The new is the well-forgotten old. Iranians will probably have to remember this popular wisdom in May 2021, when they come to the polls to choose a new president and see former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the ballot lists. Despite the fact that the most massive bloody protests in the history of the Islamic Republic took place on the occasion of his second election, he has every chance of being elected president for the third time.
The latest history of the Islamic Republic is almost as accurate as a clock, the alternation of cycles of eight years - two four-year presidential terms of conservative and liberal clans of Iranian power. The last year of the centrist Hassan Rouhani is ending (in fact, it’s still more likely a liberal who is set to cooperate with the United States, but who is forced to act in the strictly defined Ayatollah Khamenei’s perimeter). Together with him the heavyweights of the liberal camp leave one by one.
Rouhani’s ally Ali Larijani left the Iranian parliament, giving way to the IRGC, Mohammad Bagher Halibaf (the parliament in Iran is no less powerful than the government, and even affects the appointment of its ministers). The parliament itself became 75% oppositional Rouhani, a powerful core in the IRGC cannon). The liberal ambassador Mehdi Sanai of the Rouhani and Zarif team, who took office at the end of 2013 and thawed Russian-Iranian cooperation after a long “conservative winter”, left Russia. (At the end of 2019, the ambassador from the IRGC again came to Russia.) It remains to clear the Ministry of Information (Intelligence) and put the IRGC intelligence head there - and the structure will become reinforced concrete. In a word - rotation occurs in all directions, external and internal.
The era of Rouhani will be remembered as the real Iranian spring, the time of hopes for change, the weakening of the ideological and economic stranglehold on the neck, the liberalization of domestic views, the appearance of foreign goods on store shelves, the return of foreign investment, and - alas - as the collapse of these great hopes. I remember the enormous difference between December 2013 (depression on the Iranian streets, murdered private business, terrible devaluation of the rial (the legacy of Ahmadinejad, Rouhani was just elected) - and in the summer of 2014, 2015, 2017 (joy, a lot of open snack bars, shops, western tourists bringing euros and dollars, the resurrection of small business, thawed assets bled through the veins of the Iranian economy, promising a bright future).
One of the best figures in the era of Rouhani will forever remain his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who brought the Iranians in the summer of 2015 a nuclear deal with the United States and Europe. It is impossible to forget how triumphant and hero Zarif returned to his homeland - thousands of Iranians greeted him with flowers, enthusiasm, swinging in his arms like an Olympic champion. The leaders of the conservative military wing in military trench coats could not bear this triumph, devoting the next five years to attempts to break the nuclear deal and trample the victory of the liberals. And Mr. Trump really helped the Guardian Corps in this matter by coming to power and immediately destroying the deal (since someone leaked part of the nuclear dossier to Israel and Trump to help).
No matter how Rowhani and Zarif tried to save the deal, the IRGC turned out to be stronger. What is one indicative episode of this Iranian power struggle: the first ever visit of the Japanese prime minister to Tehran, the attention of all the world media, Tehran is trying to make Tokyo an intermediary with Washington, and now even Trump is involved in negotiations, he also wants an Iranian deal - suddenly, during the days of the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Abe to Tehran, “someone” from the Iranian forces commits sabotage on Japanese tankers in the Gulf, laying mines under water under them. Abe leaves spat upon, the deal fails.
In this fierce Iranian struggle for power, the liberals won a symbolic victory. On January 3, 2020, a car was blown up in Baghdad’s airport, in which General Suleymani, the archenemy of Rouhani and the entire liberal clan, was located. Here, Trump seemed to play on the side of the “Rohanists”. By posting on Farsi on Twitter, supporting Iranians protesting in early January, he urged them not to leave the streets and “change history.” Alas, Trump's advisers do not really understand the complex Persian political system. These tweets were an empty whistle.
And, despite the fact that Suleimani disappeared from the firmament of Iranian politics, the alignment of forces has not changed in favor of the liberals. On the contrary. Its liquidation was a powerful consolidating factor in society, such as declaring war.
The United States killed a national hero and warrior (this is not a personal assessment of the author, but a statement of Suleymani’s multi-million funeral, something about 30 million people who took part in the farewell ceremony and several dozen trampled alive). Now, only a “national traitor” could support negotiations with the United States, which Ayatollah Khamenei announced immediately after what happened to Baghdad to the entire political elite. So the topic of negotiations with the United States was locked tightly. And the conservatives opened the way to all branches of government for the next four, or even eight years.
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Today’s pre-election situation. The head of the Iranian judiciary is my personal nightmare - Ibrahim Raisi (59 years old), whose judges in the Islamic Revolutionary Court on October 3, 2019 presented me with fake espionage charges and left me in prison. (I will devote one of my next columns to this).
According to his most active work unfolding in 2019, it could be assumed that Raisi began the election campaign for the presidency in 2021. But conservatives from the IRGC decided not to drop him into the "disastrous" presidency, preserving his popularity as a spiritual leader, since in the Iranian political theater the president is a kind of a whipping boy. And even a fool understands that in 2021 Iran will be on the verge of an economic disaster, and the future leader will not associate with problems and poverty, and, most importantly, hold the voters accountable for this.
Having exchanged places with the object of criticism and assuming responsibility, you instantly lose the populist's trump cards about “failed politics and unprofessionalism” - and you become a target yourself. Moreover, Rouhani asked to resign, but Khamenei did not let him do this, having hung on him all the serious social and economic unpopular measures. And giving Raisi the opportunity to earn political points on him.
So, the question arose: who, then, can the IRGC nominate for the presidential election in 2021, so that “for sure”? Moreover, internal sociology showed that even in the parliamentary elections the positions of the conservatives were not particularly strong, despite the difficult situation with the collapse of the deal and the powerful liberation of the liberals by the IRGC and the permission of Khamenei. And here - the presidential, but few charismatic conservatives.
In early 2020, The Wall Street Journal published a ranking of the most popular Iranian politicians and public figures. Data source: School of Public Policy, Center for International Studies and Security in Maryland. Surveys were conducted in May, August and October 2019 (until the death of Suleymani). Ayatollah Khamenei is not included in the rating for obvious reasons, he cannot even be second. The top five looks like this.
1. General Kassem Suleimani.
2. Foreign Minister Dajvad Zarif.
3. The head of the judicial system, Ibrahim Raisi.
4. President Hassan Rouhani.
5. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Given the fact that the strongest candidate from this list was physically removed at the beginning of January 2020, and Raisi did not want to be put on a “firing post”, only the cheerful indefatigable Iranian ex-president Ahmadinejad (63 years) remains from the popular conservative candidates .
I don’t know how much the Iranian conservatives trust the data of WSJ and the Center for Political Studies and Security in Maryland, but in the spring of 2020 they really, as if checking with Washington and New York, began to persuade Ahmadinejad to join the election race.
Ahmadinejad is a little battered by battles with the liberals - in each of the last protests in the country, in January 2018 and in the fall of 2019, he took an active position, led street crowds, and fiercely criticized Rouhani. Yes, we are talking about the very protests that journalists poorly understanding Iranian reality called protests against the regime, but in fact they were protests against Rouhani and his very liberal government.
When Rouhani went to prison on charges of corruption, his former head of administration. Ahmadinejad himself could not even touch Rouhani - this is the holy of holies of the IRGC. Therefore, he answered all the appeals simply: if he is guaranteed “non-removal” during registration (the last parliamentary elections were distinguished by the total rejection of candidates by the IRGC), he agrees. Funny: the candidate from the IRGC is allegedly afraid that the IRGC will remove him from the race. In general, Ahmadinejad gave himself to talk and answered the common people: "I agree."
Today, one can also predict the possible participation of Ali Shamkhani (64 years old, Rear Admiral of the IRGC and Secretary of the Supreme Council of National Security (an analogue of the Russian Security Council). One can assume the participation of Mohsen Rezayi (65 years old, Secretary of the Council of Political Expediency, former commander of the IRGC since 1981 th through 1997.) Rezayi is authoritative among the military, since he began to command the Guard Corps at the age of 27 and still has not beaten this record. He is also considered involved in the explosion at the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 ( 85 people were killed, 151 injured), and there are always plenty of lovers to trample on the American and Israeli flags in Iran, but in charisma they obviously lose to Ahmadinejad.
So it is quite possible that May 2021 will be the triumph of the return of the most controversial president of the Islamic Republic. Dressed in a simple cheap costume from the bazaar, trolling the western establishment from the speaker’s rostrum in Geneva in 2009 with prayers from the Koran and “Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim” (citizens rushed about in the rainbow wigs of the LGBT community for a long time), who greeted the Hasidic brothers as brothers Holocaust (yes, New York Hasidim flew to Ahmadinejad in Tehran), congratulating Christians on Christmas Prompter with the pronunciation of Mutko (“Speak from May Hart”), sending a monkey into space (“How, weren't you?” - eh, it’s a pity the old warriors McCain, a lover of mutually picking with Mr. Ahmadinejad, are no longer in the world).
One of the world's best stand-up politicians, a worthy competitor to yet another charismatic, Donald Trump. (In a pair, from the stage, they would work great). Perhaps we will see this in reality.
Say, looking at this kind school teacher, that this native of Western Azerbaijan (province in Iran. - RT ), who began his political career as mayor of the town of Maku in northwestern Iran, served in the IRG intelligence and security apparatus? True, his adviser Mokhtaba Hashemi claimed that Ahmadinejad was not a personnel officer of the IRGC, but only a “Basij volunteer”.
If conservatives win the presidential election, a military Iranian renaissance will begin. The time of military trench coats and modest dark jackets. The time of the same shadow gray economy, night tankers with GPRS turned off. A time of purges of political enemies (liberals get ready). Strengthening Hezbollah, ties with Venezuela, Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, strengthening Chinese cooperation, withdrawing from all international treaties (if they still remain). In my personal sense, military uniforms will soon return to fashion around the world, even if they look on the outside like business suits in gloomy tones.
A born showman who created the image of a modest teacher who lives in a panel and drives to work on a bus with a worn briefcase (inside, of course, school notebooks and apples for children), he may return to the Iranian political Olympus for the third time. Ordinary people love cranberries and folk tales, and the Persian epos knows how to make them, so the high and broad-shouldered “colleagues” of the teacher, pushing him out of the crowd of onlookers, almost do not fall into the frame (there should be a big smile, but in the columns it looks solid )
In general, the world after the cove will become poor, but somewhere in the political stands will again be fun.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.