Iranian elections, two of which will be held Feb. 26, are more important than they are consequential.
They're important as expressions of political mood, which matters in a country of 77 million people. They're mostly inconsequential, though, because power belongs to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Most attention will befall parliamentary elections, important to the extent supporters of President Hassan Rouhani win seats.
Rouhani became president in 2013 largely by promising to end international sanctions and thereby to improve Iranian living conditions. Rouhani achieved the sanctions goal last month via an agreement to delay nuclear development.
Because that concession evoked scorn from Khamenei and his allies, Rouhani is called a moderate. But the characterization is relative in a hardline regime that gets harder with time.
Even if Rouhani wants a moderate power bloc in the Majlis, the elections won't deliver one.
As Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, reports in recent research notes, Khamenei and power centers he controls vet candidates and approve outcomes. Those groups include the Guardian Council and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Khalaji says "dozens" of former IRGC members have won Majlis seats representing small jurisdictions, where voters' concerns focus on local issues.
"The strategy has helped hardliners use the legislature as a tool for constraining the president's power," Khalaji writes.
The other election is for the Assembly of Experts, which selects a successor for the Supreme Leader. Because members of the body, who are supposed to be ayatollahs, serve 8-year terms and Khamenei is almost 77, the election has more than usual importance but is no less subject to manipulation.
As it does with parliamentary candidates, the Guardian Council reviews religious qualifications of assembly candidates. And clerical status, according to Khalaji, depends heavily and increasingly on support for the regime. Elections notwithstanding, the next Supreme Leader will not be anyone the current Supreme Leader dislikes.
In the democracy of revolutionary Iran, votes don't mean what they do elsewhere.
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.
