• English Site
• > SPIEGEL Magazine

Future of the Middle East

The Last Chance for Reformers in Iran

By Dieter Bednarz

Quarreling conservatives, frustrated reformers and an old political fox as self-appointed saviour: For the first time in the history of the Iranian theocracy, a clear winner may not emerge in this coming Friday's presidential election. The country is urgently in need of reform.

The red lettering on a dazzling white banner draped across the entire facade of a dirty yellow building on Seoul Street in northern Tehran boldly proclaims an agenda that seems illusory at best: "Dr. Mohammed-Bagher Ghalibaf -- Commissioner of the President for the Prosecution of the Smuggling of Goods and Foreign Currency."

But the man named on the banner, sitting in his spacious, heavily guarded office on the building's top floor, is only marginally interested in the government's campaign against rampant economic crime. Ghalibaf, 43, is currently waging a battle on an entirely different front. With a forcefulness that's shaking up the mullah establishment in the Islamic Republic, presidential advisor Ghalibaf is campaigning for the country's highest political office in Iran's upcoming election. Voting will start on Friday, June 17.

Despite his position as Iran's top law enforcement officer, Ghalibaf, an expert in world politics, was a relative unknown among Iranians until recently. But now, having announced his candidacy for presidency, Ghalibaf has become a serious contender to succeed the country's unsuccessful reformer and current president, Mohammed Khatami. And his unanticipated ascension -- that of a relative outsider who describes himself as a pragmatist -- is symptomatic in a political environment in which every other candidate, reformer and conservative alike, has offered only the vaguest solutions to the country's most pressing problems.

Theocracy in a region shaken by turmoil

The winner of this presidential election will face the task of guiding the theocracy through perilous times. Political turmoil is shaking the foundations of outdated power structures in Iran's neighboring countries, both in the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran's arch enemy, the United States, is threatening to impose sanctions that could lead to war if Tehran refuses to yield to demands that it abandon its nuclear weapons program. On the domestic front, a population forced to accept rigid religious beliefs as a panacea against an ever-worsening standard of living is becoming increasingly dissatisfied.

Indeed, the former police chief seems to be the man of the hour -- at least at first glance. Ghalibaf has shown himself to be adept at performing a political balancing act between the fundamentalist clerics and the country's youth, who are becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for change. He appeals to the conservatives as an advocate of law and order, and as a strict Muslim whose wife is not even permitted to shake hands with an unknown man. When he speaks with schoolchildren and students, looking fashionably scruffy and relaxed in a brown suede jacket, he comes across as the standard-bearer of modernity and as a man who can bring fresh blood into a stale mullah state. Even his campaign slogan is tempting on many fronts: "Iranians have a right to a good life."

The career officer rejects the idea that, as a veteran of Iran's security forces, he will use force to defend and uphold the theocracy. He claims that as a "good police officer," he has consistently improved tense relations between brutal security forces and rebellious students.

Charming as an Iranian Bill Clinton and as secure in his faith as a Muslim George W. Bush, Ghalibaf is using his flexibility to ride a wave of sympathy extending well beyond the capital. In fact, some Western diplomats in Tehran are even convinced that the surprise candidate could prevail over the actual front-runner, 70-year-old former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Just the fact that Ghalibaf's campaign could jeopardize the widely expected return to office of a politician who is probably the Islamic Republic's wealthiest man is seen as a minor sensation.

Whether Ghalibaf will actually find success in the upcoming elections is questionable. Rafsanjani's political experience will certainly help him and it is unclear that the reform candidate, former Minister of University Education and Technology Mostafa Moin, has run out of steam.

Real choices for voters

One thing, however, is certain: Never in the history of the Islamic Republic has the outcome of a presidential election been this unpredictable. And rarely has there been greater dissatisfaction among voters.

Members of the older generation are embittered over what they see as a betrayal of the ideals of the revolution. When they took to the streets to depose the Shah in 1979, they wanted freedom and justice -- and not a new tyranny in the name of Allah. And the current vast crop of young people (about half of Iran's population of 65 million-plus is younger than 20) has never been overly sympathetic to ideas like the "reprehensibility of the West" and the "superiority of Islam," nor have they been convinced by the concept of the United States as the "Great Satan" and the rightful "dominance of the religious scholars." They want to see a flourishing economy and an end to corruption.

Despite its enormous oil revenues, conditions in Iran are a long way from paradise. The guardians of the revolution -- the Iranian government is overseen by a spiritual leader (the Ayatollah) who also is the "defender of the revolution" and commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces -- have been clever and brutal in their defense of their power. The fallen president Khatami, a scholar once revered as "the face of kindness" and who defeated the radical religious candidate eight years ago in a landslide victory, was never able to push through reform despite being careful not to step on the mullahs' toes.

Like aging revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, his political heir, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has railed against any form of liberalization and opening to the West. With the help of the Guardian Council, a sort of Islamic constitutional court, the ultra-fundamentalists managed to suppress the reformers' legislative initiatives. They had critical newspapers shut down and rebellious intellectuals locked up.

The reform movement received its coup de grace early last year in Iran's parliamentary elections, when the Guardian Council disqualified almost every reform candidate as being "un-Islamic."