Hassan Rouhani’s landslide reelection was announced after he received 57 percent of votes (23.5 million votes out of the 41.2 million ballots cast) and defeated conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, who received only 38.5 percent of the vote. Iranian reformist and incumbent President Hassan Rouhani’s success in winning the 12th presidential elections, held on May 19, 2017, is reminiscent of reformists’ victory in the May 23, 1997 elections. The then-Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Khatami, who had resigned from the government of Hashemi Rafsanjani, defeated Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the preferred candidate of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the conservatives.
Pro-reform Rouhani had to face pressures and several obstacles to secure a second four-year term. Most importantly of which was the indirect support provided by state institutions to his major rival, Raisi, the head of the Asran-e. Quds Razavi foundation in Mashhad. Eventually, Rouhani did garner more votes than in the previous presidential elections in June 2013, where he secured 50.7 percent of votes. Rouhani’s recent win has several indications related to a shift in the domestic balance of power and how Iranians view domestic and foreign challenges.
Multiple Factors
Rouhani’s success in winning a second term can be attributed to several factors of which the following stand out:
1- Counter-mobilization. It can be said that pressures put on President Rouhani before the elections, the indirect support extended by some state institutions, namely the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and their media organizations to Raisi, have all been counterproductive. These pressures and indirect support prompted the popular base supporting reformists and traditional conservatives to vote in large numbers, enabling Rouhani to secure a second-term. They also wanted to prevent the fundamentalist conservatives from monopolizing power once again and excluding their political rivals as they did when the second term of former President Khatami came to an end in 2005.
In other words, Rouhani utilized the fact that the state supported his opponent and won ‘undetermined’ voters. He attracted the same political forces that voiced disappointment over the policies he had pursued during his first presidential term, in particular over his inaction to lift house-arrest restrictions on Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi - Mousavi and Karroubi the presidential runners in the 2009 elections – leaders of the so-called Green Movement.
2- A vote for the Nuclear Agreement. The re-election of Rouhani for a second presidential term is widely seen as re-voting for Iran’s nuclear agreement, which has been sharply criticized by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and fundamentalist conservatives since it was concluded with the P5+1 group of world powers on July 14, 2015.
In other words, voting for Rouhani sends across the message that Iranians continue to rely on having the nuclear agreement in place despite obstacles blocking Iran from receiving the promised economic and technological benefits. In this sense, Rouhani’s win also indicates that the Iranian regime seeks to reaffirm its compliance with the agreement. Most importantly, Iran had not brought about any changes to its position, despite continued escalation with the United States.
Hence, the Iranian regime wanted to ensure that the international community would not hold it responsible for any failure of the agreement in the coming period, which could have happened if Rouhani’s rival, Raisi, had won. Although Raisi declared his commitment to the agreement, his close ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which have several reservations about the deal, and his hardline stance on domestic and foreign issues, do indicate that he would have taken measures to add further obstacles to the implementation of the agreement.
3- Avoiding a Recurrence of the 2009 Scenario. Apparently, the Iranian regime has ensured that Rouhani’s win would pass without imposing obstacles. The reason is that the regime does not want a recurrence of the 2009 events when a severe political crisis broke out imposing negative repercussions that, to date, the regime has not managed to address. This is evidenced in the regime’s insistence on keeping house-arrest restrictions on Mousavi and Karroubi, as well as in the insistence of Iranian elite on condemning the regime leaders’ way of treating the leaders and proponents of the Green Movement.
In light of the above, any brazen interference in the election could have led to fueling protests by reformist political powers as well as traditional conservatives that previously, in 2009, had led demonstrations against the results of the presidential elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a second term.
Undoubtedly, avoiding this scenario is of special importance for the Iranian regime due to two essential reasons. The first reason is that foreign pressures on this regime prevent it from having free movement and an adequate room for maneuvering to push its favorite candidate in the presidential elections. That is particularly so due to the current escalation with the US administration of President Donald Trump over issues such as the nuclear agreement, Iran’s support of terrorism and an increasing regional and international rejection of Iran’s interference and sectarian policy, as well as Iran’s shrinking role in some regional crises in favor of powers such as Russia.
The second reason is that the election of Rouhani does not reflect an actual challenge. This is the case because Rouhani wants to pursue a policy that strikes a balance between reformists and conservatives so as not to appear biased and because any change that he would seek would not take place without a green light from the Supreme Leader. That is why Rouhani, more than once, was keen on reassuring that every move made by his government for the nuclear agreement has the blessings of Khamenei.
Main Variables
It can possibly be said that expecting a change in the Iranian regime’s public policies in the coming period should hinge on three main variables that are not limited to the consequences of Rouhani’s winning a second presidential term.
The first variable revolves around potential trajectories of the nuclear agreement, especially after the 90-day deadline - set by US President Donald Trump for the National Security Council to undertake a full review of the agreement to certify Iran’s compliance and whether the removal of sanctions was in the US national security interests- comes to an end. The second variable revolves around developments in regional crises, in Syria in particular, that will affect Iran’s regional role in the future and consequently its domestic and foreign policies. The third variable is the issue of Khamenei's succession, which will gain more significance during Rouhani’s second term as president. These are indications that the regime will currently seek to study the mechanisms of transferring power, if a potential power vacuum occurs in the next four years.
