Who will win the Iranian presidential election today? The answer is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of course. Even if the first round results in an inconclusive outcome, and a second round is held on June 21, the supreme leader of the revolution remains the pre-eminent winner. There are eight candidates vying for the post, each approved by the supreme leader. While there are differences between the one and the other, with each attempting to seem more or less stringent than others, they have all declared their allegiance to the supreme leader and the Islamic revolution, and their respective positions on the nuclear program and the Syrian uprising are identical. Such is the state of the presidential election in Iran, which Ayatollah Khamenei insists is democratic and rejects any foreign or local criticism of it. Since he does not want a repeat of the protests and violence following the election of 2009, when the reformists accused the regime of rigging the vote in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he this time chose to have eight candidates with different names, but who all champion the same policy. This negates the freedom of choice, which is the basis of democracy. There is no polling organization in Iran like Gallup or Pew, but I read frequently the results of local public opinion surveys that produce conflicting results. One survey gave Saeed Jalili a slight advantage, while another gave Mohammad Ghalibaf 32.7 percent versus 28.7 percent for Jalili. A US pollster conducted another survey of Iranian public opinion over the phone, and produced results completely different from everything from within Iran. The pollster put Ghalibaf ahead with 39 percent of potential votes, and he seemed to be well ahead of other candidates among women and young people. The same poll gave Jalili no more than 13.9 percent. Remarkably, 57 percent of the respondents said they had not yet decided who they were going to vote for today. There were three televised debates among the eight candidates, most recently last Friday. The first two debates were uninteresting, as the candidates remained cautious and did not deviate from their talking points. By contrast, the last debate saw some fierce sparring. Hassan Rohani, who was the first Iranian nuclear negotiator after the country's nuclear program went public in 2002, accused Jalili, the current negotiator, of squandering opportunity after opportunity. Jalili then responded by mocking Rohani's record in previous negotiations. I tried to find traces of information or even subtext in this debate, but the focus was mostly on exchanging accusations rather than on domestic or foreign policies. Personally, I believe Rohani is in a good position, given the support he has among the reformists, while the conservative camp remains divided. Regardless of all the above, it is likely that some of the candidates will not survive to the end (Mohammad Reza Aref has already pulled out, for instance). Apart from Rohani, there is competition between Jalili and Ghalibaf. The first was in the Revolutionary Guards and participated in the first Gulf War and still bears its scars, He is also the chief nuclear negotiator. The second is a former police chief and mayor of Tehran since 2005, a post in which he succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His record in running the capital has earned him the support of the majority of its population. Nevertheless, it is difficult to distinguish between a candidate and another. Indeed, they are all in favor of the nuclear program and further enrichment of uranium. For instance, Jalili rejected a Western offer to keep enrichment within the 20 percent threshold in return for lifting some of the sanctions, and made his slogan "no settlement, no submission." But this is also the same slogan of all other candidates, as it is originally the slogan of Ayatollah Khamenei, who declared many times that Iran would never submit to the dictates of the ‘Powers of Arrogance.' The victory of this ‘Khameneist' or that, no difference, will supposedly be followed by a new round of negotiations with the ‘P5+1' countries – the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. But there is no logical reason a neutral observer should expect this round to have a different outcome from any previous one. To be sure, all Iran is doing is buying time for itself, while Israel incites against it and threatens to take unilateral military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, and while the Obama administration focuses on sanctions. The US rejects direct military intervention against Iran, as it knows this would have repercussions in the whole region. In the meantime, Iran celebrated what it sees as a ‘victory' in Qusayr. In truth, this is another issue that the outcome of the election will not affect. Indeed, Iran and Hezbollah will continue fighting alongside the Syrian regime against the opposition, because losing in Syria would spell the end for all dreams of Persian hegemony in the Arab region. [email protected]
