Iranian reformists try to mobilize voters through fear

Reform politicians have resorted to scare tactics ahead of Iran’s presidential runoff election, warning of the consequences of a hard-line victory in a bid to sway a silent majority that boycotted the first round.

Iranians will choose Friday between two opposing figures in the Islamic republic’s first runoff presidential election in two decades: Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist former health minister, and Saeed Jalili, an ideologically hardline pillar of the regime.

Pezeshkian surprised many by winning the largest number of votes in the first round last week, beating three hard-line rivals. But turnout was just 40 percent, the lowest in the republic’s history.

While Jalili now hopes to unite the conservative base around his candidacy, Pezeshkian, 69, and his supporters have sought to mobilize reformists by highlighting the stark choice facing voters, at least within the political confines of the Iranian regime. Analysts say the race is too close to call.

The vote comes at a critical time for Iran, which is grappling with simmering domestic pressures and heightened tensions with the West while preparing for the eventual succession of 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This week, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, a former cabinet minister and Pezeshkian backer, said Iran would not be allowed to “fall into the hands of the Taliban,” comparing Jalili’s candidacy to that of the Islamists who control Afghanistan.

Pezeshkian, who if elected would be Iran’s first reformist president since Mohammad Khatami two decades ago, warned last week that “untrustworthy, inexperienced and dangerous individuals” could turn Iran into “a giant laboratory for their bizarre ideas.”

“Join us this week in the second round…so that we can contain the calamity,” he said in a message posted on social media.

Jalili, 58, responded to criticism from reformists in a televised debate by saying: “Will it help to tell 10 million people (who voted for the hardliners) that you are the Taliban?”

A Jalili victory would consolidate the conservatives’ grip on all levers of state power, which has been the case since radical cleric Ebrahim Raisi won the 2021 election. The elections were called after Raisi died in a helicopter crash seven weeks ago.

Pezeshkian has hinted at a softer approach to social restrictions and pledged to engage with the West on Iran’s nuclear program to secure sanctions relief. But he has also reiterated his religiosity and loyalty to Khamenei.

His challenge is to convince millions of disillusioned Iranians that he would make a difference in a system where Khamenei holds ultimate authority and hard-line power centers, including the elite Revolutionary Guards, have significant influence over foreign and domestic policy.

The scale of the challenge is underscored by Roya, a 38-year-old accountant who last voted in 2017, when Hassan Rouhani was elected to a second term.

At the time, the Tehran resident hoped that Rouhani’s promise to use the 2015 nuclear deal to end the country’s isolation and revive a struggling economy would bear fruit. Instead, then-US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018 and imposed hundreds of sanctions.

Since then, Iran has sunk into deeper social and economic malaise, fueling waves of protests. When Raisi was elected in 2021, leading reformers were barred from running and turnout was 48.8% – a record for a presidential election at the time.

Roya, like many other reformist candidates hoping to attract support, now sees the elections as an opportunity for civil disobedience.

“I have to show that I am unhappy in some way,” said Roya, who asked that her real name not be used. Asked why she was unhappy, she listed several reasons: “The injustice, the lack of security we feel… the lack of transparency and the lies.”

This sense of injustice was exacerbated by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody two years ago, after she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. The 22-year-old’s death sparked nationwide protests, a brutal government crackdown and a hardening of anti-regime sentiment.

Analysts say this is one of the crucial factors, along with economic problems, that explain the low turnout, especially among urban women. In Tehran, a city of 10 million people, the turnout was only 23 percent.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist former vice president, acknowledged that attracting “disengaged voters is a difficult task.”

“Changing the atmosphere is very difficult for the reformists, and also relatively difficult for the hardliners, because it has not been easy for them to defend Raisi’s policies in recent years,” Abtahi said.

Indeed, in the first round, hardliners also appeared to struggle to mobilize their traditionally reliable base. Pezeshkian won the first round with 10.5 million votes, or 42.5 percent. But the combined vote total for Jalili, who garnered 38 percent, and Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the other leading hardliner, came to 12.9 million, 5 million fewer than Raisi received in 2021.

After coming in third, Ghalibaf threw his support behind Jalili, but reformists expect some of his voters to switch to Pezeshkian.

Fariba Nazari, a sociologist, believes that the legacy of Amini’s protests has also affected the turnout of conservative voters “who generally refrain from engaging in any opposition.”

“Many people have lost faith in the power structures to solve their problems, and it may be too late for candidates to restore that faith,” Nazari said. “I think many of them will not participate in Friday’s elections.”

Roya said Amini’s death and the protests that followed “have woken people up and made them more aware than before.”

“My family is religious and only one of my brothers voted out of six,” Roya said. The one who did vote was “brainwashed,” the family concluded.

“It’s a foul game, simply predetermined. I don’t believe it. The vote won’t change anything.”