Poll puts relative moderate ahead in Iran’s presidential elections
Vote count underway early Saturday; Hasan Rowhani declares he’s running ‘to boot out extremists’; for supreme leader Khamenei to let Rowhani win would be ‘a mortal blow,’ says Israeli analyst

An Iranian telephone survey on Friday evening gave relative moderate Hasan Rowhani a shock, big lead in the presidential elections. Vote counting in the election was underway overnight Friday-Saturday, amid reports of high turnouts.
Israel’s Channel 2 quoted Rowhani saying earlier Friday, as Iran went to the polls to choose a successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that “I entered the political arena in order to boot out the extremists” — a remark tantamount to open defiance of the regime led by Iran’s Supreme Spiritual leader Ali Khamenei.
As things stood, the Israeli TV report said, former nuclear negotiator Rowhani was being voted into a second round presidential runoff on June 21, probably against Tehran’s mayor, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who was in second place in the poll. A runoff is mandated if no candidate gets over 50% in Friday’s voting.
But it would be unthinkable for Khamenei to allow Rowhani to win the presidency, the respected Israeli Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari said. So Khamenei’s dilemma, said Ya’ari on Friday night, will be whether to fake the results of Friday’s vote in order to exclude Rowhani, or risk letting the troublesome candidate through to the second round next Friday, and possibly having to fake the result there. For Khamenei to let Rowhani win the presidency, said Ya’ari, would be “a mortal blow.”
Widespread allegations of result-fabrication in the 2009 presidential elections, which saw Ahmadinejad re-elected at the expense of reformist rival Mir Hossein Mousavi, led to a brief upsurge in protests by reformers, which were violently suppressed by the regime.
The analyst said that Rowhani, the only relatively moderate candidate left in the race, had built support from among Iranian reformists, from the country’s various minorities, and from figures linked to the earlier years of the regime, such as former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose own candidacy in these elections was banned.
The survey cited by Channel 2 was carried out by Information and Public Opinion Solutions, a US-based polling group that conducted telephone polls of more than 1,000 Iranians in both cities and rural areas. It gave Rowhani 38 percent of the vote, far ahead of second placed Qalibaf on 24%, with Khamenei’s widely reported preferred candidate Saeed Jalili in fourth place with just 12.6%. Results are expected Saturday.
Amid turnout estimated at some 70%, Rowhani’s campaign manager, Mohammad-Reza Nematzadeh, was quoted in media reports saying: “From what we are hearing, by God’s grace and with the people’s support, he is leading in all the country, down to the level of villages.”
Rowhani is far from a radical outsider. He led the influential Supreme National Security Council and was given the highly sensitive nuclear envoy role in 2003, a year after Iran’s 20-year-old atomic program was revealed.
But he is believed to favor a less confrontational approach with the West and would give a forum for now-sidelined officials such as Rafsanjani and former president Mohammad Khatami, whose reformist terms from 1997-2005 opened unprecedented social and political freedoms that have since been largely rolled back.
Khamenei delivered a salty rebuke to the US earlier Friday as Iranians lined up to vote in a presidential election that has suddenly become a showdown across the Islamic Republic’s political divide: hard-liners looking to cement their control and re-energized reformists backing the lone moderate.
Khamenei responded to US questions over the openness of the balloting, telling Washington “the hell with you” after voting began in a race widely criticized in the West as pre-rigged in favor of Tehran’s ruling system. Khamenei also charged that the US elections are controlled by “the Zionist regime.”
“US president is being elected only from two parties while Zionist regime is controlling everything behind the scenes,” said a cartoon posted Thursday on Khamenei’s English language Facebook page.
Long lines snaked outside some voting stations in Tehran and elsewhere. Iran’s interior ministry extended the voting time by four hours. The enthusiasm suggested an election once viewed as a pre-engineered victory for Iran’s ruling establishment has become a chance for reform-minded voters to re-exert their voices after years of withering crackdowns.
Until polling day, there was no clear front-runner among the six candidates trying to succeed the combative Ahmadinejad, whose eight-year era is coming to an end because of rules blocking a run for a third consecutive term. But influential figures on all sides appealed for a strong turnout, indicating both the worries and hopes across an election that has been transformed in recent days.
Iran’s loose coalition of liberals, reformists and opposition activists — battered and fragmented by relentless pressures — have found last-minute inspiration in former nuclear negotiator Rowhani.
Some analysts said a victory by Rowhani would be seen as a small setback for Iran’s hard-liners, but not the type of overwhelming challenge posed four years ago by the reformist Green Movement, which was brutally crushed after mass protests claiming Ahmadinejad’s 2009 re-election was the result of systematic fraud in the vote counting. Israeli analyst Ya’ari considered it would be far more dramatic a blow.
Rowhani’s backers, such as former president Rafsanjani have urged reformists and others to cast ballots and abandon plans to boycott the election in protest over years of arrests and intimidation.
“Both I and my mother voted for Rowhani,” said Saeed Joorabchi, a university student in geography, after casting his ballot at a mosque in west Tehran.
In the Persian Gulf city of Bandar Abbas, local journalist Ali Reza Khorshidzadeh said many polling stations have significant lines and many voters appear to back Rowhani.
But fervor also was strong for other presumed leading candidates: hardline nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and Tehran’s mayor, Qalibaf, who is boosted by a reputation as a steady hand for Iran’s sanctions-wracked economy.
“We should resist the West,” said Tehran taxi driver Hasan Ghasemi, who backed Jalili.
Outside Iran, votes were casts by the country’s huge diaspora including Dubai, London and points across the United States.
Khamenei, who has not publicly endorsed a successor for Ahmadinejad following their falling out over the president’s attempts to challenge the supreme leader’s near-absolute powers, remained mum on his choice Friday.
Instead, he blasted the U.S. for its repeated criticism of Iran’s clampdowns on the opposition and the rejection of Rafsanjani and other moderate voices from the ballot.
“Recently I have heard that a U.S. security official has said they do not accept this election,” Khamenei was quoted by state TV after casting his vote. “OK, the hell with you.”
In Washington on Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that while the U.S. does not think the Iranian election process is transparent, it is not discouraging the Iranian people from voting.
“We certainly encourage them to,” Psaki said. “But certainly the history here and what happened just four years ago gives all of us pause.”
Iran’s election overseers allowed eight candidates on the ballot out of more than 680 registered. Two candidates later dropped out in bids to consolidate votes with rivals. Journalists were under wide-ranging restrictions such as requiring permission to travel around the country. Iran does not allow outside election observers.
Iran’s security networks, meanwhile, have displayed their near-blanket control, ranging from swift crackdowns on any public dissent to cyberpolice blocking opposition Internet websites and social media.
Yet other cracks are evident.
Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program have pummeled the economy by shrinking vital oil sales and leaving the country isolated from international banking systems. New U.S. measures taking effect July 1 further target the country’s currency, the rial, which has lost half its foreign exchange value in the past year, driving prices of food and consumer goods sharply higher.
Such concerns could have a direct effect on the outcome of the election. Qalibaf is widely viewed as a capable fiscal manager and could draw in votes, since economic affairs are among the direct responsibilities of Iran’s president.
All other major issues are fully controlled by the Khamenei, his inner circle and its protectors, led by the powerful Revolutionary Guard. The other candidates permitted on the ballot by election overseers are seen as loyalists, including Jalili and Khamenei adviser Ali Akbar Velayati.
Such insiders in the presidency would give Iran’s leadership a seamless front with significant challenges ahead, such as the possible resumption of nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers and the increasing showdown in Syria between rebels and the Iranian-backed regime of Bashar Assad.
Recent comments by Khamenei were interpreted as leaning toward Jalili, whose reputation is further enhanced by a battlefield injury during the 1980-88 war with Iraq that cost him the lower part of his right leg.
But the election also could leave Iran further divided. Rowhani’s rapid rise from longshot to reformist hopeful — aided by endorsements from artists and activists — has shown the resilience of Iran’s opposition despite relentless crackdowns. A defeat could leave them even more embittered and alienated.
At final rallies, Rowhani’s supporters waved his campaign’s signature purple — a clear nod to the single-color identity of the now-crushed Green Movement and its leader, Mousavi, who has been under house arrest for more than two years. On Wednesday, thousands of supporters welcomed Rowhani yelling: “Long live reforms.”
Some Rowhani backers also have used the campaign events to chant for the release of Mousavi and other political prisoners, including former parliament speaker Mahdi Karroubi, leading to some arrests and scuffles with police.
- Israel & the Region
- Tehran
- Iran
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
- Green Movement
- Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
- Saeed Joorabchi
- Ali Reza Khorshidzadeh
- Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf
- Bandar Abbas
- Hasan Ghasemi
- Saeed Jalili
- Bashar al-Assad
- Iraq
- Jen Psaki
- Mir Hossein Mousavi
- Supreme National Security Council
- Dubai
- London
- Hassan Rouhani
- Ali Akbar Velayati
- Ali Khamenei