http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/middleeast/iran-election.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130616
Iran Moderate Wins Presidency by a Large Margin
Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency
Supporters of the newly
elected president of Iran, Hassan Rowhani, took part in street
festivities on Saturday after the announcement of his victory in
Tehran. More Photos »
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.
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.”
