Head of Iran’s judiciary system, Ebrahim Raisi, handily won the presidential elections held on June 18, taking 62% of the total cast and ruling out the need for a second round after his three arch rivals were left unable to continue the race.
It can perhaps be said that hard-line Raisi’s presidential victory will impose powerful repercussions both on the domestic and foreign levels. But most significantly, the consensus among the influential powers in the Iranian regime defines the relation between them. Such a coherence, at times, seemed to be undergoing crises or litmus tests during the tenure of former president Hassan Rouhani. This was reflected in the deep crisis sparked in March by a leaked audio recording in which Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarid criticized the Revolutionary Guards’ (IRGC) interference in Iran’s foreign policy, especially before the assasination Qasem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force.
This incident was maybe one of the reasons why the Iranian regime, headed by the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, decided to pave the way for Raisi to cruise to an ‘easy’ and ‘quick’ victory. The regime did not interfere in the decisions made by the Council of Guardians, also known as the Constitutional Council, that toppled a number of Raisi’s potential frontrunners, who were possibly poised for seizing the presidential victory from him. One of those was Ali Larijani, former head of the Consultative Assembly. When Khamenei called for reinstating or restoring the honor of candidates, who were rejected from the election, the propaganda was that this does not mean that the Constitutional Council would revise its decision. It also means that reinstating them was incumbent on the institutions that had presented ‘unrealistic’ explanations of the rejection, including reasons linked to the families of the candidates.
This may explain the concern for excluding some military commanders from standing for the election. Former Minister of Defense Hossein Dehghan announced his withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of Raisi before the Constitutional Council made the decision. The council, at the same time, disqualified Saeed Mohammad, commander of the IRGC’s Khatam-al Anbiya Construction Headquarters, from the race. Reports from Iran suggested that one or both of them stand a good chance for taking high-profile posts in Raisi’s cabinet in his first term, alongside other candidates, who dropped out of the race in favor of Raisi, including former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, the former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Direct Repercussions
Signs of this consensus will show up in the coming period, especially because this will coincide with the ongoing talks between Iran and the P4+1 group of world powers, with the United States being involved in indirect talks with Iran. The most significant repercussions can be explained as follows:
1. The Issue of Dual-Citizens:This can stick out as a major bone of contention between Iran and the involved western states because Raisi, in his capacity as former chief justice, played a main role. Iran is expected to exploit this issue to put pressure on the West in the coming period, especially because their disagreement will continue to exist even if, as a result of the Vienna talks, the two sides reach a new deal that bolster the existing nuclear agreement. Despite this, Iran is not unlikely to take advantage of this issue to engage in new deals to bargain with the Western states, just like it did in the past.
2. Direct Escalation: Iran may, in the coming period, seek to send escalation messages to the Western states to say that whatever the outcome of the Vienna talks, it will not hesitate to continue to put pressure to force the US troops out of the region, and especially from Iraq. This suggests that Iran under Raisi is not willing to back down from operations carried out by loyal Iraqi militias against U.S. interests. Notably, in this context, Rouhani’s government, according to several reports, played a role in bringing about uneasy calm to Iraq’s security landscape in the past period, in conjunction with the Vienna talks. This suggests that Iran was pushing to deprive the forces opposing the nuclear deal from an opportunity to block efforts to strike a new deal in Vienna.
3. Counter-messages: Backed by the new president, the IRGC may further send messages that the nuclear deal would not push them to de-escalate in other concerns. Therefore, the current situation, in which Iran under pressure from the Rouhani government, has not conducted any new ballistic missile tests, may come to an end. Furthermore, even if the Vienna talks succeed, the IRGC and the government will back the option of further advancing the program and conduct new tests to suggest that the deal is limited to the nuclear program and does not include any other matters. In other words, the IRGC will seek to do, once again, what it did after the nuclear deal was concluded on July 14 2015, especially when they embarrassed the U.S. Administration by capturing U.S. sailors on January 12, 2016. The move sparked a barrage of criticism and pressure against the administration of former president Barack Obama..
Decline of Duality
In spite of all the above facts, such notion of agreement might impose strong pressure on Iran. The apparent disparity between the government and other forces, especially the IRGC, used to give Iran several opportunities in the past. This was especially during negotiations with the world powers, where Iran had a broader margin for maneuverability that it sought to take advantage of in order to achieve maximum benefit in exchange for minimum concessions.
This was evidenced in the nuclear deal reached between Iran and the P5+1 group on July 14, 2015, which yielded strategic gains for Iran, especially in terms of keeping uranium enrichment activities- although production was limited to low-enriched uranium- and at the same time having most of the U.S. and international sanctions against it lifted.
Based on the above, and because of this this concept of coherence, Iran is set to lose a significant part of its maneuverability margin that was available until recently. This would coincide with continued tensions and disagreements with the international powers around several other concerns, namely its ballistic missile program and its regional role in addition to human rights violations, for which Washington imposed sanctions on Raisi himself. As such, tension will continue to headline relations between Iran and the Western states during the new president’s tenure, even if a potential new deal is reached in Vienna.
