[The mayor of Tehran, seen as a pragmatist, came in second with 18 percent of the vote, but the four hard-line conservatives aligned with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, finished at the back of the pack. That punishing at the polls indicated that Iranians were looking to their next president to change the tone, if not the direction, of the nation by choosing a cleric who served as the lead nuclear negotiator under an earlier reformist president, Mohammad Khatami.]
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| President Elect Hassan Rowhani: A Google Image |
TEHRAN — In a striking
repudiation of the ultraconservatives who wield power in Iran, voters here
overwhelmingly elected a mild-mannered cleric who advocates greater personal
freedoms and a more conciliatory approach to the world.
The cleric, Hassan
Rowhani, 64, won a commanding 50.7 percent of the vote in the six-way race,
according to final results released Saturday, avoiding a runoff in the race to
replace the departing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose tenure was defined
largely by confrontation with the West and a seriously hobbled economy at home.
Thousands of jubilant
supporters poured into the streets of Tehran, dancing, blowing car horns and
waving placards and ribbons of purple, Mr. Rowhani’s campaign color. After the
previous election in 2009, widely seen as rigged, many Iranians were shaking
their heads that their votes were counted this time.
“They were all shocked,
like me,” said Fatemah, 58, speaking of fellow riders in the women’s
compartment of a Tehran subway. “It is unbelievable, have the people really
won?”
The mayor of Tehran,
seen as a pragmatist, came in second with 18 percent of the vote, but the four
hard-line conservatives aligned with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, finished at the back of the pack. That punishing at the polls
indicated that Iranians were looking to their next president to change the
tone, if not the direction, of the nation by choosing a cleric who served as
the lead nuclear negotiator under an earlier reformist president, Mohammad
Khatami.
Though Mr. Rowhani’s
election was not expected to represent a break with Iran’s nuclear policies,
voters linked him with the Khatami era, when Iran froze its nuclear program,
eased social restrictions and promoted dialogue with the West, giving reformers
hope that he would try to lead Iran out of international isolation and
religious reaction.
But if the election was
a victory for reform and middle class voters, it also served the conservative
goals of the supreme leader, restoring at least a patina of legitimacy to the
theocratic state, providing a safety valve for a public distressed by years of
economic malaise and isolation, and returning a cleric to the presidency. Mr.
Ahmadinejad was the first noncleric to hold the presidency, and often clashed
with the religious order and its traditionalist allies.
The question for Western
capitals is whether a more conciliatory approach can lead to substantive change
in the conflict with Iran over its nuclear program.
Ayatollah Khamenei still
holds ultimate power over the nation’s civil and religious affairs, including
over the disputed nuclear program. Sharif Husseini, a member of Parliament,
warned Saturday that “nothing would change” in Iran’s nuclear policies. “All
these policies have been decided by the supreme leader,” he was quoted as
saying by the Iranian Student News Agency.
For all his reformist
credentials, Mr. Rowhani backs the nuclear program, which Iran contends is for
peaceful uses but which the West believes is aimed at producing atomic weapons.
In a 2004 speech, not made public until years later, he boasted that even when
Iran had suspended uranium enrichment, it was able to make its greatest nuclear
advances because the pressure was off.
“While we were talking
with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the
facility in Isfahan,” he said. “In fact, by creating a calm environment, we
were able to complete the work in Isfahan,” a crucial Iranian nuclear facility.
Still, the election
results put Ayatollah Khamenei under pressure to allow some changes, and could
allow him to make changes that might be opposed by hard-liners if they
controlled all the levers of power. For the supreme leader, a weak loyal
president might be less threatening than Mr. Ahmadinejad, who over time
alienated the ayatollah as he consolidated his own power through the
bureaucracy.
Analysts predict at
least some change. The president can set the tone of debate on issues from
socializing rules for young people to the need for the nuclear program. He will
also have some control over the economy — the public’s primary concern lately.
“There will be
moderation in domestic and foreign policy under Mr. Rowhani,” said Saeed
Laylaz, an economist and columnist close to the reformist current of thinking.
“First we need to form a centrist and moderate government, reconcile domestic
disputes, then he can make changes in our foreign policy.”
A White House statement
on Saturday congratulated Iranians on “their courage in making their voices
heard” and urged the new government to “heed the will of the Iranian people and
make responsible choices that create a better future for all Iranians.” The
United States, it added, “remains ready to engage the Iranian government
directly” to find a diplomatic solution to concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.
As the race began,
conservatives and hard-liners had first seemed to close ranks around Saeed
Jalili, the nation’s hard-line nuclear negotiator and a close ally of the
supreme leader. Mr. Jalili campaigned on the idea of no compromise, explicitly
referring to negotiations with the West over Iran’s nuclear program, but which
may also have been seen by the weary electorate in Iran as a cornerstone of his
domestic intentions. He won about 11 percent of the vote.
Mr. Rowhani, by
comparison, used a key as his campaign symbol, and focused on issues important
to the young, including unemployment. His message was one of outreach,
responsiveness and inclusion.
“Let’s end extremism,”
Mr. Rowhani said during a campaign speech. “We have no other option than moderation.”
He criticized the
much-hated morality police who arrest women for not having proper head scarves
and coats. He called for the lifting of restrictions on the Internet. He said
that “in consensus with higher officials” political prisoners would be freed.
At the time, his
campaign words sounded like empty promises to many potential voters, who
pointed out that Mr. Rowhani did not enjoy the support of those in power.
But support from two
former presidents, Mr. Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was
disqualified from the election, lifted Mr. Rowhani’s status, helping him tap
the votes of millions of dissatisfied Iranians.
His appeal to the
younger generation was crucial in a nation where there is an increasing divide
between the millions of youths — two thirds of the 70 million population are
under 35 — and the ruling hard-liners who use the morality police, Internet
blocking and other harsh measures to try to mold those born after the 1979
revolution.
Many Iranians were
disillusioned after the 2009 election, when millions took to the streets after
a vote widely seen as rigged returned Mr. Ahmadinejad to office. The government
deployed security forces to silence the opposition and placed its leaders under
house arrest for years. Mr. Khamenei took sides in that dispute and at least
temporarily lost his standing as an arbiter above the partisan fray, a role he
can now try to reassume.
Still, within the
circumscribed world of Iranian politics, the public looked to the vote as a
chance to push back.
Feeling defeated by
pessimism and expecting Iran could only change for the worse, many Iranians
awoke on Saturday anticipating that the conservative clerics and Revolutionary
Guard Corps members who have been amassing power over the past years would again
alter the outcome of the vote in their favor.
Instead state
television, which is under their control, meticulously broadcast the results
that came in more slowly than usual, all showing a clear lead for Mr. Rowhani.
“I thought they would
trick us, engineer a runoff with another candidate and make Rowhani lose,” said
Reyhan, 30, a poet.
Many Iranians who voted
on Friday suggested they had mixed feelings about casting a ballot for any of
the candidates carefully vetted by the ruling clerics. But they said that at
least Mr. Rowhani represented a distinct change from the combative style of Mr.
Ahmadinejad, who presided over a painful economic decline and international
isolation.
“We need to end these
eight years of horror,” said Mehdi, 29, while leaving a polling station in
Narmak, the neighborhood where Mr. Ahmadinejad had lived before he was elected
in 2005. “I thought of not voting, but we cannot stand aside.”
“Either Rowhani wins, or
we leave the country,” he said as his wife nodded.
For the West, Mr.
Rowhani’s election means a possible new opportunity for the long-stalled
nuclear talks.
In a way, the elections
were a referendum on the tactics of the talks. Mr. Rowhani was Iran’s nuclear
negotiator in 2004, when Iran agreed to voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment.
That suspension was reversed during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s tenure and the
replacement of Mr. Rowhani with Mr. Jalili.
During the campaign, Mr.
Rowhani faced scathing attacks from Mr. Jalili, who suggested that Mr. Rowhani
had betrayed the country. In an important pre-election speech, Ayatollah
Khamenei also implicitly warned Mr. Rowhani that it was “wrong” to think that
there could be any compromise with Western nations.
But that appeared to be
a misreading of Mr. Rowhani’s position. In the 2004 speech, which offered
unusual insight into the otherwise opaque world of Iran’s thinking, the former
chief negotiator made it clear that his goal was ultimately about mastering the
nuclear process.
“If one day we are able
to complete the fuel cycle and the world sees that it has no choice — that we
do possess the technology — then the situation will be different,” he said.
“The world did not want Pakistan to have an atomic bomb or Brazil to have the
fuel cycle, but Pakistan built its bomb and Brazil has its fuel cycle, and the
world started to work with them. Our problem is that we have not achieved
either one, but we are standing at the threshold.”
Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New
York.
