In this year’s Iranian parliamentary elections, that took place in February and resulted in the victory of the hard-liners, the voter turnout was 42.6% (the lowest since the 1979 revolution with the rate as little as about 25% in the capital). This record low rate was a normal prognosis of the current political setting in Iran.
First, there is a big chunk of dispirited voters among the electorate with calls for a boycott after the Guardian Council, which determines which candidate qualify for the elections, disqualified thousands of reformist contenders including 90 members of the then current parliament. This public anger is as well a result of the widespread repression of human rights and intolerance of dissent the regime exhibited during the November protests triggered by the hard economic situation and the Iranian responsibility for the death of Iranians on board of the Ukrainian plane.
Second, the coronavirus was outbreaking in Iran during the elections time, and there were international media speculations about that, while the Iranian regime denied anything of the sort at that time to encourage people to go to the ballots. Remarkably, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said “this negative propaganda about the virus began a couple of months ago and grew larger ahead of the election” arguing that the international media does not miss the opportunity for dissuading Iranian voters from going to the ballots.
The current hard-liners’ victory will no doubt pave the road or their victory in the presidential elections of 2021 particularly with the blatant support the supreme leader is giving them. It is no secret that the current position of Conservatives in the Iranian political landscape cannot be more contrasting to their position in the 2016 when the parliamentary elections resulted in the victory of Reformists with a majority of the seats after securing the presidency as well in 2013 elections that brought Rouhani to power. They were alienated and with this election they are dominating. During the reformist era led by Rouhani, the Conservatives were striving to obstruct Rouhani’s attempt to reach a nuclear deal with world powers and particularly the US. However, despite their attempts and with the help of Obama’s diplomacy, Rouhani was able to reach the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the US, UK, Germany, France, Russia and China. With that milestone, the Iranian regime generally and the reformist cohort inside the regime particularly, breathed fresh air as this move did not only improve their domestic standing among the Iranians with the sanctions lifted, but also eased the international isolation that characterized the Iranian regime for a long time. However, this transpired into something very different following the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016. This is because the Trump administration viewed the JCPOA as appeasement and in 2018 delivered a death blow to the reformist current and much of Rouhani’s influence by withdrawing from the agreement.
Pursuing his maximum pressure approach, Trump imposed sanctions increasingly on Iran hoping to force the later to re-negotiate the agreement, while Iran refused to sit on the negotiation table before the sanctions are lifted. This dynamic pretty much characterized the conflict with brinkmanship; the strategy to push things to the brink of a war but stopping short of it. Things took a dramatic turn when the US targeted Iran’s most prominent commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone attack in Baghdad and Iran retaliated by launching missile attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq and many speculated a potential war. But again, it was brinkmanship, and the situation was contained very short of a war.
In the meantime and with the advent of the hard-liners there many speculations about a change of game in Iran’s politics vis-à-vis the US with a field limited to competition among the various groups inside the hard-liners camp, with the Reformists fully marginalized.
They will be pursuing a détente for the following reasons:
- The ultraconservatives’ domination would mean that they no longer be able to blame the country’s dire economic situation on Rouhani and the Reformists. Weakened by a U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign that has choked vital oil exports, Iran’s fragile economy alienated many Iranians. It became a struggle for ordinary Iranians to make ends meet has become harder since re-imposition of U.S. sanctions, which combined with the rising inflation, growing unemployment. And in fact, the current Coronavirus situation had brutally exposed the damage that had been done to the Iranian economy from these sanctions. These factors combined leaves the Iranian authorities with few options particularly because the establishment’s core support comes from lower-income Iranians, who joined anti-government protests in November over a sudden hike in fuel prices. The unrest reached the height of demanding a “regime change”. While the Revolutionary Guard responded with a harsh crackdown that saw hundreds killed and thousands jailed, but the unrest was a case in point in proving to the regime how vulnerable to popular anger over economic hardship.
- The killing of their chief military figure Qassem Soleimani sent a vigorous message to Iran that the US is capable of and willing to hit them hard and that if they kept their heads in the sand about the power differential they will be enduring a very difficult economic situation that erodes their legitimacy at home and still wont spare them the US offensive moves. In fact, the decision to target kill Soleimani was made to retaliate for the killing of an American by an Iranian attack and more strategically to induce moderation inside the Iranian power circles.
- Before the Aramco attacks of September 2019, Iran was more or less appeased by the European powers (UK, France and Germany). However, after Aramco their international isolation grew exponentially because the three joined the Saudi-US camp that calls for the revision of the JCPOA. With the international momentum building on the American side it is probable that Iran will sit on the negotiations table with the US with no pre-requisite condition having no potential mediators to pressure the US on its behalf.
- Beside its growing international isolation there is an unfolding rolling back of the regional Iranian influence in the Middle East not only because of the death of the mastermind of their regional network of militias, but as well because of the protests against it taking place in Iraq and Lebanon. Two countries Iran had for long, particularly after 2011 viewed as consolidated strongholds of its regional influence. This roll back in power will eventually weaken Iran’s negotiating position because being a key resourceful regional player was one of its main bargain chips vis-à-vis the US.
