In Iran, there’s division and distrust. Next year’s election will decide what path the country follows

Navid Karimi and his friends voted in Iran’s parliamentary election four years ago, determined to get the hardliners out and the reformists in. Fifteen months later they were equally fervent in their support of president Hassan Rouhani against his conservative opponent, Ebrahim Raisi.

They regarded Raisi, a former judge in the “death commissions”, as a dangerous populist reactionary.

“He is talking like [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, who came along saying that he would clean up corruption and look after the poor. But my father warned me, don’t even think of voting for Raisi. Remember what happened with Ahmadinejad,” said Navid. “No, I am sticking with Rouhani”.

One of his friends, Ibrahim, nodded. “Ahmadinejad set us back 20, 30 years; we are only just beginning to get over him.”

Not going back to the time of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a refrain one heard often at the time. Iran’s signing of the nuclear deal with international powers meant to be a sign of its opening up to the world again. Navid, 23, had spoken of his plans to me on a previous visit of getting a well-paid job with his engineering degree, go on a road trip to the US and avoid dying fighting in Syria.

But storm clouds were already gathering with the election of Donald Trump and the economic uncertainties caused by his threat to pull out of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action). Navid was yet to find a job; the road trip, the result of being introduced to Jack Kerouac by an uncle educated in Illinois, was not going to happen anytime soon with the uncertainties surrounding Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban. But he has had one success, he pointed out with a rueful smile – avoiding conscription and being sent to Syria.

President Rouhani came under ferocious attack from the hardliners during the campaign. Raisi and his team hammered the message time and again that the agreement with the west weakened national security, that the US and its allies could not be trusted.

But the supporters of reform stood by him and he won a comprehensive victory.

Ahmadinejad had wanted to run at that election, but was barred by the powerful Guardian Council, which vets candidates. Tentative arrangements for an interview with a few journalists were abruptly cancelled.

A few days later came Donald Trump’s first official foreign trip as US president to the Gulf and Israel. He used it to try and sell arms against the supposed Iranian threat and also declare economic war on Iran.

The parliamentary election I covered six months ago in Iran was very different from previous ones. The hopes that the country would be transformed by the gains of the nuclear deal had faded with the Trump administration imposing punitive sanctions and continuing the campaign to dismantle the nuclear deal.

The economy was in a parlous state. There had been sporadic but widespread street protests. The assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) by the US, and then the shooting down of an Ukrainian airliner above Iran, had raised real fear of a conflict erupting.

Only relatively small crowds turned out to vote this time; the mood was subdued and sombre with deep apprehension about what an uncertain future would hold. Anger and frustration was directed towards politicians at home as well as adversaries abroad.

Many of those who had queued up so eagerly to back the liberals in the past, like Navid and his friends, stayed away. Some even came to vote and then turned back, like Amir and Mariam Sharifi.

“Who is to blame, the government or American sanctions, I would say half each,” said Amir Sharifi, who owned a car dealership and lived in the more affluent and liberal part of the capital. “Of course the sanctions have caused a lot of problems, but the politicians must also bear responsibility for the corruption and the inefficiency.”

His wife Mariam added: “We really don’t think anything much can be changed by us voting, so we have decided not to vote this time. We are going back home, we are not going to waste any more time here.”

The result of the election was a crushing victory for the hardliners. They took every seat in Tehran and won a significant majority across the country. The turnout was the lowest since the 1979 revolution, hovering at just 42 per cent, compared to 62 per cent in the previous election. The figure fell to 25 per cent in the cities, where the electorate had previously helped to put the reformists in power.

Iran continues to go through a grim time, badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic to add to all other problems. There’s division and distrust. Next year’s presidential election will decide which path the country follows.

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran and former police chief, who came top in the capital with more than 1.2 million votes, is the new parliamentary speaker and is seen as a flag-bearer for the conservatives.

But someone else is now pushing himself into the political fray. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have embarked on a campaign to position himself as a possible presidential contender next year.

Ahmadinejad has sent a letter to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, suggesting a road map out of the war in Yemen. Copies had been sent to the Iranian foreign ministry and Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthi forces in Yemen, and UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia bear responsibility for the conflict and must work together to find a solution, said Ahmadinejad. “This war has no logical or clear reason behind it, this is a product of some rivalries and also some international interventions, within the level of the region and beyond,” he declared.

It is not just Saudi Arabia, the great Sunni rival to Shia Iran in the region, who Ahmadinejad believes should be engaged in dialogue, but also the “Great Satan”: the US. “I passionately believe that nations should live together in friendship and peace. Wherever there is difference, wherever there is war, it is against human nature,” he wanted to stress.

Ahmadinejad had made pronouncements on international affairs in the last few years, especially on social media, and the Yemen letter can be viewed as another attempt at making himself look important. But it is garnering him the publicity he needs to make a push in politics.

It would not be easy. Ahmadinejad has fallen out with the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who had initially supported his presidency, and there is no sign of a rapprochement between the two men.

According to some, Ahmadinejad had repeatedly sought to meet the ayatollah, only to be rebuffed. Abbas Amirifar, a cleric who was a cultural adviser to Ahmadinejad when he was president, said, “For three years Ahmadinejad knocks on every door and begs to get a chance to meet the leader, but they do not give him an appointment.” Yet at the same time a website associated with Ahmadinejad, called Dolatebahar, published allegations about the supreme leader’s supposed acquisition of a vast fortune and accused him of silencing critics.

Whatever happens, Iran will have a new president next year; Rouhani cannot run for a third consecutive term under the constitution. The situation is volatile and it remains unclear how pressures such as the pandemic, and its economic consequences, will shape events.

An election taking place elsewhere will also have a great impact on what happens to Iran. A Joe Biden presidency after November’s US election is likely to lead to significant changes in some aspects of American foreign policy, something a number of governments around the world are aware of. Ahmadinejad’s call for renewed dialogue with the US, in this context, could be an astute move.

The scenario of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the comeback kid remains a long shot, but we are living in strange times. And also, let’s not forget, there were not many people who could have predicted 10 years ago that Donald Trump would become president of the United States.