Iranian elections, 2016: who are the moderates?
Iranian voters have chosen a host of reform candidates in their recent election, and this would seem like good news. Many writers are treating it as such (see this, for example).
Others are not the least bit sure. Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary is certainly one of them, and his take on it contains a few details I hadn’t been aware of before this election:
We already knew that in Iran’s faux democratic system, a Guardian Council controlled by Khamenei vetted all of the possible candidates for office and disqualified virtually all those who had any real inclination to transform the country from a theocratic tyranny into something less awful. So, no matter what Rouhani or anyone else might say, the election winners that are called “moderates” in accounts of the vote are not actually moderate by any reasonable definition.
Bloomberg’s Eli Lake explains the reality of the election in a piece in which he points out that one of the victors considered a reformer is the same person who has called for the execution of leaders of the Green Movement that led protests against the regime in 2009 that ended in bloodshed and repression. Two others are former intelligence ministers that murdered dissidents. Others on those lists of moderates have made it clear that they resist the label and consider themselves part of the Islamist mainstream that supports the status quo. What apparently has happened is that faced with the disqualification of all of their candidates, reformers have endorsed others that do not share their views. That gives them the opportunity to declare victory today but is meaningless in terms of the impact of the vote on the future of Iranian society.
Please read the whole thing. The question of what is an Iranian “moderate” and who actually controls the country—and who will control it in the foreseeable future—is an important one in understanding what might be happening there. One thing of which I’m fairly sure, though, is that the election expresses the will of many of Iran’s people to take the country in a more moderate direction, a desire they’ve had for years and one that’s been thwarted for a long time.
No fanatical theocratic regime will ever willingly yield power to any other faction. As their fanaticism cannot admit to any other POV having even the slightest validity.
As far as I recall, the more moderate presidential candidates have won in every election in modern Iranian history. There’s definitely dissatisfaction. Whether there’s deep dissatisfaction, I don’t know.
Nick:
Where were you several years ago when the Iranian people started the real “Arab Spring” that Obama and Hillary aborted by sitting on each other’s hands, brains and morals?
Prior to the Ayatollahs’ coup, thanks to Jimmah Cahtah, the Iranians were pretty modernized and Westernized. They still don’t support the religious lunatics, but can’t oppose them publicly.
“(T)he more moderate presidential candidates…” relative to whom and what? You don’t even get a chance to run if the Ayatollahs don’t approve in advance. Was Ahmadinejad really the “moderate” in his “election” campaigns? And who counts the votes in Iran anyway?
Simply put, Cons must moderate the Iranian Political sphere by war or financial control. Nations who guillotine the quorum of their leadership in order to radicalize their perceived freedoms, quite like the French stray to the far left and begin to tear off pieces of their founding constitutions and the institutions thereof. Iran should build upon their Persian legacy, their Ottoman ideals and prowess, not prey upon themselves as autophagii and attempt to destroy the globalization of the planet by nuclear fire. They are unprepared for the end of religion in their region and seek to blame Israel, Neocons as opposed to cons, must seek to liberalize the debate in Iran in order to create a double reversal back to the beautiful and worthy Persian contribution to humanity.