1 Report for

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Daily Report for Thursday, February 25, 2016

1 Report for

Wednesday,

February 25, 2015 Esfand 6, 1394

Highlights, Page 2 News Briefs, Page 3

Wary voters await elections in Iran, Page 5

Hardliners flinch as star commander backs Larijani, Page 8 Iran’s clergy view upcoming elections with wariness, Page 10 Stakes are high as reformists seek further political gains, Page 14

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2 Highlights

 Conservatives are suspicious of foreign influences as Iran prepares to hold key elections. (See Page 5)

 Ghasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most loved military men, has put his support behind Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani’s bid for election. (See Page 8)

 Despite a restricted field of candidates, conservatives in Qom fear the reformists will use the success of the nuclear deal to ‘sneak back’ into politics.

(See Page 10)

 With Hassan Rouhani as president, reformists feel there is an opportunity to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians – if they can be convinced to take part in Friday’s election. (See Page 14)

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News Briefs

 Ayatollah Khamenei: Iranians will elect a Parliament that “will not be intimidated by America”. Jomhouri Islami conservative writes that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced “the enemy’s tricks” in the February 26 elections to Parliament and the Assembly of Experts. Ayatollah Khamenei criticized the enemy’s creation of “a false dichotomy between a pro- administration and anti-administration Parliament” and added that Iranians instead want a Parliament that is “unable to be deceived, whose officials oppose the avarice of the Arrogance [the West] and are defenders of the nation’s honor and independence… and who will not be intimidated by America.” Ayatollah Khamenei indirectly criticized several non-hardliner elements in Iran. He stated, “A group inside the country has been indignant because we always speak of influence, but this indignation is misplaced… The issue of influence and infiltrators is real, but sometimes individuals do not realize that they themselves have become part of this current.” He also criticized the use of “extremist” and “moderate” as labels for Iranian political factions as a longstanding tool of Iran’s enemies. Khamenei’s comment is another likely criticism of Reformist and centrist candidates, who have often used the word “extremist” to refer to hardline Principlist opponents.

 Guardian Council Secretary: We will catch would-be infiltrators in the Assembly of Experts. Tasnim News Agency reports that Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati has warned that “corrupt individuals, in coordination with foreign policies, have worked for a long time both inside and outside” of Iran to infiltrate the Assembly of Experts. The Guardian Council Secretary noted,

“Insofar as we [the Guardian Council] have been able to detect infiltrators, I do not think we will have problems in the future.”

 Judiciary Spokesman: Maybe the British have a secret relationship with the candidates they are supporting. State-owned newspaper Iran writes that Judiciary Spokesman Hojjatoleslam Mohsen Ejei highlighted the threat posed by foreign interference in the elections during a press conference. He stated,

“The question is whether the British have a relationship with the people they are saying to vote for… The people must be smart and not be fooled.” These comments are in response to BBC Farsi’s coverage of the elections in recent weeks, including one BBC article in particular titled “Could Yazdi, Jannati, and Mesbah be removed from the Assembly of Experts?”

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 Rouhani orders Interior Ministry to hold “healthy elections”. State-owned newspaper Iran writes that President Hassan Rouhani emphasized the role of the Interior Ministry in “safeguarding the vote of the people” and facilitating healthy elections during a cabinet meeting on February 24. The Interior Minister is appointed by Rouhani and oversees the elections in addition to the hardline Guardian Council and the police. Rouhani also reiterated the importance of electing a Parliament that focuses on improving Iran’s economy and stated, “The Iranian nation will show the ill-natured that they do not accept libel, backbiting, being ill-natured, and divisiveness in the country. The direction that [the Iranian people] have taken for the country’s advancement will continue.”

 Iranian killed in Syria. Basij Press news website writes that Ahmad Esmaili appears to have been a member of the 27thMohammad Rasoul Allah Division.

He will be buried in Tehran. No information on his rank was given.

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5 Wary voters await elections in Iran

Al-Monitor news website. Ali Hashemi. Ali Hashem is an Arab journalist serving as Al Mayadeen news network’s chief correspondent. Until March 2012, he was Al Jazeera’s war correspondent, and prior to that he was a senior journalist at the BBC. He has written for several Arab newspapers, including the Lebanese daily As-Safir, the Egyptian dailies Al-Masry Al-Youm and Aldostor and the Jordanian daily Alghad. He has also contributed to The Guardian.

QOM, Iran — On the walls surrounding the grave of “Fatima the Infallible,” the names of the most prominent ayatollahs in Iran can be read. Their graves are situated under the marble covering the grounds of the shrine, which belongs to the sister of Imam Reza — the eighth Imam of Shiite Islam — who lived and died in modern-day Iran some one thousand years ago.

Around the shrine, the famous city of Qom, about 80 miles south of Tehran, grew to become the most significant center for Shiite theology, besides Iraq’s Najaf, bringing together the most important Islamic scholars.

While dead ayatollahs lie under the marble, future ones sit on top of it. They gather in circles to study and debate — some holding books, others with laptops. Meanwhile, the voices of worshippers around them are heard praying and crying. All of this comes together to form the shrine’s unique sound.

There, Al-Monitor met Hussain, a scholar who seemed taken with the heightened political debate as elections approach for the Islamic Consultative Assembly (also called the Iranian Parliament) and Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of mujtahids, or senior Islamic clerics, who elect the supreme leader, the country’s highest ranking political and religious official.

Hussain said he believes foreigners want to interfere in the elections, mainly by targeting three candidates for the assembly: incumbent Assembly Chairman Mohammad Yazdi, hard-line cleric Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah Yazdi and Guardian Council head Ahmad Jannati. “These [three] are the defenders of the revolution,” Hussain told Al-Monitor, adding that defending the trio is akin to defending the 1979 Islamic Revolution itself, in which the shah was overthrown.

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Large posters of Mesbah Yazdi cover the area around the shrine. He is slated to speak before supporters who, like Ali, an English-speaking seminary student, seem angry about the foreign media.

“The foreign media is trying to influence voters,” said Ali, “The Persian-language channels are sending messages to people, calling on them not to vote for the revolutionary candidates.”

Ali told Al-Monitor, “People know well that the British are targeting the revolution.

They want their candidates to win so they can have control over the country like before.”

Hostility is running very high among Qom’s conservative clerics — or

“revolutionary” clerics, as they prefer to be called — toward the other lists in the parliamentary and assembly elections. “Those who are praised by the West can’t be trusted,” Ali said.

Qom is important for any mujtahid who seeks endorsement for his Assembly of Experts candidacy. The Society of Qom Seminary Teachers is one of the two most important clerical associations in Iran, along with the Society of Combatant Clergy. If these two bodies support a cleric’s candidacy, he has a strong chance of winning.

Incumbent parliament Speaker Ali Larijani hails from Qom. Being a renowned conservative, he surprised many by deciding to run as an independent. “I’ve not separated from the Principlists [Party], but there are differences in our way of thinking,” Larijani said at a campaign gathering. “I don’t accept the accusation that Reformists aren’t revolutionaries,” he added.

In the streets of Qom, pictures of Larijani can be seen almost everywhere. The incumbent speaker won the endorsement of the Society of Qom Seminary Teachers.

The Reformists have also placed Larijani on their joint ticket with moderates, who are said to be backed by President Hassan Rouhani. And while Larijani isn’t the only candidate in Qom, he is the most prominent. He and others will have to contend for the 1 million potential votes in the city, which can send three lawmakers to Tehran.

In a coffee shop near Bastani Square, Al-Monitor met with Bagher, another seminary student. The cafe showed no traces of being situated in Qom. Decorated with pictures of Salvador Dali, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio and

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others, it might have been anywhere in the world. However, two grand photos of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the two supreme leaders in the history of the Islamic Republic, brought one back to Iran.

Like Ali, Bagher is critical of foreign media. He said he believes international media outlets are trying to present Iran inaccurately.

“There are three main models dominating the world today,” Bagher told Al-Monitor.

“The Western model, the Daesh [Islamic State] model and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s model; you can’t mix any of these three.” (Bagher sees the Eastern model of governance and society as no longer relevant.)

“When some try to say Iran is a democracy similar to the West, they are wrong.

[They] might be people who love Iran, but they don’t understand that you can’t draw a line between Iran and Daesh by saying that Iran is closer to the West,” he said.

“Iran isn’t a democracy. We have our own model, namely ‘religious democracy,’

which means that we follow the authority of the people. The people of this country legitimize the power of the regime and the government on religious conditions.” This is what Ayatollah Khomeini said in his 1970 book, “Islamic Government,” and his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, later institutionalized, Bagher said.

The idea Bagher was referring to was first spoken about in Qom, where Ayatollah Khomeini in the early 1960s gave his lectures in the Fayziyeh School — inside the shrine of Fatima the Infallible. Back then, a new line of thought among Shiites appeared, and for the first time in centuries, it included a call for seizing power and ruling in accordance with Islamic teachings. This was seen as the revolution — not just against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, but also against the mainstream seminary.

Decades later, as Iran is about to hold key elections, it appears the country is still in the grip of a struggle for the soul of the revolution — and what it means.

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8 Hardliners flinch

as star commander backs Larijani

IranWire opposition news website: Ghasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most loved military men, has put his support behind Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani’s bid for election on February 26.

Speaking to the families of Iranian soldiers who had died in the conflict in Syria, Soleimani, who commands Iran’s expeditionary Qods Force, praised the speaker, who hopes to be elected to represent the seminary district of Qom — and has also attracted criticism from some of Iran’s fiercest hardliners.

Soleimani told the group he had admired Larijani’s commitment to revolutionary movements in the region throughout the influential candidate’s career, from his time at state-run Islamic Republic of Iranian Broadcasting to the present day. “He has always supported the Qods Force and I have always enjoyed his intellectual and practical support. I wish him success.” Soleimani’s comments make specific reference to Larijani’s time as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 2005 to 2007.

With elections to take place only two days away, Soleimani’s support for Larijani has come at a key time. Hugely respected and even revered for his reputation a powerful military figure, Soleimani has set out not only his own political leaning, he has also hinted at the agendas of senior figures in the Revolutionary Guards. And his support for Larijani could derail — or at least damage — the hardliners’ propaganda campaign against Iran’s reformist and moderate candidates. For them, the image of Soleimani standing side by side with Larijani marks an unwelcome shift in Iran’s political landscape.

Larijani, who qualified to run for representative for the seminary district of Qom, is considered to be a moderate principlist, an advocate of the values of Ayatollah Khomeini and the early days of the Iranian revolution. But hardliners openly criticized him after he refused to be included on their list of candidates. In addition, a number of his candidates Larijani is currently affiliated with appear on the reformist list or on the list of candidates endorsed by President Hassan Rouhani’s administration, moderates reviled by most hardliners.

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Soleimani has for many years been held up as a political symbol for Iran’s hardliners, a diplomat for the regime and a powerful embodiment of the values of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. And Ali Larijani has represented the exact opposite: a man deviating from some of hardliners’ most cherished ideals, an ally of President Hassan Rouhani who not only supported the nuclear deal, but actively played a role in its outcome.

Because of his huge popularity, the special forces commander could have a significant impact on voter support for the current speaker of parliament. And Larijani has not been remiss in showing continued support for Soleimani. Last summer at a gathering of the Revolutionary Guards commanders, Larijani praised the Qods Force as the

“inspiring aspect of the Islamic revolution” and the guarantor of the “protective power of Iran in the region.”

Larijani’s praise is now paying off. When voicing his support for Larijani — one of four influential brothers in one of Iran’s most powerful families — Soleimani referred to his accomplishments for Iran across the region, calling him “one of the most effective people in regional development.” In the days leading up to the parliamentary elections, hardliners have attacked Larijani’s role in the region, but they have not limited their attacks to his record on international relations: they have taken every opportunity to attack his domestic policies as well.

In Iran’s 2013 presidential election, General Soleimani endorsed Tehran’s mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, who was also considered to be a moderate principlist.

Again, his support for Ghalibaf not only revealed his political agenda, but that of senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, many of whom supported Ghalibaf, a Guards man himself. Ghalibaf of course lost the election to Hassan Rouhani, but he remains an influential figure as Tehran’s mayor.

Soleimani’s public support for Larijani — voiced to an audience who may have felt reticent to get behind the speaker until now — reveals the commander’s keen understanding of the current climate in Iran today. And it also presents a man who knows very well how to position himself within that volatile environment, and get what he needs from it.

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‘Through a religious prism’: Iran’s clergy view upcoming elections with wariness

The Guardian newspaper’s website: Around 60 people, mostly men, are gathered in the local mosque in an old central neighbourhood of Mashhad, the shrine city in eastern Iran. In between midday and afternoon prayers, the men fiddle with their prayer beads, sitting on a floor covered with long, factory-made, green carpets with

“prayer rug” patterns.

A middle-aged man asks the imam about the election due on Friday for the clerical body whose one real task is to choose Iran’s supreme leader should a vacancy arise.

“The Assembly of Experts must consist of the most righteous statesmen and religious figures,” says the imam, who is in his early 30s. “I’m not going to suggest names, as the Qom seminary hasn’t given us a preferred list of candidates, but remember to vote for someone whose thoughts and ideas are closer to the ones of the supreme leader, someone who will continue his path.”

The Guardian Council – which has qualified only 160 candidates, including a handful of reformists, out of 800 hopefuls – has narrowed the field. When it comes to the Assembly of Experts, the conservative clerical establishment is in no mood to concede an inch to reformists or moderates, or even to have too contentious an election.

Some provinces have no competition. Out of 88 members in the next assembly, nine (10.2%) are already selected as the number of candidates equals the number of seats in the provinces of Western Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Bushehr, northern Khorasan, Semnan and Hormozgan.

And in some others, there are few options. In two provinces, Eastern Azerbaijan and Khuzestan, 13 candidates are competing for a total of 11 seats, and in seven others – Gilan, Khorasan-e Razavi, Kerman, Fars, Sistan-Balouchestan, Ghazvin and Lorestan – 39 candidates are competing for 24 seats.

In such times, voting is not so much a positive choice as a chance to say no, according to Mohsen Kadivar, who trained at the seminary in Qom and is now research professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, North Carolina. “This election is more about putting the supreme leader in his place,” says Kadivar. “In my opinion,

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more than 80% of Iranians cannot find their preferred candidates among those qualified. So their only remaining option is to vote against the leadership’s favourite figures.”

He compares the current situation in Iran with 1975 when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi abolished the multi-party system and replaced it with only one party, Rastakhiz. But such methods don’t work in the long run, he said: “In 1979, just a few years after the establishment of the Rastakhiz party, the Shah was toppled.”

In Tehran, reformists and supporters of President Hassan Rouhani are circulating a list topped with photos of Rouhani, himself an Experts’ Assembly candidate, and former president Mohammad Khatami backing 16 candidates for the Experts Assembly election and 30 for parliament. This follows a statement published on 20 February in which Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and another candidate for the assembly, asking people to take an “opportunity” to prevent society drifting towards

“political and religious extremism”.

Hossein, a retired manager of a state office in Mashhad, is proud of hardly ever missing Friday prayers at the shrine of Imam Reza. He says that all candidates in the province – Khorasan-e Razavi – stand by the side of the supreme leader.

But that does not stop him making a choice. While Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, Mashhad’s Friday prayer leader is, he says, an “extreme hardliner”, others like Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and Mohammad Hadi Abdekhodaei have more moderate perspectives. “So I am probably going to vote only for these two,” he explains.

Even with a narrow field, the country’s clerical establishment is not at ease. A Shia scholar with extensive ties to Qom, who asks to remain anonymous, says the establishment is wary of the reformists trying to “sneak back” into influential positions. According to him, conservative clerics are worried that reformists and moderate allies will use the success of the nuclear deal and the easing of sanctions to re-launch “the reformist programme or ...[a] slightly less conservative reading of how Iranian society should be run”.

But instead of expressing this openly, he says, these clerics are using “mutterings and murmurings” to spread their views: “That’s how they do politics. They won’t stand up and say, ‘Don’t let this guy come back in’. They will just disgruntle loudly during a class or Friday sermon when emotions are high… suddenly drop a line to say ‘Look,

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these reformists are still trying to undermine the credentials of the Islamic Revolution’.”

A general warning has come from the top. On 18 February, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked people to resist attempts by “the enemy” to influence the elections. Friday prayer leaders around the county echoed his words, warning against

“the enemy’s infiltration”. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, substitute Friday prayer leader in Tehran and a member of the Experts’ Assembly, said the west was trying to plant insiders both in the assembly and in Iran’s parliament.

Kadivar says these warnings reveal how nervous the leadership is. “Currently they are so fragile that they are even scared of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Rouhani. The Islamic Republic is like a train. In each station it disembarks some of its political figures.

Previously it got rid of the reformists and now it’s Hashemi Rafsanjani and the moderates’ turn.”

The careful attention being paid – both in Iran and internationally – to the election for the Experts Assembly comes from the likelihood that it may in its next eight-year term choose a successor to Khamenei, who is 76 and in 2014 underwent prostate surgery.

But whatever the backbiting surrounding Friday’s election, this is just the start of a process of succession that could take years.

Kadivar stresses this isn’t a job for just anyone. “The next leader can’t be an unknown figure and must be in a high political position within the hierarchy of the Islamic Republic,” he said. Kadivar believes the main decision-makers will be the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and Khamenei, who will be able to shape his own succession and might even express a preference.

A principle-ist and former high-ranking official close to Iran’s supreme leader disagrees. “The Assembly of Experts is the most important organisation in Iran after the leadership and it’s not correct to say the IRGC has [undue] influence over it,” he told Tehran Bureau. “The best reason [evidence] for this is the presence of Rafsanjani in the election.” The former president is disliked by many IRGC commanders and was barred from the 2013 presidential election.

The Shia scholar cited earlier says that those who stress the influence of the Revolutionary Guards believe they will be able to impose “a frail, weak candidate, someone they can control,” citing Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the current chair of the Experts’ Assembly.

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But the scholar prefers to stress the role that will be played in selecting the leader by the clergy loyal to the Islamic Revolution and its ideals. “They see the world through a religious prism, a conservative theological prism. Many long for someone [as leader]

who reminds them of Ayatollah Khomeini. The whole paradigm of the guardianship of the jurist [the system concentrating constitutional powers in the leader] is built on the belief that he has to be a jurist and a mystic philosopher. Khomeini combined both – he was a grand ayatollah [a pre-eminent jurist] and a mystic.”

This, says the scholar, undermines the chances of some often cited as potential leaders: “[Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi] Mesbah-Yazdi is neither a mystic nor a pre- eminent jurist. Nor is Yazdi or Shahroudi.”

He believes the chances of Shahroudi, 67, who was regarded by many as a front- runner until he failed to put his name forward last year as chair of the Experts Assembly, have receded. “He’s too Iraqi for them, even though he’s a former head of the judiciary. He speaks Arabic with a heavy Persian accent, and I hear when he speaks Persian he has a bit of an Arabic accent.”

The scholar believes Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, although 82, fits the criteria of “someone who is a mystic and a jurist” as well as being “a strong politician with a proven track record”. Plus he’s a pragmatist: “He’s flexible, he controls large shares of companies, the bonyads [religious foundations] – this could sit well with the Revolutionary Guards.”

A further factor is the Shia religious establishment in neighbouring Iraq, centred on the city of Najaf. Its relations with Qom have frayed, partly because Najaf, and especially Ayatollah Ali Sistani, resisted what they saw as an attempt by Iran to

“parachute” Shahroudi into Iraq.

But Sistani is himself 85 and the relationship between Iran’s leader and Shia internationally has been changed by developments in Syria and Iraq, and growing tensions with a Sunni Arab establishment led by Saudi Arabia. The bombing this week by the Islamic State on Sayida Zeinab, Syria’s leading Shia shrine, may add to a growing sense of pan-Shiism.

“The perception that Sunni elders are coming together against the Shias, while Turkey has formed an alliance with Saudi and Jordan, suggests everyone is out to get the Shias,” says the scholar. “So they [the clerics in Najaf] are happy to form some kind of temporary alliance with the Iranians. At the end of the day, they’re co-religionists.”

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1 4 Iran elections: stakes are high as

reformists seek further political gains

The Guardian newspaper’s website: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, looks meaningfully into the camera as he holds a piece of paper poised over a plastic ballot box. “Elections are the bulwark of our nation,” proclaims the Farsi caption.

“People at the polling stations will protect the destiny of our nation and prevent our enemies taking over our land.”

Khamenei is looking down from a giant poster in the courtyard of the Shahid Motaheri mosque in south Tehran, a poor area where support for his ultra-conservative leadership is strong. Only a few hundred people have come to this rally but there is a flurry of excitement at the arrival of Gholamali Haddad-Adel, the first candidate on the main list of hardline “principalists” contesting Friday’s parliamentary poll.

Haddad-Adel is followed by a media gaggle – including a few of the foreign journalists who have been given rare visas to report from Iran – as well as an officer of the Revolutionary Guards with a clenched fist and Kalashnikov badge gleaming on his dark green uniform. Speeches follow afternoon prayers in the Islamic Republic’s classic combination of faith and power.

“The economy,” declares Haddad-Adel, “will be the main priority for the next government.” He provides a succinct summary of the theme of this country’s first elections since last summer’s landmark nuclear agreement and the lifting of international sanctions just more than a month ago. Not a single benefit has yet come from that, he complains.

The atmosphere is charged. The crowd at the blue-tiled Motaheri mosque chants slogans attacking reformists, the BBC and England – still the “Little Satan” of Iran’s nationalist demonology. (America remains the “Great Satan.”) Meanwhile, Shargh, a reformist paper, lyrically foresees “a wave of hope rising” when the contest for the 290-seat majlis is over – even after the disqualification of hundreds of reformist candidates.

In parallel, clerical leaders are standing for election to the assembly of experts, a normally obscure body whose role is to choose the next supreme leader. Khamenei is

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76 and reportedly suffering from prostate cancer, so whoever ends up occupying its 88 seats may have a crucially important decision to make in the coming years.

On the face of it, Friday’s votes are not as dramatic as the presidential contests in 2009, which saw the confrontational Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win re-election by rigging the results and crushing the subsequent Green movement protests, and in 2013, when the pragmatic Hassan Rouhani succeeded him as president. But in the circumstances both could be significant milestones on the path to Iran’s future, shifting the balance of internal power in favour of greater change.

The mood seems calm, though both sides recognise that the stakes are high. “This election is about protecting the regime from changes that are important to the revolution,” warned Saeed Salehi, an oil engineer listening to Haddad-Adel in the Motaheri mosque. “The reformists are not experienced enough and they look to the outside world – not to our own national resources. The Iranian people have not enjoyed the good will of the west.”

If more reformists enter parliament, their argument goes, it will help Rouhani open up the economy to deliver urgently needed improvements for millions of ordinary Iranians – in terms of jobs, growth, housing and medical care, crucially demonstrating that ending Iran’s isolation will make a real difference.

There is no doubt that this threatens the vast interests of the conservative establishment, especially the Revolutionary Guards. The president’s headline- grabbing deal to buy 118 planes from Airbus for $25bn has come under withering fire as an elite project that serves foreign rather than national interests.

Still, the scars of 2009 – with its mass street protests, killings and arrests – run deep, so no-one is rushing headlong into a new crisis. Even the most optimistic estimates say that reformists and moderates – once distinct terms that are now blurred – are unlikely to take more than 80 seats. “We are not going to have a carnival,” concedes Mohammed Ali Vakil, a leading reformist candidate. “But a lot of people will vote for us. They will be calm, but they will surprise us.”

Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist who is campaigning for the reformist alliance, agrees. “I am excited,” he told the Guardian by phone while getting the vote out in Khuzestan in the south-west. “If we can persuade 10%-20% of undecided voters to overcome their indifference and go to the polling stations then there could be a

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historic outcome. Conservative voters are determined and will definitely vote. It’s the reformists who are undecided.”

Apathy is a huge problem, however. “I voted for the revolution when I was a young man, and that was it,” shrugged Hassan, a burly 60 something driver stuck in the traffic around the capital’s Ferdowsi Square. “Why should I bother now?”

The cynicism is just as strong in the leafy north Tehran suburb of Jamaran, where Ayatollah Khomeini lived. “If you are educated you never vote because you would just make a fool of yourself,” said Negin, a young dentist smoking shisha with four friends – their loose headscarves, makeup and fashionable clothes and boots a reminder of far-reaching social changes of recent years. “It’s easier to live in Iran without thinking about politics,” sighed Melina, a designer.

“People opposed to voting think those who do are sheep or donkeys,” said one still undecided middle-aged voter. “But the Iranian people are the only real reformers in Iran by remaining engaged and persisting in effecting change from the bottom up millimetre by millimetre. The younger generation’s higher expectations is testament to that.”

The argument for gradual change has powerful proponents. Mohammed Khatami, the reformist president of the late 1990s, has openly endorsed the Rouhani camp – his Instagram account circumventing the official ban on publishing his picture. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the historic leaders of the revolution, is another. Rafsanjani, now 80, is drawing heavy fire from hardliners for his bid to inject a more moderate element onto the assembly of experts.

Tehran is festooned with election flyers and posters – though reformists complain that theirs have been systematically torn down at night. The campaign is far from perfect – and not only because of the mass disqualifications. Language is careful and coded;

everything tightly controlled. Still, Mohammed Reza Aref, overall leader of the reform camp, is closely identified with Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the Green leaders who are still under house arrest after having their victory “stolen” in 2009 – one vivid illustration amongst many of the limits of domestic change under Rouhani, despite his breakthrough in relations with the west.

Above all, Iranians are approaching this contest in a realistic mood – and not least because of the violence elsewhere in the region. “The simple-minded, idealistic

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fantasy of an Iranian-style Arab spring has gone,” argues the veteran analyst Saeed Barzin, “Iranians have become more conservative and more inclined to get involved in elections even though they know they are not free and fair. That’s important after what happened in 2009. This is based on a social contract where the state says it will provide security and a chance of economic progress and allow you to choose between political programmes that are somewhat different. It’s fairly limited on both sides.”

But reformists insist that this exercise really matters. “The nature of the election is not everything,” says a Rouhani loyalist. “No, we don’t have a full democracy – but we do have some elements. We have participation – and it’s rarely under 50%. And we have limited competition – and cut-throat competition too. They don’t have that in North Korea. No, it’s not free but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to vote. We know that the presidential election was not free either – but we voted for Rouhani – and only he could do the nuclear deal.”