Mahan Abedin is an analyst of Iranian politics, educated at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Checkmate! Thus ran the headline of the hard-line daily Kayhan following Iran's February 20 parliamentary elections. The elections for the seventh Majlis (parliament) represent to the conservatives what the 2000 elections for the sixth Majlis signified to the reformers - near total victory. But the Kayhan headline also alluded to a broader implication of the sham elections, which represent not just a temporary electoral setback for the reformers, but a decisive defeat for the reform movement that emerged after the presidential victory of Mohammad Khatami in 1997.

The elections do not represent a radical departure from the factional politics of the Islamic Republic. In the next few years politics in Iran is likely to revert to the familiar left/right factional divide, but the reformers will not figure prominently in the equation.

Moreover, contrary to the views of some outside observers, the ascendance of a minority right-wing regime in Tehran is unlikely to produce major changes in Iranian foreign policy or spark substantial domestic upheaval.

Western media reports about the Iranian elections have focused mainly on the most proximate cause of the conservatives' landslide victory - the disqualification in January of 3,533 out of 8,144 prospective candidates by the Council of Guardians, a 12-member body appointed directly and indirectly by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Although some of the disqualifications were later reversed, most prominent reformist candidates, including some 80 incumbent Majlis deputies, were barred from standing for election. The magnitude of the council's action was unprecedented, surpassing even the purge of Islamic left candidates prior to the 1992 elections.

However, Iranian reformists were privately preparing for defeat even prior to the Guardians' purge. They had suffered a resounding defeat in the February 2003 municipal council elections, despite the fact that the vast majority of their candidates were allowed to stand.[1] Although reformers blamed the defeat on low voter turnout, voter apathy was itself an outgrowth of public disillusionment stemming from the failure of President Mohammad Khatami to deliver on his core promises of more civil rights and greater transparency and accountability in government.

The reformers faced an uphill battle against entrenched hard-line interests. Over the past four years, the conservative-dominated judiciary shut down over one hundred reformist periodicals and jailed hundreds of liberal political activists, journalists and students. Numerous pieces of reform legislation were approved by parliament only to be vetoed by the un-elected Guardians Council.

Although reformers captured the vast majority of parliamentary seats in 2000 and Khatami was re-elected the following year with 78% of the vote, both declined to use this popular mandate to mobilize the public. At time when they could have drawn tens of thousands of supporters into the streets, the reformers declined to organize political rallies, preferring instead to wrangle with hard-liners within the halls of government. Even when the futility of working within the system had become readily apparent to all, the reformers were unwilling to play the most powerful card in their hands - mass resignation, which might have forced the hand of hard-line clerics. "Reform outside the establishment will fail," Mostafa Tajzadeh, a leading reformer, told an assembly of student activists in November. "In our society, being outside the establishment means radicalism and passivity."

The failure of the reform movement was rooted in its conception. The original ideologues of reform were a group of security and intelligence personnel who recruited elements of the Islamic left for the reformist project. This nexus was rooted firmly within the regime and had few organic ties with society at large. There are no organized platforms of reform outside the circles of "state" reform. Indeed the largest reform body, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), is largely run by incumbent reform deputies. There is some tentative organization in the student movement, but it is wracked by divisions and heavily penetrated by a myriad of security agencies. Although the students are often portrayed as the most politically savvy stratum of Iranian society, some of their leaders have a poor understanding of the complexities involved in developing a democratic polity.[2]

The reformists were less interested in representing the public interest than in promoting their own vision of the Islamic Republic. Saeed Hajarian, the chief reform strategist, declared that the primary aim of the reformist movement was "to turn the enemies of the system into critics and critics into supporters." In short, the people wanted massive change, while the reformers were careful not to violate the political and cultural norms of the Islamic revolution.

This lack of organic connectivity between the reformists and the wider public did not pose problems in the first few years as both parties were buoyed by the retreat of the regime's hardliners. The problems started when the conservatives began their onslaught after the 2000 parliamentary elections. As the reformers showed an ever-increasing propensity to retreat from a confrontation with the conservatives, an expectations gap developed between their ranks and the wider public.

The Coup

The miserable condition of the reformist coalition was made even more evident during the month-long political crisis prior to the elections. The initial reaction of the reformers to the Guardians Council decision was unusually robust. Some 130 Majlis deputies, a number of senior cabinet members, and all 27 provincial governors submitted their resignations (a largely symbolic move, since Khatami and Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karoubi refused to accept them). Posturing of this kind, followed by appeals to Ayatollah Khamenei, had compelled the Guardians Council to reverse disqualifications in the past.

This time around, however, there was to be no dramatic volte-face. Once this became apparent, the veneer of reformist strength and unity shattered. Eight of the original 22 groups in the 2nd of Khordad reformist coalition decided to go ahead and compete in the elections and lay claim to a rump reformist bloc in the new parliament. A number of well-known reformers who were not disqualified stayed in the race, including Karoubi, Jamileh Kadivar, and Soheila Jelodarzadeh. Khatami personally appealed to the public to vote in the elections, but turnout was not high enough even for Karoubi to keep his seat.

Those reformists who chose to boycott the election were still discredited by the fact that they had been unwilling to take such strong measures until the four-year-old conservative onslaught finally threatened their own re-election. By the time the noose finally closed around the reformers, the public had already grown indifferent to the plight of those who over-promised and under-delivered.

In light of the dismal electoral prospects of the reformist camp on the eve of the vote, the central question raised by the crisis is why the Guardians Council conducted the most extensive electoral purge in the republic's history if conservatives were already confident of victory. The so-called coup d'etat of the Guardians was really a coup de grace as it saved the reformers from experiencing a humiliating defeat in the polls. Some conservative candidates were privately furious with the Guardians, as they were confident of winning election fair and square. The power of the purge lay in its symbolism - it was intended to underscore in no uncertain terms that the reformist experiment in government was over and signal the unification of the Islamic regime.

The idea of a unified regime is an oxymoron, as the governing elite in Iran has long been composed of a multitude of ideological factions across the classic left/right divide. In the early years of the revolution, the regime attempted to conceal its inherent divisions through the creation of the Islamic Republican Party (IRP). Although the IRP was designed to render the two main clerical factions superfluous,[3] it instead accentuated these divisions and was finally dissolved in 1987.

Hard-liners are aware that the factional and coalitional nature of the regime cannot be overridden; what concerns them is that the past seven years have institutionalized these factional divisions - their position is that this reality must remain implicit as it is important for the regime to boast a veneer of unity and cohesion to the outside world. Moreover conservative elements resent the divide being represented along conservative/reformist lines. They would much prefer the old Islamic right and Islamic left dichotomy.

The really important question is whether this spells the end of reform. "If you interpret reform as a movement within the government, I think yes, this is the end," says Reza Yousefian, a reformist MP barred from defending his seat. "But if you regard it as a social phenomenon, then it is still very much alive."[4] This is, at best, an optimistic assessment. Given the lack of organized platforms of reform outside the government, it is difficult to envisage the reformers making any mark on Iranian politics for the foreseeable future unless they narrow the aforementioned "expectations gap."

The New Conservatives

Interestingly, the conservatives campaigned on a platform to improve economic conditions, while avoiding the promotion of religious ideology. This was epitomized by the name of the broad conservative coalition: Abadgarane Iran-e-Islami (Developers of Islamic Iran). Right-wing political groups employed sophisticated campaign strategies to bolster conservative electoral chances. The main political movement associated with conservative business interests, Jami'at-e Motalefeh-e Eslami (Islamic Coalition Society), led by Habibollah Asgarowladi, did not field any candidates of its own in the elections, opting instead to support "moderate" Abadgaran candidates. Taking another cue from Western electoral strategists, the conservatives fielded some popular celebrity candidates, such as wrestling champion Amir Reza Khadem and Saeed Abutaleb, a well-known documentary filmmaker (who became even better known after he was detained by American forces while filming in Iraq).

The electoral strategy of the conservatives underscored that they are not unresponsive to public opinion. Some reformers predict that the new conservative deputies will have little option but to support policies adopted by the outgoing sixth Majlis to satisfy public demands and promote economic welfare.[5] In any event, the conservatives are unlikely to use their invigorated power to increase repression, which would unnecessarily alienate an already demoralized public.

Some observers have suggested that conservatives may seek to legitimize their rule by seeking a rapprochement with the United States. Since a majority of the population appears to support normalization of Iranian-American relations, the reasoning goes, this would be an "easy" crowd pleaser (in comparison to solving the country's social and economic ills). Moreover, such a breakthrough would validate one of the main rationales offered by conservatives for their recent coup - that a unified decision-making process is more likely to impress the United States.

However, while there is certainly a debate among conservatives about normalization of Iranian-American relations, it is doubtful that Iran will accommodate US demands regarding its sponsorship of anti-Israeli terrorist groups or alleged nuclear weapons program. These demands may well intensify, as the rise of a more authoritarian regime is likely to embolden critics of the Islamic Republic in the United States. Iran, for its part, is unlikely to grant such concessions at the best of times, let alone during a period when the system is undergoing its gravest legitimacy crisis in 25 years. While conservatives are eager to garner public support, they are unlikely to marginalize their core constituency - Islamic zealots who view normalization as anathema.

The misfortunes of the reform movement do not necessarily imperil the future of the Islamic left, particularly the Majmae Ruhaneeyoone Mobarez (Forum of Militant Clergy) that constitutes the historical pillar of this faction. Leading personalities in the FMC are likely to distance themselves from the reform movement and revert to their old discourse - championing economic reform and social egalitarianism within the existing political framework. This will further weaken the reform movement, as the FMC has lent significant organizational, moral and financial support to the "state" reformists over the past seven years.

The broadest implication of the parliamentary elections is that they have dramatically underscored the failure of Iran's mullahs to graft Islamist ideology with the institutions of a modern democratic state. For all the elections the Islamic Republic has held over the past 25 years and all the gesture politics and sloganeering revolving around the theme of "Islamic Democracy," alternations of power in the Iranian government are still determined in secret by a handful of clerics.[6] The reformist Spring in Iranian government was less an outgrowth of societal forces than a political experiment approved for a time by hard-line clerics who have now seen fit to end it. A vestige of this experiment will remain for the final year of Khatami's lame duck presidency, but the Guardians Council is unlikely to permit a credible reformist candidate to stand in the 2005 presidential election.

Notes

  [1] While Municipal elections are not subject to the oversight of the Council of Guardians, nevertheless the candidates are vetted by special committees of the Interior Ministry who liaise extensively with the Ministry of Intelligence and the judiciary.
  [2] Author's discussion with student leaders in the Economics Faculty of Tehran university, August 2002.
  [3] These are the left-wing Forum of Militant Clergy and the right-wing Society of Militant Clergy. Both bodies boast numerous affiliate parties and organizations.
  [4] Analysis: What now for Iran?, BBC, 23 February 2004.
  [5] Iran Daily, 25 February 2004.
  [6] See "Can Iranians change their political system?" William Samii, International Herald Tribune, 16 January 2004.