Iran’s moderates fear backlash in crucial election as supreme leader Khameini urges voters to ‘foil evil American intentions’

“The election foils many of the evil intentions Americans and Zionists have in mind against the country. They aim to sow discord between the Islamic establishment and the people. They will not succeed,” declared Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khameini as the campaigning stepped up for the last days of the polls in Iran.

“As in the 11 February rallies and the funeral reception of Martyr Soleimani, enemies will not achieve their goals when people go to vote which is a religious duty and a revolutionary duty,” the Supreme Leader stressed in a rare public speech.

The parliamentary elections on Friday will be one of the most significant in Iran’s recent history. They come at a time of dangerous turbulence, with fears of war with the US raised at one stage after the assassination of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani on the orders of Donald Trump.

The killing came amid steadily rising tensions and acts of sporadic violence, including the seizure of oil tankers in the Gulf and attacks on American bases and the embassy in Iraq. There remains great concern that continuing confrontations in the region may yet spark a deadly conflict with grave consequences.

The polls in Iran will also show which direction this country of 83 million people, one of the main strategic players in the Middle East, will take in the future: whether the reformists who won the parliamentary and presidential elections just a few years ago will hang on, or whether hardliners who are inimically hostile to the west will begin the process of gaining power.

On the streets of Tehran, people insist they will not be swayed by foreign propaganda and express continuing anger at the killing of General Soleimani. But, at the same time, many also speak of their disillusionment with the government and establishment politicians – charging them with the responsibility for an economy in dire straits and widespread corruption.

The main cause of the current economic problems are the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration after it withdrew from an international agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme.

But it is the government of president Hassan Rouhani and foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), curbing nuclear powers in return for a chance to open up the country to the outside world, modernise the economy and access lucrative foreign trade.

Correspondents covering the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2016 and 2017 saw a great outpouring of optimism along with the votes for the reformists.

But now the tide appears to be turning against them. The conservatives – or principalists as they term themselves – who were against the deal had repeatedly warned that one cannot trust the west. Now they can proclaim that they had been right all along and those responsible for the agreement must be thrown out of office.

“The Americans abandoned the nuclear deal and the Europeans have not done enough to protect it,” says Kamal Sepahi, a conservative commentator. “But it is Rouhani and Zarif who believed the Americans and the Europeans.

“The reformists went for the deal and that failed. Rouhani is one of the owners of the policy which failed and so is Zarif, so yes, people will think they are responsible.”

Sepahi, who had once supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the populist and controversial former president, and knew Soleimani well, also condemns the Rouhani government for its handling of the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner.

Officials at first claimed that Iran had nothing to do with the destruction of the plane, which killed all 176 on board, but then admitted that it was shot down with a missile by mistake. The revelation led to angry street protests in the country.

“Not giving out the information at first was the biggest mistake,” says Sepahi. “No one sane would be happy at the death of so many innocent people, so why not say what happened straight away? This delay made people angry and allowed some of the opposition to do things like tear down photos of Commander Soleimani.”

Mohammad Jahangari, a strategic affairs analyst, echoes the suggestion that there could be a backlash among the electorate for the nuclear agreement.

“Space has clearly shrunk for the moderates, with anti-west and anti-US chorus growing after the assassination of General Soleimiani,” he says. “Many see the moderates as responsible for trusting the US and its allies and getting nothing in return.”

Moderates say they are being unfairly blamed for the failure of the nuclear deal and it is they who can get the economy moving again.

Vahid Toutounchi, an oil and gas analyst as well as a reformist candidate, says the nuclear deal “was the result of so many years of negotiation, not only three years, and it had a very good outcome in the oil and gas industry”.

“Now everything will be affected and people see it,” he says. “But if we have a parliament in harmony with the government we can make up the losses and find ways to move on, just as we did before the JCPOA.”

Ehsan Mottaghi, another moderate seeking a win, adds that the failure of the agreement was not just due to the west. “There was also a lot of internal opposition to it from the principalists who accused us of betraying Iran’s security, so they also tried to make sure that it did not work.”

The liberals face other pressures. There has been controversy over the decision by the Guardian Council, the powerful election supervisory body, to disqualify a disproportionately large number of their candidates.

A total of 6,850 candidates out of 14,000 have been barred from contesting the polls, including a third of the current members of parliament.

Mohammad Adabi, a reformist candidate, says a number of experienced figures have been removed from the contest, which weakened the side. But, he holds, there is a silver lining: “There were a lot of people there for a long time and what has happened has meant that we can get younger people. They can bring their expertise and fresh ideas, which is a good thing.”

President Rouhani has strongly criticised the council. But Ayatollah Khamenei, the final arbiter in the country’s complex electoral system, has backed the decision, saying there is no place in parliament for “those scared of speaking out against foreign enemies”.

There were similar accusations of bias in the last parliamentary election, but at the time the reformists overcame the obstacle in a wave of popular support.

“I doubt if they will do that this time. I will vote for them because I don’t want to see a gradual return to the Ahmadinejad times,” says Reza Gharabaghi, a 43-year-old businessman. “But a lot of people who voted for them are simply fed up now and the principalists may win.

“This may not be the kind of regime change the west wanted. They might not worry too much thinking just us Iranians will be affected. That is foolish, what happens here will have an effect in lots of places.”

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