Rachna Shah
May 12, 2017

Rouhani vs. Raisi: May 19th

The Iranian presidential elections will be on May 19th. Current President Rouhani - who is neither a reformist nor a conservative, yet who has aided Iran to alleviate sanctions in relations to the JCPOA - will be running for re-election, but his victory is not guaranteed. His main opponent is a conservative who runs one of Iran's holiest shrines, and thus perhaps has the endorsement of the Supreme Leader. Thoughts about the election? Possible predictions? Any other comments regarding Iran?

2 comments
annadomahidi
May 17, 2017

The current supreme leader is 77 years old, meaning Iran has another few presidential terms (each are 5 years long) left before they need a new supreme leader and from what I've gathered, the Assembly of Experts (the group that chooses the next supreme leader) will most likely show bias in who's elected next. I think that this election is a lot bigger than just who's going to be president, but who's going to succeed Khameini in the coming years. Who's elected next may very well end up holding the most power in Iran soon. This is important because that will decide a lot of what direction Iran will take in the coming years.

Also, Rouhani recently criticised the Revolutionary Guard for conducting missile tests that would have gone against the agreement they've made with their nuclear program. This could have some influence in how the election goes because the guard reports directly to the supreme leader, and while there are elections, they aren't transparent.


I highly recommend this article from the NYT that takes a bit of a deeper look into Iran's political system: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/world/middleeast/iran-presidential-election-democracy.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-interpreter&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection