Soccer Dad

The iranian election

The Washington Post profiles one of the contenders for President of Iran, Mir Hossein Mousavi. The profile, while mentioning Mousavi's past as part of the revolutionary government generally tires to paint him as a Western style politician, one who represents "hope and change."

"Mousavi will make us free," a girl shouted from a car Saturday night, waving at the masses of young supporters. "I don't really know who he is. But he is the only one that can beat Ahmadinejad."

Those close to Mousavi, who is also an architect, describe a worldly intellectual who is not hungry for power but who thinks that Iran's bad economy and international isolation require him to try to effect change. Others, however, accuse Mousavi of having played a pivotal role in the purging of pro-Western professors and students in the first years of the Islamic revolution.

But most Iranians say that Mousavi, like many of the founders of the Islamic republic, has changed. They say the dogmatic hothead who wanted to spread the Islamic revolution around the world has become a pragmatic politician who firmly believes in Islamic governance but also has called for greater freedoms and civil rights protections.

The New York Times in its profile of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a backer of Mousavi, seems a little less enthusiastic.

The bitter exchanges have underscored the surprising vigor of Iran's limited democracy. The country's theocratic rulers weed out all but a few ideologically acceptable candidates before each election. But within those confines, the races are hard-fought and unpredictable.

Maybe Rafsanjani is less sympathetic than Mousavi, but the point that anyone running for President has to be "ideologically acceptable" is an important point. Con 'Coughlin wrote yesterday:

As a result of the Guardian Council's intervention, Iran's voters are left with a Potemkin election in which the survival of the guardians of Khomeini's Islamic revolution is guaranteed. And just in case there was any possibility that the Internet generation might be tempted to mobilize disenchanted voters, the authorities have taken the precaution of closing the Facebook Web site for the duration of the campaign.

So is there any difference among the candidates? Barry Rubin writes:

There's one other extremely important point on which Ahmadinejad is misunderstood. It is true that he does not control the government. The most powerful man in Iran remains the supreme guide, Ali Khamenei. But Ahmadinejad, allied with powerful current and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers, is building his own apparatus. In the future, he could well emerge as the uncontested leader of Iran. For the moment, though, it is enough that he has the regime's backing.

Ahmadinejad, then, if re-elected has the potential to become the most powerful man in Iran. That doesn't necessarily mean that his rivals are more moderate, but that they might derail his ambitions. Perhaps that is the main dynamic here.