Iran's New President, Consummate Insider

Hassan Rouhani’s electoral victory last Friday has taken both Iranians and the West by surprise. Its implications will be manifold, but the new president's past can offer some ground to make tentative speculations about his tenure.

Rouhani's political life began well before his recent candidacy. According to Rouhani's own account he was asked by then Hojjat al-Islam Ali Khamenei, today the incumbent Supreme Leader, to oversee the organisation of the military in the first years of the revolution. His exact duties and responsibilities at this time need to be further researched.

Rouhani replaced Khamenei as head of Majles’ Defence Commission when the latter became president in 1981. We can speak with some confidence of a long-standing relationship between the two men. Rouhani has been in the security establishment for over two decades. He was head of the Supreme National Security Council (SNCSC) for 16 years. If he wasn't trusted by the incumbent Supreme Leader it’s hard to fathom how he has come to occupy such sensitive posts pertaining to Iran’s national security over such a sustained period. He is also a member of the conservative Society for Combatant Clerics. While he wasn't backed by the clerical organisation in this election, one ought to consider his enduring ties to conservation-traditionalist circles.

Finally, he was most recently Khamenei's representative in the SNSC until the present day and also a member of the Assembly of Experts, the clerical organisation putatively charged with supervising the Supreme Leader's performance and appointing his successor. He is also close to Rafsanjani and has been careful to walk a fine line between the two men who have had a publicly strained relationship since Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005. Rouhani will be cautious now that the elections are over. Interestingly enough one of the first high-level members of the political elite that he publicly met on camera was Majles Speaker Ali Larijani. An inveterate critic of Ahmadinejad, and again a figure close to the Supreme Leader.

It should also be born in mind that in Feb 2011 Rouhani harshly condemned the protests held by Green Movement protestors in support of the Arab Spring and correspondingly supported the pro-government demonstrations. During his tenure as SNSC chief he also delivered a fiery speech denouncing student protestors in July 1999. At a cursory glance he seems like he is prepared to keep his cards close to his chest and speak to the concerns of a large section of the IRI political elite. He is also aware of the many diplomatic blunders and incendiary remarks made by Ahmadinejad in the past and will be keen to build bridges internationally, while closely coordinating with key players on the ultimate objectives of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy. 

The reformists might have erred in throwing their weight behind Rouhani prior to the first round of the election, with Khatami's basically ordering the reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref to step aside. If they had taken a bigger risk and the contest had reached a second round they might have been able to extract more cabinet portfolios when the cabinet is finally put to parliamentary vote. It was a big risk, they preferred not to take, and perhaps they were right to do so.

Another problem is that we do not have a comprehensive break-down of the electorate and hard data on the reasons people came out. The most obvious reasons seem to be the flagging economy, inflation, unemployment, the fear of more sanctions, military adventurism, regional tensions etc.

There is also a vocal and active group who have not forgotten the events of the 2009 election and hope to use Rouhani’s win as a springboard for more significant changes. How Rouhani handles these different constituencies is yet to be seen, but given his pragmatic politicking, it seems like he will try and keep as much of the political elite happy as possible, and take little heed of radical hardliners such as the cleric Mesbah Yazdi and his cohort, and radical reformists like Mostafa Tajzadeh. 

Most likely Rouhani's first point of call will be to try and better Iran's relations with Europe, and undertake a publicity campaign abroad and push for sanctions' alleviation and basically attempt to address those issues which most immediately affect people's livelihoods. In this way he can claim to have satisfied the electorate while neutralising demands which extend beyond this remit. In this way he will also minimise the risk of provoking the ire of the radical right, security services, Supreme Leader, Keyhan newspaper.

From his comments preceding the campaign it is clear that extricating Iran's nuclear file from the UN Security Council's purview is one of his chief objectives. If he can achieve this he might feel confident enough to make a couple of token gesture to reformist demands, such as greater respect of civil rights and structural reforms of the system. He can to a limited extent decrease domestic tensions and relax the security atmosphere which has gripped much of the country for the last four years. He will not have much say over the Ministry of Intelligence, the IRGC and Basij command, and so again, he's hedged in. The parallelism which afflicts Iran’s security apparatus is a genuine one and no president in the history of the IRI has be able to overcome it.

The question is whether the electorate will be content with minor and token gestures when it comes to political and citizens' rights. If a large swathe of Iranian voters has indeed rediscovered its confidence they might pressure the incoming president further to make good on his campaign rhetoric. A lot depends on how the reformists act. They will probably be cautious since they do not want to spark an immediate backlash and provoke accusations of "radicalism" (tondravi). Reformists will however make their measured demands and expect him to deliver given their endorsement, particularly the clinching endorsement of former president Mohammad Khatami. The question is what levers the reformists have to bring to bear and how can they really pressure Rouhani? They are a minority in the parliament and have little presence in the unelected and unaccountable organs of the state. 

Rouhani does have Rafsanjani and Khatami's support. He also has the support of lot of other prominent middle-of-the-road Principalists such as Ali Larijani, Ali Motahhari and their ilk. The polarising figures of Ahmadinejad, Mashai and other allies are no longer in or associated with the executive and it will be interesting to see what niche they attempt to carve out for themselves in the political system.

Rouhani does not have an independent social base of his own and it is not at all clear whether he will use his new found supporters to pressure unaccountable state organs to cave to his election promises, or whether he'll play it relatively safe. I think we can bank on the latter. He can make some small changes which could make a lot of difference, and then despite his own intentions, provide further opportunities on which reformists might capitalise.

Many in the regime elite think Rouhani’s election was the very best outcome for the preservation of the system. It will remain a great historical “what if”, if another polarising figure like Saeed Jalili had been elected, and what it might have meant for the Islamic Republic. While Rouhani might not be Khamenei's ideal choice, given his proximity to Rafsanjani, he is no doubt assured by the fact that Rouhani is not a radical reformist and that he doesn't have a radical and organisationally savvy reformist political base, as Khatami did in the sixth reformist-led parliament. Many reformists prior to the election defended Rouhani as the less bad option and as a means to an end, not an end in himself. It would be surprising if Rouhani was oblivious to this, and thereby was also cautious vis-à-vis the reformists.

While it appears Khamenei might have directly intervened in the case of Rafsanjani's candidacy and disqualification by the Guardian Council, we really can't have a firm grasp on his attitudes to Rouhani as president. Except for some barking from Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Keyhan, there's little to indicate Khamenei’s resolute opposition to Rouhani’s candidacy. Indeed, the Supreme Leader may well have learnt from his embarrassing experience with Ahmadinejad who he explicitly endorsed in 2009, but in the last years of his second term, basically never missed an opportunity to undermine him and the regime's unity. 

This is essentially speculation, since we have little insight into the discussions and horse-trading which have unfolded in the Leader’s office in the last months and weeks, but he may well have seen that the tide of public opinion favoured Rouhani and simply decided to go with it. This is especially since any candidate who might really have posed a threat to his authority was filtered out by the Guardian Council. That being said, the modus operandi and interaction of a president and the Supreme Leader can only be gleaned in practice and we will have to see how the two coordinate and work together. Given the contradictory sources of authority codified in the IRI constitution, there is never any guarantee of a smooth ride.

In short, we can tentatively suggest Rouhani himself will attempt to traverse the middle ground within the IRI political elite and bring a large section of it along with him. Whether Reformists and elements of the opposition will make use of this opportunity to pressure him and radicalise his policies will have to be seen. This will not be an easy task, especially since hardline elements are already retrenching and feeling out the new president, trying to discern the overarching line his administration will take, at both home and abroad. As always with Iranian politics we should be very wary of making predictions of any kind.