{"id":235042,"date":"2021-05-28T06:40:31","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T06:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=235042"},"modified":"2021-05-29T05:27:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T05:27:35","slug":"the-iranian-presidential-shocker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=235042","title":{"rendered":"The Iranian Presidential Shocker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pepe Escobar \u2013 The Unz Review May 27, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

When Iran\u2019s Interior Ministry released on Tuesday the final list of candidates approved by the 12-member Guardian Council to run for President in the upcoming June 18 election, all hell was breaking loose in Tehran for at least 24 hours.<\/p>\n

An \u201cunofficial\u201d list of the 7 candidates for the presidential election was already circulating and causing quite a stir, but not confirmed yet to be final.<\/p>\n

The talk of the town was that the list barred a lot of important people. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was out. So was Ali Larijani \u2013 a former Parliament speaker, and even the current Iranian Vice President, Es\u2019haq Jahangiri, who should be the top reformist running.<\/p>\n

The Fars news agency had broken the story on Monday, announcing the final 7. They got everything right \u2013 from the elimination of Ahmadinejad, Larijani and Jahangiri to the fact that no women candidates were approved.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From left to right : Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (President of the Assembly of Experts, the 86 religious sages who preside over Iran) ; Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani (Chief of the Islamic Judiciary) ; Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader of Iran) ; Cheikh Hassan Rohani (President of the Islamic Republic) ; Ali Larijani (brother of the Chief of the Islamic Judiciary and President of the National Assembly).<\/p><\/div>\n

Fars is very close to the IRGC. So what happened makes perfect sense. Including the rumors swirling around Tehran that outgoing President Rouhani went into panic mode, calling Ayatollah Khamenei for a revision of the list.<\/p>\n

As it stands, the Magnificent Seven who will be running are Ebrahim Raeisi, Saeed Jalili, Mohsen Rezaei, Alireza Zakani, Seyyed Amir-Hossein, Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, Albdolnasser Hemmati and Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh.<\/p>\n

The undisputed leader of the pack is Raeisi, the head of the Judiciary since 2019. He is technically a Principlist \u2013 an Islamic Revolution conservative, in Iranian terms \u2013 but says he will run as an independent. Call him a soft hardliner.<\/p>\n

Among the others, the only one relatively known outside of Iran is Jalili, also a Principlist, and former top nuclear negotiator as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 2007 to 2013.<\/p>\n

At least in thesis, two reformists are left: Mehr-Alizadeh and Hemmati, the current governor of the Central Bank. But they have no national appeal.<\/p>\n

So Raeisi now seems to be nearly a done deal: a relatively faceless bureaucrat without the profile of an IRGC hardliner, well known for his anti-corruption fight and care about the poor and downtrodden. On foreign policy, the crucial fact is that he will arguably follow crucial IRGC dictates.<\/p>\n

Raeisi is already spinning that he \u201cnegotiated quietly\u201d to secure the qualification of more candidates, \u201cto make the election scene more competitive and participatory\u201d. The problem is no candidate has the power to sway the opaque decisions of the 12-member Guardian Council, composed exclusively by clerics: only Ayatollah Khamenei.<\/p>\n

The Guardian Council cryptically stated that only 40 out of 592 candidates had submitted \u201call the required documents\u201d to the Interior Ministry\u2019s election HQ. There was no explanation about the content of these \u201cdocuments\u201d.<\/p>\n

Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaee, the Council\u2019s spokesman, dismissed<\/a> any politicking: decisions were made based on \u201celection law\u201d. So no one can contest them \u2013 except Khamenei. He stressed that the Council \u201chad not been informed\u201d of any action by the Leader.<\/p>\n

The end of the reformist era<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Vice President Jahangiri, who would have been the reformist standard bearer, did not take it lightly: in a forceful statement, he said, \u201cthe Council naturally bears the responsibility for the decision and its legal basis and for the political and social consequences arising from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

More crucially for the Tehran establishment, he highlighted a \u201cserious threat\u201d to the system: \u201cI hope that the republican aspect of the establishment, the effective participation of the people in determining their own fate, the national interests, and the future of Iran will not be sacrificed to immediate political expediencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advisers to former President Ahmadinejad \u2013 still extremely popular nationally \u2013 told me they are still weighing their options: \u201cIt is a very big disappointment, but expected. A big mistake, that will lead to anger and distrust among common people, and eventually backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran remarked, \u201cthere\u2019s still some uncertainty about the candidates.\u201d He\u2019s not making a full assessment yet because he\u2019s not sure the vetoing of Larijani, especially, \u201cwill be the final say\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even as the Magnificent Seven are now free to start campaigning, the overall sentiment is that the Rouhani-Zarif era seems to be over, not with a bang but a whimper.<\/p>\n

At the JCPOA negotiations in Vienna, Iranian deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi continues to sound as a realist, stressing<\/a>, \u201cI am not confident that it would be possible to conclude the negotiations but there is a possibility.\u201d That would require \u201cpolitical decisions to be made\u201d, a direct reference to Washington.<\/p>\n

Everyone in Vienna knows that what was agreed to far on the JCPOA revival was the easy part. The real problem are the remaining hundreds of sanctions that must be canceled by the US Congress \u2013 and that\u2019s not gonna happen.<\/p>\n

Besides, the Americans continue to insist that Tehran should first resume the nuclear commitments it has suspended \u2013 following its legal retaliation rights as defined by Article 26 of the JCPOA. Tehran\u2019s red line is clear: it was Washington which ditched the JCPOA, so it\u2019s up to the US to first remove all sanctions, \u201cpractically and verifiably\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tehran has reiterated over and over again it will walk out of Vienna by the end of May if there\u2019s no deal. The IRGC couldn\u2019t care less: they are already in post-JCPOA mode. Focused on the Iran-China strategic deal. Focused on wider Eurasia integration alongside Russia and China. And relying on the perfect candidate placed to become the next Iranian president.<\/p>\n

(Republished from Asia Times<\/a> by permission of author or representative)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The talk of Tehran was that a lot of important people were barred from running. These include: former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ali Larijani \u2013 a former Parliament speaker, and even the current Iranian Vice President, Es\u2019haq Jahangiri<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235042"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235045,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235042\/revisions\/235045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}