The Iranian presidential election is a sham. This is not because the vote will be fixed in the manner of African or Soviet-style dictatorships. It is a sham because it does not matter who is president. The battle between the so-called reformist incumbent Hassan Rouhani and four other candidates is meaningless. The international political analysts dancing excitedly around the hustings are being fooled and if they are any good, very probably know it. Power rests with ayatollahs, led by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Whoever wins Friday's vote will get all the presidential trappings and a limited amount of patronage and influence. But nothing substantive will change in Iran unless Khamenei says so. And Khamenei is a hide-bound conservative whose prime concern is to preserve the power of the deep state created by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and perpetuated by a coterie of ayatollahs ever since. Iranians may imagine that they have a choice this week but many of them also realize that it is hardly a free choice. The original six candidates could only stand after they had been vetted and approved last month by the Guardian Council, made up, of course, of ayatollahs. Much is being made of the decision by Tehran's ultra-conservative mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf to withdraw from the contest because he does not want to split the hardline vote. He has told his supporters that they should now back conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, the only candidate who it is said, has a chance of defeating Rouhani. But while the international media obsesses about this election, more seasoned observers are stifling a yawn. As the rule of the religious establishment approaches its 40th anniversary, for ordinary Iranians, remarkably little has changed in the country. This is not true, however, of the elite gathered around Supreme Leader Khamenei, in particular the top echelons of the Revolutionary Guard, who have always presented themselves as the spearhead of the revolt that overthrew the Shah and the Pahlavi dynasty. For them and the religious establishment, the long years in power have produced spectacular opportunities for self-enrichment. Despite economic sanctions over the country's nuclear weapons program, top members of the regime and their acolytes have become extremely wealthy. Indeed, the US-led sanctions probably assisted this enrichment. Corruption and cronyism have always flourished under the ayatollahs but the economic straitjacket imposed on the regime produced new opportunities for payola with sanctions busting and a thriving black market. When he won the presidency four years ago, Rouhani vowed to attack corruption. He must have known then that his promise was empty and that obstruction from the entrenched regime would mean that he would be about as effective as a street cleaner without a broom. Every once in a while the Revolutionary Guards allow some corrupt official or businessman to be prosecuted for graft, so that hard-pressed ordinary Iranians have the illusion the rich and powerful are not getting away with it. But such trials are fig leaves and the suspicion is that the accused are probably actually in the dock because they did not pay enough or kowtow sufficiently to key regime figures. Therefore after Friday's vote, nothing fundamental will have changed. Iranians will know in their hearts that they have once more been cheated and shortchanged by the entrenched ayatollahs and their minions.
