June 16, 2021
Jalili Resigns in Favour of Raisi
Saeed Jalili withdrew his candidacy in a statement. Jalili said “now that a large part of society has shown their support for our dear brother Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, it is appropriate for all the believers of the Revolutionary Front to vote for him”. Jalili encouraged his fellow conservative candidates to also resign in Raisi’s favour and encouraged his supporters to vote for Raisi.
June 14, 2021
Mottaki Pressures Candidates to Resign for Raisi
Manouchehr Mottaki, spokesman for the Unity Council, one of the main Principalist organisations, has joined the chorus of conservative voices calling for the four conservative candidates (Ghazizadeh, Jalili, Rezaei and Zakani) to stand aside for the consensus candidate, Ebrahim Raisi. Mottaki reminded the candidates of the 2013 election, where the large number of conservative candidates on election day split the conservative vote, resulting in the victory of Moderate candidate Hassan Rouhani. Mottaki did not name any names, but only encourage “the five candidates of the Revolutionary Front” to come together and choose a “consensus”.
June 13, 2021
Shariatmadari: Failure to Stand Aside for Raisi is a Sin
Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of Kayhan newspaper which is close to the Supreme Leader, today wrote that refusal of four candidates endorsed by the Revolutionary Front in favour of the fifth candidate is a mistake, the consequences of which will be an unforgivable sin. Shariatmadari was referring to the agreement that Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, Saeed Jalili, Mohsen Rezaei and Ali-Reza Zakani would have had to have made to be endorsed by the Principalist organisations, that they would stand aside for Ebrahim Raisi before election day so as not to split the conservative vote.
June 12, 2021
Summary of the Third Debate
The Third Debate was more focused than the previous two, with most of the candidates seeking to be less antagonistic towards each other and more focused on explaining their policies and pointing out the shortcomings of their rivals’ policies At the beginning of the debate, the moderator announced that the seven most important issues nominated by the general public for this debate were housing, employment, unemployment, inflation, justice, subsidies and corruption. Interestingly, neither sanctions nor COVID were raised as top issues by the general public. The debate focused mainly, therefore, on economic issues, particularly inflation, as well as accountability and internet filtering.
Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, who has become a viable candidate in some polls, pointed to his relative youth (as opposed to most of the other candidates) and said that he represented generational change. He said “Dear people of Iran, to entrust the management and solving of today's problems to the very people who created the current situation is like entrusting the treatment of malaria to mosquitoes or the treatment of COVID to the virus itself”.
Ebrahim Raisi seemed much more prepared than in previous debates, and used his non-executive experience to his advantage, pointing to his involvement in building local business while head of the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad and emphasising his role in fighting crime and corruption while Chief Justice. Raisi was much more coherent and articulate when taking on his main challenger, former Central Bank governor Abdol-Naser Hemmati, by centring his narrative on the slogan that “banks are a barrier to production”.
After Raisi said that “bank arrears must be repaid”, Hemmati produced a handwritten list of 13 names of those in arrears, to which Raisi said “We had previously published the names of the bank debtors given by Mr Hemmati. If Mr Hemmati had the list of bank super-debtors, why hadn't he handed it over to the judiciary so far? Why did they bring it to us in the debate?” Hemmati responded that the names had been provided to the judiciary and accused them of not acting swiftly before trying to break Raisi’s image of a strong judicial manager by saying “Mr Raisi, the economy is not like a court and a judge”.
Mohsen Rezaei did not perform particularly well, but centred his speeches on imager of Iran needing two major surgeries: for its governance and its economy. When asked how he would fund his centrepiece policy of a monthly 450 thousand toman subsidy, he stumbled, saying “don’t worry where I get the money from, as long as there is not theft, it’s not a problem”
Saeed Jalili asked more rhetorical questions than he gave rhetorical answers, but he developed his narrative around having the most extensive planning, saying “Iran needs a plan - if you want to weave an Iranian rug, you need a comprehensive plan to weave it row by row, knot by knot”.
Abdol-Naser Hemmati placed the responsibilities of Iran’s economic failures on the behaviour of hardliners, who had caused the sanctions which now cost the economy 16 billion annually. In differentiating himself from Raisi, Hemmati said “tell me, what will happen if power falls into the hands of the extremists? I can easily say that more sanctions will be imposed”.
Hemmati also accused the hardliners (meaning all other candidates except for Mehr-Alizadeh) of turning Iran’s neighbours into enemies, naming Saudi Arabia and UAE specifically, of creating alliances that brought no economic benefit to Iran, specifically naming Iraq and China, and sabotaging agreements that benefit Iran, specifically the FATF and JCPOA.
Jalili had said “the signing of conventions, including the FATF, is of no benefit to the country” to which Hemmati retorted “Mr Jalili and North Korea are the only ones saying that the FATF is useless. Does that mean 200 other countries do not understand this? Let the country breathe!”. Raisi said he was supportive of the JCPOA, although the agreement would be better under a “strong government”, a reference to his slogan “a people’s government for a strong Iran”.
Ali-Reza Zakani focused his speeches on what he called the three “n”s of Iran’s failures: not knowing, not wanting, not being able. Zakani also produced a letter which supposedly showed Hemmati as a key supporter of the petrol price rise of 2019, which led to protests which were violently suppressed, which ran contrary to Hemmati’s own claims of opposition to the price rise. Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh took a similar road to Hemmati, saying the problems that Iran faces stem from the fact that everything is politicised: “our economy and our livelihoods suffer because of politicisation”
Mehr-Alizadeh also continued to lobby on ethnic issues, which had been a feature of the second debate in particular, arguing that local languages should be permitted for use in regional universities and the press, posing the question “is there equality between ethnic groups in Iran?” Other candidates avoided the issue, although Rezaei said that his plan for Iran’s development was all inclusive and Ghazizadeh blamed a rise in ethnic dissatisfaction on the decline of family. Mehr-Alizadeh criticised treatment of Sunnis in Iran, particularly the ban on Sunni seminaries and Sunni mosques in places like Tehran. As soon as the debate finished, the most senior Sunni leader in Iran, Molavi Abdol-Hamid, announced his support for Raisi.
Internet filtering became a means of discussing social issues, with Hemmati criticising Raisi’s mention of “safe filtering” saying that “safe filtering means closing Instagram”. Hemmati also tried to bring the discussion of women’s rights on to the agenda in a roundabout way, since it was clear the candidates may have been warned after the last debate. Hemmati asked Raisi if he agreed with the Friday Imam of Mashhad, Ahmad Alam-ol-Hoda (who is also Raisi’s father-in-law), and his views on women. Alam-ol-Hoda’s Instagram account was recently suspended. Raisi said he had not introduced any new filtering while Chief Justice. While Zakani said “Mr Hemmati, why are you talking about filtering? You closed your Instagram comments until yesterday. You do not dare to talk to people”.
June 9, 2021
Politics Centres on Election Banners
Campaign banners of candidates became news on Wednesday. Ebrahim Raisi issued a statement ordering his headquarters to remove his banners saying that they are a waste of money and damage the environment, and requested that donors to his campaign direct their funds to projects that help the people, and not to printing or distributing banners. Saeed Jalili’s supporters, on the other hand, were subject to criticism for creating their own banners through graffiti throughout Tehran. Jalili’s supporters were also blamed for setting alight the banners of Abdol-Naser Hemmati in Qom.
Read about Raisi’s statement at Tasnim
See images of pro-Jalili graffiti on Twitter
See images of burnt Hemmati banners on Twitter
June 8, 2021
Summary of the Second Candidates Debate
The second candidates debate took place on Tuesday afternoon.
Much of the debate centred on the economic plans of the candidates, as well as COVID and issues affecting women, youth and ethnic minorities. There was also some discussion about cultural and social restrictions in Iran. The candidates did not spend as much time hurling and responding to accusations about each other. However, again there was a notable absence of foreign policy issues, largely because, it is believed, the Supreme Leader declared these issues to be off limits in the election campaign.
Ebrahim Raisi lamented that “People’s trust in the government has reached the lowest level”.
Mohsen Rezaei declared the country to be in a worse situation than during the Iran-Iraq War, but promised that 1400 (2021) is the year of opening.
Saeed Jalili promised “this is not a debate, this is an intelligence test”.
Abdol-Nasser Hemmati said of the election that “it is not a choice between bad and worse, it is a choice between those who close doors and those who open doors”.
Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi congratulated the national football and volleyball teams on their recent victories, and emphasised the non-factional, universal nature of his planned “salaam” government.
Ali-Reza Zakani said that the next administration must help Iranians increase the birth-rate and housing affordability, saying that 58% of Tehranis’ income goes toward housing.
Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh called for the introduction of a minimum wage.
The debate included accusations between candidates, although not as much as the first debate. Jalili reiterated a point he has made throughout the campaign, that if showmanship takes the place of real work in politics, then the country cannot move forward. Mehr-Alizadeh reiterated his criticism of Raisi’s education, that the Chief Justice had only six classes of proper education. Raisi responded “my degree is not equivalent to what Mr Mehr-Alizadeh says; I have a seminary degree and a university degree”. Ghazizadeh came to Raisi’s defence, saying that Iran has “many great scientists among Islamic scholars, including in economics, and I myself have learnt from the clergy in many matters”.
Mohsen Rezaei talked about how he had become an internet meme, saying that “jokes about me are my capital”, seemingly following Hemmati’s philosophy that all publicity is good publicity.
A few candidates used Rouhani’s failures to attack Hemmati, with Jalili saying “they say we agreed to lift the sanctions, but the sanctions were not lifted”, referring to a statement by President Rouhani in early May. Zakani added “the representative of the Rouhani government here (Hemmati) is not willing to debate” before playing on “hope”, the slogan of the Rouhani campaign in 2013, saying that “this government has left no hope”. Zakani, who resents the term cover candidate used to describe him and others who are believed to be willing to stand aside to Raisi, returned to this topic in the second half of the debate, saying “Mr Hemmati, if I am a cover candidate, you are a cover candidate – come and cover the 8 years of disaster that you caused the people”. Raisi explicitly said that “Mr Hemmati must be held accountable during his tenure at the Central Bank” to which Hemmati hit back with “you have been in the judiciary for 40 years, should you be held accountable for all the sabotage in the judiciary? Now you tell me I have to answer for just eight years?”
COVID was an important issue of debate, with Hemmati said the next administration will fully vaccinate the country. Mehr-Alizadeh said he would vaccinate the country within three months.
The politics of ethno-linguistic minorities were present in this debate. In the first debate, Mehr-Alizadeh and Hemmati both spoke in Azeri, appealing to the large number of voters of Azeri origin. This time two candidates without Azeri background, Raisi and Rezaei, tried to appeal to the same voters. Raisi said confidentially that “the Turkish (Azeri) regions love me very much” while Rezaei embarrassingly and incorrectly tried to say “long live Azerbaijan” in Azeri.
On the future of the youth, Ghazizadeh expressed his dismay at the continual brain drain in Iran, and called for education reform, saying that “our youth spend five years of their lives in a room preparing for the concours (university entrance exam)”.
Issues affecting women also figured in the debate. Hemmati promised that he would have five women in his cabinet, and each of these women would be seriously involved in decision making. Ghazizadeh said that “instead of one, two or five people, I will dedicate the whole cabinet to women” before saying that he believed in meritocracy. Rezaei promised free internet to women head of households so that they could be involved in the online economy, before promising to lift restrictions on women athletes, such as in attending gyms. Mehr-Alizadeh spoke on the issue of the hijab, saying “if a girl’s hair is a hair out, we should not send her a message of terror”. Raisi promised guidance patrols (like morality police), but for economic managers, while Zakani said that people’s privacy was a red line that must be respected.
This discussion tied to issues of cultural and social restrictions in Iran. Rezaei said that the Council of the Cultural Revolution “is no longer efficient; I ask the Supreme Leader to dissolve it”. Rezaei quoted the lyrics of the song “We Hope for Joy” by Shahin Najafi, a rapper living abroad, saying “our youth have hope”. Hemmati responded with “they rap their music, but ban rap music”.
June 5, 2021
Summary of the First Election Debate
In the first candidates’ debate of the campaign, the candidates spent as much of their time responding to each other’s allegations as they did answering questions from the public.
The debate began on economic issues, with Ebrahim Raisi discussing how he would deal with smuggling and removing barriers to productivity. Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi outlined the problem and his solutions for the national currency.
Abdol-Naser Hemmati came out swinging, saying “unlike my friends here in front of you now, I actually know about economics”, saying he had a plan for fairer distribution of wealth, and accused Mohsen Rezaei of holding the country back financially for his part in opposing Iran’s signature for the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), an international body responsible for tackling money laundering and the financing of terrorism. He also accused Rezaei of obtaining his economics degree through intimidation rather than study. Hemmati attacked Saeed Jalili for having Trumpian politics, and then accused five of his opponents of being cover candidates for the sixth, Ebrahim Raisi, saying he will not respond to their criticisms unless they vow not to drop out of the race for Raisi. Hemmati then turned to Raisi, saying he had special respect for him for being a genuine candidate, unlike the others, before attacking his record in the judiciary and accusing him of oppressing the people.
Mohsen Rezaei tried to change the tone of the debate and push the heat back onto Hemmati, saying that the former Governor of the Central Bank had overseen the decline in the economy. Rezaei criticised Hemmati for offering subsidies to “rent-seekers” but not to the poor, and said he had turned the Revolutionary train into a scooter. Rezaei then emphasised that he is a soldier of Iran, and lamented “that Hemmati sympathises with the enemies of the Iranian nation is a great defect on his part”.
Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh began by outlining the problems of Iran, with 50% of Iranians subsisting below the poverty line and 7 million “heads of households” without a fixed reliable income. Mehr-Alizadeh directed most of his criticism towards Raisi, asking how a man with “seminary literacy” to solve the problems of the economy, asking the Iranian voters if they would hire an unlicensed driver to be their chauffeur. Mehr-Alizadeh said that the judiciary is still run as it was in the days of the Qajars, and Raisi suffers from “Restless Post Syndrome”, meaning he does not stay in one senior role long enough to be effective.
Ali-Reza Zakani directed his criticism for Hemmati, saying that the failure to sign up to the FATF was his fault, and as recently as two years ago he was saying that the FATF was not important. Zakani also said of Hemmati: “you say you want to redistribute wealth but all you have done is redistribute poverty”. Zakani also said the economy needed a leap in production, and needed to deal with tax arrears.
Saeed Jalili continued with the theme of attacking Hemmati, saying that when he was head of the Supreme National Security Council, he had several meetings with Hemmati in which the senior economist was given assistance in solving the problems of Iranian financial institutions, and he failed.
Ebrahim Raisi said “it is very bad that someone in the guise of a presidential candidate destroys others just to get votes” adding that no country has ever solved its problems through slander. Raisi then spoke to his record as an economic manager, particularly in increasing production, before speaking of his positive contributions as Chief Justice, which he said brought him in close consultation with the executive branch of government, and therefore gave him an understanding of the workings of the presidency. Raisi added that “management is the missing link in the country. I can line up many economists to solve the country’s problems but today, people want good management. Today, people are looking for a powerful economic manager who can solve problems”.
Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi echoed Raisi in his criticism of the tone of the debate and the need for good economic management. Ghazizadeh focused on tackling inflation and the housing crisis.
The take away is that Hemmati succeeded in getting all of the candidates talking about him, giving the impression that he is the alternative to Raisi. Whike Raisi succeeded in staying on track, presenting his plan and responding to Hemmati in a measured fashion, debates like these usually favour the underdog over the favourite, and it seems Hemmati turned this debate into being more about him than Raisi. Finally, the amount of time the other candidates spent in responding to Hemmati’s criticisms and levelling their own made them look irrelevant. Ghazizadeh, Jalili and Zakani did nothing to break the impression that they are pro-Raisi candidates. Mehr-Alizadeh was quite sheepish and although the same cannot be said of Rezaei, who did seem well prepared, his message was confused at times.
The next debate is on Tuesday, June 8.
June 3, 2021
Saeed Jalili Releases First Campaign Video
The first campaign video of Saeed Jalili went to air tonight. The film focuses on Jalili’s war record (he lost part of one foot in the Iran-Iraq War) and his connection with the Iranian people. In the film, Jalili outlines his plan for the next four years, and discusses the Iranian economy and material livelihood of Iranians.
June 3, 2021
Jalili: Outlines his Plans
In an interview, Saeed Jalili said that the people must follow the shadow of the government, meaning working side-by-side with the government’s efforts to improve Iran. Jalili blamed most of the country’s problems on domestic mismanagement, saying that if the government is in sync with the people, the country can “leap” forward. Jalili’s discourse was full of religious meaning, as he referred to efforts to tackle the nation’s shortcomings as a jihad, and sought inspiration in governance from Imam Ali.
May 31, 2021
Jalili and Zakani Both Talk Tough on Smuggling
Saeed Jalili started the day talking about his plans to tackle smuggling, saying that the practice, which is harmful to the country, is not limited to smugglers at the border, but rather his government will have to tackle the issue of a larger mafia which includes corruption of officials. Later that afternoon, Ali-Reza Zakani added his thoughts on the issue, saying “we have to eliminate profitability of smuggling by regulating the market, dealing with the causes of smuggling while also hunting those involved”.
Watch Saeed Jalili’s comments at Mashregh
Read Ali-Reza Zakani’s comments at Mehr