Desperately Seeking a Conservative Center

Iran’s 10^th Parliament will start work on May 7, but before it does, runoff elections must be held on April 29. 138 candidates are competing for 69 seats, which comprise more than 23 percent of the seats in the new parliament.

Reformists and supporters of Rouhani’s government are counting on gaining 40 seats. Hardline conservative “principlists,” meanwhile, have their own expectations. Independent MPs, too, hope to make gains.

The current speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, wants his supporters to gain enough seats to ensure that he will remain speaker. Larijani is a traditional conservative close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but is disliked by some hardliners.

The struggle now is between Larijani’s supporters and supporters of Mohammad Reza Aref, a reformist politician, and a Rouhani ally.

But in recent days, reformists and Rouhani supporters have increasingly backed Larijani.

They say they do not want to compete with “moderate principlists,” and would join them in voting for Larijani. Reformists, it seems, are offering an olive branch to Iran’s conservative political center so as to undermine more extreme, hardline figures. (Imagine if Democrats in the US House of Representatives were going to support Paul Ryan in order to prevent the rise of the Tea Party, and you have a rough analogy).

The term “moderate principlist” has no clear definition, but in the current political climate, it may signify that some so-called principlists are ready to do business with Rouhani’s government, or at least don’t care to challenge it too fiercely at the moment. Such principlists, presumably, also have what it takes to stand up to more hardline figures, and may afford Rouhani some protection.

The Bogeyman Factor

Rouhani’s government and its reformist supporters are taking care not to allow an ostentatious surge of reformists in parliament, as such sudden change could inspire powerful hardline opponents to retaliate with all means available to them.

At the same time, hardline media and principlist figures are already ringing alarm bells over the runoff, and fuelling the rivalry between Larijani and Aref, exaggerating Aref’s prospects for becoming the next speaker of parliament.

Aref is not a charismatic politician. He has meagre parliamentary experience and lacks good relations with key reformists. Nevertheless, he could annoy hardliners if, as speaker, he was to talk about the house arrest of the 2009 Green Movement’s leaders, express opinions in meetings of the Supreme National Security Council, or praise former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, for whom he served as first vice president from 2001 to 2005.

Hardliners find it annoying enough that Aref is going to parliament as the leader of the reformist faction, or perhaps as deputy speaker, but as the speaker his influence would be bitterly opposed. Many of Rouhani’s supporters fear what this would mean for them.

Ali Larijani, meanwhile, sees possible advantages for himself. By refusing to join the principalists in the first round of the elections, he has dealt a blow to hardline rivals. Now he expects Rouhani supporters to reward him.

With many of his hardline rivals now absent from the coming parliament, Larijani can also put on a show of unifying the principalists. Larijani’s opponents are very aggressive, but there are not many of them, and their voices are not as loud as those of their predecessors in the previous parliament.

If Larijani can manage the principalists and control reformists, he can the become go-to person for just about everybody.

In recent years, hardliners have accused Larijani of being a silent “seditionist” for helping to pass the nuclear agreement, but he has always tried to present himself as a safe figure, sometimes for the Revolutionary Guards, sometimes for President Rouhani’s government, and sometimes for the Supreme Leader. It is a difficult juggling act, but his ambitions demand it.