a candidate who advocates rationality as an U.S. agent.

Second, if we must say something about the election, we should say as little as possible and choose our words cautiously.

To begin with the obvious, the election will give Washington an opportunity simply because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will no longer be in office.

As long as he was, his outrageous statements on the Holocaust, Israel and other mat­ters made him too toxic for U.S. officials to deal with on any issue and at any level. In Washington, officials dismissed anything – reasonable or not – with Ahmadinejad’s fingerprints on it.

Of course late-night comics and those who would turn the Islamic Republic into a superhuman threat to civilisation will miss him.

His love of the absurd and his divisiveness made him a liability even for his own countrymen, who criticised him for talking without thinking and for his needless provocative rhetoric that could drag Iran to destruction.

The reality is that the Iranian president has almost always been a minor figure in Iranian politics. True power lies elsewhere, and the sooner the president accepted his unimpor­tance, the smoother his tenure would be.

Even Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, reportedly complained about his powerlessness when he was Iran’s president from 1981 to 1989.

Real change will come not when one Iranian figurehead replaces another. It will likely come with the end of Iran’s senior clerical elite and the network of financial, judicial and security institutions it controls.

It’s worth noting that the group of about 25 oligarchs who have held the key positions in the Islamic Republic since 1979 is now much smaller, and that one of its key figures – former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani – has taken the unlikely role of outsider.

But those members of the men’s club who do remain – including figures such as Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati, and Ali Khamenei himself – continue to wield consi­derable power.

Thus far they have shown little inclination to change either the foreign or domestic policies that have kept them in their palaces for the past 34 years.

The U.S. would certainly like to see free and fair elections in Iran. But until that blessed day arrives, we will have to deal with a less ideal world.

If the Jun. 14 Iranian election is ultimately “good enough” (that is, if it is better than Iran’s 2009 election and no worse than the 2000 U.S. presidential election), President Obama should send a note of congratulation to the winner.

In that note he should chose his platitudes carefully and avoid gratuitous insults like “odious regime”, “change your behaviour” or “stop support for terrorists”.

Judicious language about “mutual respect” and “mutual interest”, which the president used in the first years of his administration, puts the ideologues of the Islamic Republic in a most uncom­fortable place.

Although they know well (with more than 30 years of practice) how to respond to American insults, thoughtful U.S. language discredits their rhetoric and neutralises their anti-U.S. slogans.

After all, how can the Islamic Republic make a believable enemy of someone who seeks discussions based on “mutual respect”, something the Iranians have always said they want as a condition of engagement?

I am always optimistic that the U.S, and Iran can somehow end their unique 34-year estrange­ment – an estrangement that has done no one any good and threatens to descend into an armed conflict that neither side says it wants.

A recent “Iran Project” study, endorsed by three dozen former U.S. officials and scholars, says of the U.S.-Iran relation­ship: “The [American] goal would be to build a practical relationship that could over time help the United States achieve its principal objectives without resort to force.”

Such a relationship would be a major break with the past three decades of hostility and ex­changes of empty slogans, threats, insults and occasionally worse.

That break, however, is unlikely to happen as a result of this June’s Iranian presiden­tial election.

There was no break in the U.S.-Iran estrangement even after Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997, although both sides lowered the volume of their rhetoric for a time and spoke about “dialogues” and “roadmaps”.

At that time the two countries began exchanging artists, scientists, and sports teams, but somehow those worthy programmes did not result in any change at the political level. Wrestlers and filmmakers came and went, but the silent treatment and hostility remained among officials.

So what should the U.S. do or say about the Iranian election?

Keep focused on our own goal, which, as the above-noted study says, is to achieve principal American objectives without resorting to the use of force.

Doing so requires saying as little as possible and ensuring that official statements emphasise the principle that Iranians, like the rest of us, deserve a govern­ment that does not steal elections and allows its citizens to express themselves without fear of the club and the goon squad. Everyone will get the point.

*John Limbert is Class of 1955 Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. During a 34-year diplomatic career, he served in Tehran (where he was a hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 1979-81) and, in 2009-2010, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern (Iranian) Affairs.

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.

The last-minute entry of former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani into the presidential polls set for Jun. 14 has inspired vastly different reactions in a conflicted Iran.

Chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Credit: Amir Farshad Ebrahimi/cc by 2.0

Those calling for change hail his candidacy as a hopeful sign. Deeming his entry a response to serious societal demands, even many reformists think that as a centrist, Rafsanjani is the best choice for changing the direction the country has taken under the eight-year presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Prior to his decision to enter the fray, representatives of many groups, including the business community and university students and professors, had met and appealed to Rafsanjani to run. Even many reformists and supporters of former president Mohammad Khatami thought that Rafsanjani would be a better candidate to challenge the conservatives’ hold over the country.

Ali, one of the protesters who took to the streets after the 2009 disputed election, considers Rafsanjani the best choice since “he is faithful to the foundations of the Islamic Republic and [the 1979] revolution and also has sufficient personal power to create not only a balance in the relations between the president and the Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], but also return the country to a normal situation with the collaboration of the latter.”

Likewise, many in the business community see Rafsanjani as the right person to rectify what they consider to be the “economic mess” Ahmadinejad’s administration has created.

One source, who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, said, “Hashemi [Rafsanjani] has the experience of reconstruction after the [Iran-Iraq] War, and the current destruction is nothing less and perhaps even more than the destruction during the war, and there is a need for someone who can take charge of the situation.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, former president Khatami also described the country’s situation as critical in the face of the lack of popular trust in the government and the external threats that confront it. He called on his supporters to “understand this historical moment… and stand on Mr. Hashemi’s side.”

But this is only one face of Iran. Rafsanjani’s entry has so disrupted the calculations of his opponents in the conservative camp that they spared no time in attacking him and his record in unprecedented terms.

If, in the 2005 and 2009 elections, it was only Ahmadinejad who spoke against Rafsanjani, now many potential conservative candidates are using anything they can get their hands on to attack him, even suggesting, in some cases, that they are doing so on Khamenei’s behalf or to protect the Leader against the threat posed by Rafsanjani’s candidacy.

One of those potential candidates, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, who used to be a member of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), went so far as characterising Rafsanjani’s return as “militarism”. He did not explain what the phrase meant precisely, but described Rafsanjani’s conduct since the end of his presidency in 1997 as wholly negative.

“In the debates, Mr. Rafsanjani has to explain his conduct to the people for the past 16 years,” he asserted, apparently referring to the alleged challenges Rafsanjani has posed to Khamenei’s authority.

Gholamali Haddad Adel, another potential candidate who is deemed close to the Leader, implied in an interview with Fars News that Rafsanjani has been engaged in “sedition” and said that his supporters are the same ones who voted for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mussavi in 2009 and then attempted to undermine the system by protesting against the results of the disputed election.

Even Ali Akbar Velayati, who served as Rafsanjani’s loyal foreign minister during his presidency, accused his former boss of not taking “the position he should have taken” in 2009 and “in those circumstances not remaining on the side of the Leader.”

Given the support and excitement Rafsanjani’s candidacy has generated among various groups, these reactions are hardly unexpected. No one doubts that his entry will impact the race in significant ways. Although public opinion polls taken inside Iran are not considered reliable due to the lack of transparency regarding their methodology, one conducted by Iran Student News Agency (ISNA) suggested that Rafsanjani had moved past Khatami and others in terms of popularity as a candidate by receiving the support of 30.5 percent of over 10,000 respondents.

But while criticism of Rafsanjani is considered fair game, the question of whether Ayatollah Khamenei actually approves of the extent to which conservative candidates are questioning Rafsanjani’s loyalty to the Islamic Republic is a source of great speculation. After all, as the Khamenei-appointed chair of the Expediency Council, Rafsanjani remains a high-ranking official. Accusing him of sedition in such a public manner is unusual even for the raucous politics of the Islamic Republic.

This is why some close observers of Iranian politics are not convinced that Khamenei has given the green light for such destructive criticism. At the same time, his silence has opened the path for everyone to attack.

According to a Tehran University political science professor who spoke to IPS on the condition of anonymity, Khamenei’s silence has allowed “those who want to climb the ladder of power to think that the easiest way to move up is to claim absolute obedience to the Leader and then use that as a prop to attack their political opponents, many of whom are long-standing and experienced officials of the Islamic Republic.”

Rafsanjani seems aware of this phenomenon and, in his first statement after registering his candidacy, lamented tactics that have forced “experienced managers of the Islamic Republic to sit at home.” In this statement he identified his campaign slogan as e’tedal Alavi (“moderation” with Alavi being a reference to the political conduct of the first Shi’ite Imam Ali) and thus affirmed his apparent intent to bring many of those managers and officials back into the government.

This call for moderation against the “extremism” that has taken hold of the country also appeals to a number of traditional conservatives with strong ties to the business and clerical communities. Many of them have also been pushed out of power during Ahmadinejad’s tenure.

Indeed, one conservative politician who did not want to be identified questioned the charges being made by his colleagues that are amplified in the media, insisting that Rafsanjani’s return does not pose a serious threat to Iran’s Leader.

“Despite the different views that Mr. Hashemi has, he will maintain respect for the position and standing of the Leader. But temperament-wise he is the only one able to bring back equilibrium to the power system of the Islamic Republic,” the politician said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Credit: sajed.ir/GNU

By Yasaman Baji
TEHRAN, May 7 2013 (IPS)

As the five-day registration period for presidential candidates began here Tuesday, the question of whether Iran’s upcoming election will represent the will of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or the people of Iran is uppermost on many people’s minds, including those of the potential candidates.

In the crowded field of former and current officials who have declared their intent to run, many have already made a point of declaring their total allegiance to the Leader’s dictates. For instance, the repeat presidential candidate, conservative Mohsen Rezaee, promised on Apr. 1 that his administration will be “the most coordinated administration” with the Leader ever.

Even some reformists, who are known to be critics of the Leader, have called for the candidacy of someone who will not provoke Khamenei’s opposition or sensitivities.

Abbas Abdi, a reformist journalist, goes as far as identifying the candidacy of former president Mohammad Khatami as a mistake, saying “Khatami has not had a meeting with a leader for the past four years. How could his presidency be possible?”

But this is not a position taken by many other reformist individuals or groups. Since mid-March many individuals and groups, through public letters and meetings, have called upon Khatami to become a candidate. Their call is premised on Khatami’s popularity and the belief in the continued attractiveness of his ideas and conduct as president.

Similar calls have been made for former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to run. Neither of the past presidents has committed himself, and both have said that they will not run unless the leader agrees to their candidacy. Their argument has been that, without such a nod, the political environment will just become too contentious and tension-ridden.

In Rafsanjani’s words, “if Ayatollah Khamenei does not agree with my candidacy, the result will be counterproductive…If there’s a situation where there is a difference between me and the leadership of the state, all of us will suffer.”

In fact, mere talk of runs by Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani has led to overwrought accusations on the part of hardliners.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the intractable editor of the hardline Kayhan Daily, called Khatami “corrupt on earth” and a “supporter of sedition,” a reference to his backing of former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi who remain under house arrest due to the protests that followed the 2009 presidential election.

According to Shariatmadari, “supporters of sedition… will undoubtedly be disqualified.”

In turn, the hardline minister of intelligence, Heidar Moslehi, went after Rafsanjani, calling him “the source of sedition.” His language was so harsh that it elicited a response from several members of Parliament who scolded the minister for his overt political involvement and accusations against someone who continues to serve as the chair of the Leader’s own advisory council.

No one doubts that these attacks are intended to intimidate the two former presidents. Whether Khamenei himself is behind them is also a subject of much speculation. After all, Shariatmadari is appointed by Khamenei, while the minister of intelligence was protected from being fired by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad through Khamenei’s personal intervention.

Even more fundamental is the question of whether the upcoming election will once again turn into an arena of confrontation between the presumed desired candidate of the Leader and the one chosen by society, as many believe was the case in the 2009 election when Ahmadinejad was swiftly declared the winner.

While the protests have long since ended, many voters continue to believe that there was extensive fraud in 2009. Furthermore, given his ardent support for Ahmadinejad’s re-election, many hold Khamenei responsible for the downward economic spiral the country has faced and their own economic woes.

In the words of a 73-year-old taxi driver, “I used to believe in Khamenei, but when I saw that he wants everything for himself and is ready to take the country into ruin in order to insist that he made the right choice, I no longer support him. Every day I curse him for the sake of the youth in this country.”

Talk about potential runs by Khatami and Rafsanjani had created hope that Khamenei might have finally seen the mistake he made in 2009 and become willing to entertain honest competition among a whole slew of candidates representing the diverse sentiments of society.

But the harsh attacks by Shariatmadari and Moslehi have again created doubts about the potential for a fair election and Khamenei’s calculations.

According to a well-known novelist who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity, “Khameni wants us to back down and acknowledge his leadership as a principle of the constitution but when we back down, he wants more. When we say we accept the constitution, his supporters say it is not enough to accept his constitutional role; you have to completely give in to his leadership.

“When we say we will participate in the election, they say we must recant our actions in 2009. But he himself is not willing to take any responsibility or acknowledge mistakes for the mess Ahmadinejad has created in the country.”

Reformists are no longer the only critics. A prominent conservative who wished to remain anonymous told IPS that he considers Khamenei a failed leader who has tried to become like the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

This conservative politician believes that Khamenei has never understood the two main differences he has with Khomeini. “First of all Khomeini was a charismatic leader who had an organic relationship with the society while Khamenei has an organisational relationship,” he said.

“Secondly, Khomeini was clever enough to accommodate popular sentiment even if they were against his own wishes while Khamenei obstinately and vindictively stands against them.”

Many citizens who participated in the 2009 election and continue to think that their vote was “stolen” will not vote in the Jun. 14 election. But everyone will be watching to see whether Khamenei will again insist on having his wish become the choice of the country.