Abstract

Iran's Tainted Elections

Iran's elections, scheduled for February 20, have provoked the gravest political crisis in that country in twenty years. The conservative, clerical Guardian Council sparked the turmoil in January by barring nearly half of the roughly 8,000 candidates for various national and local posts from running. A majority of those excluded were from the reformist camp associated with President Mohammad Khatami, including eighty-three sitting members of Parliament. At first Khatami seemed prepared to postpone the elections, but when Khamenei denounced this plan, Khatami folded. It may not matter. Some observers felt that the reformists were likely to do poorly even had they not been barred. Khatami is supported in Parliament by reformists of the Second of Khordad Front, who won 189 of the 290 seats in 2000. More than 100 of the reform Parliament's laws, however, were Struck down by Khamenei's Guardian Council, and many newspapers have also been closed. Reformists who questioned the absolute powers of Khamenei have been jailed. The clerical conservatives who are likely to dominate Parliament will suffer from profound illegitimacy, both because of the unfairness of the election and because turnout will almost certainly be small. For the hard-liners to try to rule an increasingly young, restive, urban population without a popular mandate could well set the country up for substantial unrest. In the meantime, the Bush Administration should accommodate demands in neighboring Iraq that upcoming elections there be as open and direct as humanly possible.