Concerns have been raised in Iran as a large number of candidates for the presidential elections of June 18 comes from the ranks of the military. At the same time, there are fears of militarization of the Islamic Republic.
The participation of “candidates with a military background is not new”, pointed out Ahmad Zeidabadi, a freelance journalist from Tehran, as broadcast by the Athenian News Agency.
Admiral Ali Samhani, Secretary-General of the Supreme National Security Council, General Mohsen Rezai, former Chief of Staff Guards of the Revolution, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Galibaf or his predecessor Ali Larijani, both former members of the Revolutionary Guards, have tried their luck as candidates for the presidency.
But “none of them were active members of the army,” said Habib Torkaswad, a Fars correspondent close to the ultra-conservatives, when he ran.
This year, as the official submission period opens tomorrow, Tuesday, not only is “the largest number of candidates in the military” observed, according to the official Irna news agency, but some of them are still active in the military.
This is the case with General Said Mohammad: although he resigned as commander of the Revolutionary Guards before announcing his candidacy, he remains an adviser to the corps’ chief of staff, General Hussein Salami.
The same goes for Admiral Rostam Gasemi. The former oil minister is currently the deputy financial adviser to the head of the Konz force, the elite group of Revolutionary Guards.
“Negative effects”
In addition to these two officers, General Hossein Nehkan – Minister of Defense in the first government of the outgoing president Hassan Rohani (2013-2017) and current adviser to Iran’s supreme spiritual leader Ali Khamenei – was the first to announce his candidacy for the presidency in late 2020. He was followed by Ezatollah Zargami, a former member of the Revolutionary Guards who has been the head of the state Radio and Television of Iran, and General Rezai.
Samhani, Galibaf and Larijani are also possible candidates.
All candidates must obtain the approval of the Guardian Council of the Constitution.
But the moderate Jomhouri-ye-Eslami newspaper has already estimated that the election of “a military man as head of government” could have “negative consequences” for the country.
Reformist former MP Ali Motahari, a candidate who does not have much hope of gaining Council approval, paralleled the situation in Iran with “former” military regimes “in Turkey and Pakistan”, noting that these countries “fought with great difficulty to free themselves from military domination”.
General Dehkan recently assured that “there is no possibility of militarizing the state in Iran.”
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, had asked military “Not to interfere in politics”. But under the successor of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guards expanded their activities into politics and economics, to the point, observers say, of creating a state within a state.
“Personal initiative”
“The law does not prohibit the participation of the military in the elections (…), but the intervention of the army in the elections, as in the case where” an armed force announces a candidate or acts in a way that changes the outcome of the elections, “the spokesman explained. of the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, Abbas-Ali Kandhodai.
Fears of militarization of the system have been heightened by the leak and publication in late April of a speech by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in which he was heard criticizing the “sovereignty” of the country’s military sector.
Zarif apologized but after the publication of this conversation, General Reza announced his candidacy for the presidency, adopting a tone critical of the Foreign Minister.
Undoubted proof that the debate is far from over is the fact that General Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guards, stated on May 6 that “if a member of the Guards or a military decides to run in an election, it is a personal initiative ».
For Zeidabadi, critics are “worried that a military presidency will lead to an unprecedented concentration of power.”
But according to Torkaswand, the criticism is a “political” attack to destabilize the conservative movement. The Conservatives, who prevailed in the 2020 parliamentary elections, are also favorites to win the presidential election after the frustration caused by public opinion in Iran by the alliance of moderates and reformists who support Rohani.
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