The presidential elections in Iran are over.
On the weekend - Friday, June 18 - the working hours of the polling stations were extended many times, and as a result, the polling stations worked until two in the morning.
And even with such a “squeezing out,” the turnout in these presidential elections is 48%, the lowest in the history of the Islamic republic.
The winner, as expected, was the heavyweight cleric Judge Ibrahim Raisi, who was appointed head of the judiciary by Khamenei in 2019 (this is a super-influential position in the Iranian power hierarchy) and for whom the Guardian Council disqualified all his competitors in the presidential race in May 2021.
This time, Khamenei and the conservatives did not risk "disagreeing" with the results and taking to the streets to fight for their candidate by voters, as happened in 2009, when the liberal politician Mir-Hossein Mousavi was admitted to the elections and after the announcement of the results they took to the streets millions of his supporters.
No alternative candidate - no problem.
A universal recipe.
Of the 48% turnout (about 28 million voters), 17.9 million people voted for Raisi, 3.4 million for the IRGC General Mohsen Rezai, and about 2.5 million for the "reformer" and ex-head of the Central Bank of Iran, Hemmati.
Surprising (or not surprising) fact - more than 4 million spoiled ballots in this election.
With such a low turnout, ensured by the administrative resource, the sluggish interest of Iranians in these elections, which affected the turnout, 4 million spoiled ballots is an obvious protest vote.
And if it consolidated around a single figure of the opponent Raisi, the second round could have happened.
But this did not happen, and this morning yesterday's election rivals congratulated Ibrahim Raisi on his victory.
“I congratulate the people on their election,” the current President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, reacted to the results.
"My official congratulations will come later, but we know who got enough votes in this election and was elected by the people today."
The surname Raisi did not sound aloud, however, Rouhani once again demonstrated that he is a strong player who remains pragmatism in the most difficult situations: literally a couple of hours later he left for a meeting with Raisi, where after a photo session on camera, a personal conversation took place between them.
Hasan Rouhani and Ibrahim Raisi
© IRNA
Let me remind you that in the last presidential elections in 2017, Raisi lost to the current President Hassan Rouhani by a margin of almost 8 million votes (23.6 million votes for Rouhani, 15.8 million for Raisi with 41 million counted) and between them all these four years had a very difficult relationship.
Raisi harshly criticized Rouhani and his government, the president's brother was arrested and convicted, accusations of corruption rained down on people from Rouhani's circle, and heavyweight clerics from Raisi's inner circle threatened the president with physical violence from the stands.
We do not know what happened behind the closed doors of this meeting, but we can assume that the fate of the nuclear deal was discussed (Rouhani's team is negotiating on it in Vienna), the fate of Rouhani after the transfer of power, and whether protesters against the election results will take to the streets.
Whatever one may say, Rouhani is still president and has serious resources, and “his” candidate - the most super loyal pragmatist - was unjustly disqualified by the Guardian Council (this is subtly, in an oriental way, Khamenei himself admitted after the disqualification, but to return Ali Larijani to the presidential race did not).
Out to the press, Rouhani said: "We will stand by and fully cooperate with the president-elect for the next 45 days until the new government comes to power."
The most remarkable thing for me in these elections is that, despite the unprecedented number of IRGC generals who had registered to participate in the elections, under whom the election legislation was even changed this year, Khamenei seemed to give his own guard hope that he could entrust them with the presidency. in the country, this still did not happen.
That is, there is a clear answer to the main question that I asked earlier - who will win, the ayatollahs or shoulder straps.
The cleric became president again.
The result of the presidential elections - 2021: the supreme executive power in the Islamic republic is again controlled by the clergy, and the IRGC is still subordinate to it (despite the fact that it has enormous political influence and financial power).
And Ayatollah Khamenei does not intend to change this status quo.
The Islamic theocracy had enough two terms of the "secular" Ahmadinejad, who did not belong to the clerical class, but was part of the large IRGC family, to assess the threats and challenges he posed to the entire system of Islamic religious statehood.
The recently published and highly recommended book, The Battle oh the Ayatollahs in Iran, by the American researcher and director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, an ethnic Iranian, Alex Watanka, describes a remarkable episode when all the angry clergy rose up against Ahmadinejad and nearly wiped out Khamenei in 2009 for allowing Ahmadinejad to be elected.
In those days, Rafsanjani, the second most influential person in Iran, who made Khamenei a spiritual leader, came to the latter with the words: "Do you want the military to carry out a coup and take away power from you, like in Egypt ?!"
Therefore, after the "Ahmadinejad vaccine", Khamenei and the ruling clergy are unlikely to allow the generals to take the helm.
At least for as long as the 81-year-old spiritual leader Khamenei is alive, and the Guard Council is headed by the 94-year-old ultra-conservative Ahmad Jannati.
Here, as a striking example, it is worth recalling the ranking of Iranian politicians published on January 16, 2020 by the WSJ.
The study, based on large-scale interviews with the Iranian population in May, August and October 2019, when General Soleimani was still alive, was conducted by the School of Public Policy, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland.
And I am absolutely sure that these figures were owned by the Iranian leadership and influential Iranian think tanks.
Approximately 80 out of 100 respondents (in percentages) named General Qassem Soleimani as the most popular politician in Iran.
The next most popular in the ranking (70 on a 100-point scale) was Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
In third place (approximately 55 out of 100) is Ibrahim Raisi, with a slight lag behind him - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Hassan Rouhani closed the top five.
As a person who lived in Iran in 2017, I can testify that General Soleimani was then everywhere - on billboards, on the pages of newspapers, the hero of songs and YouTube videos;
he was building up his public weight very actively, and in the period from 2017 to 2020 it could be assumed that he was really preparing to go into big politics.
Not only fans watched the billboards with Suleimani, with which Tehran was hung.
The influential mullahs also gazed at them.
Soleimani's authority grew by leaps and bounds.
And in his hands he had the levers of real power - both inside Iran and outside it, because the head of Al-Quds, one of the most serious intelligence services in the world, controlled all Iranian proxies, Hezbollah, had personal contacts with Moscow and the Americans in Iraq.
His ascetic image, popular popularity and nationalist rhetoric began to strongly strain both Qom and Mashhad.
In January 2020 - a year and a half before the presidential elections - the main contender for the military presidency was killed in Baghdad.
Today, there are even more portraits and sculptures of him in Iran.
But as a martyr, Suleimani no longer poses a threat to the clergy.
With Javad Zarif there was such a scandal with the leakage of conversations with criticism of the "martyr Suleimani" (evaluate the drama) that he decided not to risk it and not to nominate himself at all.
Ahmadinejad is disqualified.
Rouhani cannot be elected for the third time in a row.
So in the elections-2021 Raisi became the winner.
President Putin was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Mr. Raisi on his victory: "I hope that your activities in this high post will contribute to the further development of constructive bilateral cooperation in various areas, as well as partnership in international affairs."
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.