In Iran, the Big Winner Is None of the Above

In Iran, the Big Winner Is None of the Above

The Atlantic

Since the death in May of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran has been in the throes of a surprise electoral contest. Not for the first time, one of the loudest campaigns has belonged not to any of the candidates, but to opponents of the regime who advocate boycotting the vote. Among those who refused to vote on June 28 were the Nobel Peace Prize laureates Shirin Ebadi and Narges Mohammadi, the labor leader Esmayil Bakhshi, former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi (under house arrest since 2011 for leading the Green Movement protests), and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a prominent reformist turned critic who is in prison.

Now the first-round results are in, and they suggest a grand victory for the boycotters. On election day, so few Iranians came out to vote by 6 p.m., when the polls were due to close, that the regime extended voting hours all the way to midnight (the legal maximum). And yet, even if the interior ministry’s numbers are to be believed, turnout climbed no higher than 39.9 percent, by far the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Read: Who would benefit from Ebrahim Raisi’s death?

The previous presidential election, in 2021, was much less competitive—effectively a coronation for Raisi—and turnout was 49.9 percent. This time around, not even the inclusion of a reformist candidate, Masud Pezeshkian, who had the full support of once-popular former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, brought voters to the polls. Nor did the tireless campaigning of former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. The Iranian regime urges its supporters to vote as an act of fealty to the Islamic Republic, so refusing to vote is traditionally understood as an expression of dissent against the regime and its policies. And the message this year is clear: In the first presidential election since the Women, Life, Freedom protests of 2022–23, the majority of Iranians are making clear with their voting behavior, just as they did in the streets, that they reject the Islamic Republic.

And so one might expect that the reformist candidate, who would have been the likeliest choice for those who stayed home, would have been the biggest loser. It has long been held axiomatic in Iran that low voter turnout will deliver a victory to the hard-liners. But Pezeshkian surprised many by topping the poll on Friday with 42.5 percent of the vote, which sends him to a runoff, to be held on July 5, against Saeed Jalili, a fundamentalist hard-liner who came away with 38.6 percent. To many critics of the regime, even some of those who voted for Pezeshkian, the outcome was ideal: an expression of mass dissatisfaction that still managed to put a reformist in the lead.