Iran’s supreme leader is terrified of people power

livemint.com:

Iran’s presidential election on June 28th, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, said that any vote was a vote for his Islamic Republic. By that test the poll raises deep questions about the decaying regime’s legitimacy. Some 60% of the country’s 61m-strong electorate have withheld their vote, resulting in the lowest turnout on record.

The streets of Tehran, the capital, were uncannily quiet on polling day with many people dismissing the exercise as a farce in a country being ruined by dictatorship. Instead of queues outside polling stations, election monitors slept at their desks in empty mosques.Don’t mistake calm for stability, however. The system is still reeling from the mysterious death of the presidential incumbent, Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash on May 19th.

And the surprise results mean a second round will take place on July 5th, which could further expose the fissures in Iranian society and the fragility of the regime.Iran’s political system is a hybrid that mixes elements of democracy, military rule and religious authority. The clerics and military commanders who dominate the system had looked to Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf as their candidate. He is a stalwart of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the clerical authorities’ praetorian guard.

Yet he came in third place and is now out of the race.In the lead with 10.4 million votes is Masoud Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old surgeon who was a health minister in a reform-leaning government two decades ago. He has decried the regime’s corruption and brutal enforcement of the mandatory veil and called for engagement with the West. He has the backing of a reformist bloc hoping for a comeback.