Last updated: 14/04/08
Shaken, not Stirred

Elizabeth Davies examines the recent Iranian parliamentary elections; what the results mean for the country and the west’s view of Iran’s politics.

As current campaigns go, it was unexciting; and certainly compared to Iran’s own political history, the results of the March 14 elections to the Majles (Iranian Parliament) seemed totally uninspiring. Yet go beyond the basic results (‘Conservatives Win Iran Parliamentary Election’, declared Sky News in a deceptively succinct manner) and Iran’s capacity for generating sustained interest amongst political junkies is self-evident.

The country’s leaders often claim that the Islamic Republic is woefully misunderstood, and although this is useful rhetoric domestically, it is also a pertinent international warning.
Iran is an embodiment of misconception and self-contradiction. Despite its location in the complicated area of the world we like to lump together as the ‘Middle East’, Iran’s people are not ‘Arabs’, do not speak Arabic, and in fact have a culture, history and religion totally distinct from that of the Arab world. Iranians speak Farsi, and draw their roots from the ancient Persian Empire, whose capital, Persepolis, is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site and also forms the title of a new critically-acclaimed and Oscar-nominated film based on a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi about her experiences of the 1979 Revolution.

Most significantly, until Azerbaijan (which shares a border with Iran) gained independence from the USSR in 1991, Iran was the only country in the world with a Shia Muslim government reflecting the religious orientation of its people. Over 90% of Iranians follow the Shia branch of Islam, which makes it a country with a unique religious makeup and helps to explain its historical antagonism with neighbouring Iraq.

Commentators also like to stress the level of political and social repression within Iran and yet, despite state crackdowns on freedom of speech, Iran has one of the world’s most active blogging communities. After a young Iranian journalist published a how-to guide to blogging online it exploded in popularity, with books like Nasrin Alavi’s We Are Iran published to give Western audiences a taste of the Iranian blogosphere. Similar contradictions are reflected in the more mainstream political scene, which is why it is unhelpful to view the recent elections as a black-and-white victory on behalf of the ‘conservative’ wing of Iranian society. As a relatively new system still attempting to find its feet, any Iranian political event should be viewed with regard to the dynamics underlying it.

Since a 1951 CIA-backed coup reinstalled the shah, the Iranian monarch, over the popular leader (and still-celebrated hero) Mohammed Mossadeq, Iranian politics has been characterised by resentment of foreign interference in their affairs.

This resentment has simply seemed more pronounced since the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President. Ahmadinejad’s election came as a complete surprise, beating ex-President and enduring political heavyweight Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a fight seen as pitting the hardliners against the more moderate aspects of the regime.

Mohammad Khatami, the previous President, had been a leading reformer, advocating a “dialogue among civilisations” in foreign policy instead of the traditional post-revolutionary suspicion - but after his reforms failed to produce any noticeable change for suffering Iranians, popular approval swung to Ahmadinejad’s side.

On the surface of it, the recent Majles elections seem to affirm the popularity (or at least the stranglehold) of the conservatives among the population. However, the results actually indicate an interesting split within conservative ranks, which could have important implications for the next Presidential election, to be held in 2009, and for Iran’s position in the world. Contrary to what is usually suggested, Iranian politics is not based on some kind of ‘radical Islamic’ agenda (whatever such an agenda would actually consist of).

Most big fluctuations in Iranian politics have occurred because of economic problems, and now the BBC’s media monitoring inside Iran shows a concerted effort by the hardline press to place the onus on the Majles to deliver - and the New York Times quotes analysts who say that they anticipate this Majles standing up and challenging President Ahmadinejad, particularly when it comes to economic policy.
The outcome was portrayed as a conservative victory, because they appear to have soundly beaten reformist candidates (whose key figures were disqualified from standing anyway), even in constituencies like Tehran, where moderate feeling usually runs high. But the real victors from the March elections were those who call themselves, perhaps oxymoronically, ‘reformist conservatives’ - allies of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who has already begun to voice his reservations about Ahmadinejad in public. These politicians view the President as a populist demagogue following unpragmatic policies, and are determined to do something about Iran’s complete reliance on its oil revenue, the roughly a quarter of its population unemployed, and rising inflation.

One key figure in this faction is Ali Larijani, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, who resigned from his post in October 2007 citing personal differences with the President. He won his Majles seat in Qom, Iran’s religious capital, with over 75% of the vote, fuelling speculation that he may attempt a Presidential challenge next year. If this is the case, Iranian politics will remain extremely relevant for the foreseeable future.

Yet one thing, of course, has not changed. As Jon Leyne, the BBC’s man in Tehran, puts it, “the conservatives…are firmly in the driving seat” - whatever the hidden dynamics hinted at by the results, one thing is certainly clear: whoever is depicted as winning, the fundamental character of the regime does not look likely to be transformed.