Khalid Azizi, the secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Iran.

Khalid Azizi is a composed and soft-spoken man; he does not exhibit the fiery rhetoric that would be expected of a man in his position. Azizi is the secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Iran, an outlawed group currently based in neighboring Iraq. He lobbies for the improvement of rights for Iran’s Kurdish population, currently numbering close to seven million.

Here, he talks about the changes sweeping the region and how they may affect the course of the Kurdish fight for greater freedoms. His forecast is fairly bleak; the near future promises little change from the status quo. The elections taking place in Iran today, June 14, will do little to improve Kurds’ lot, according to Azizi: “I have not seen an agenda from the presidential candidates regarding the case of Kurdish people in Iran.”

Cooperation between Kurds in Iran, Syria, Turkey and Iraq also appears to be a distant prospect, yet Azizi displays a certain respect for national sovereignty and has no intention to meddle in neighboring countries’ internal affairs. He has enough on his plate within the Iranian-Kurdish opposition.

Internal disputes within the party led to a split in 2006, culminating in the formation of two separate parties: the KDP and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI). There have since been several attempts to reunite the groups.

The Majalla: In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat in 2008, you stated that there was disunity between members in your party. Are these problems still present? Is your party currently facing any internal obstacles between its members?

The split in the party occurred about six years ago. We are currently having meetings and discussions in order to reunite the party again. At the present time, we have a good relationship.

Q: You have made numerous visits to Europe and America to gain support for a Kurdish regional government in Iran, just like the one in Iraq. Is this one of the current objectives of your party?

The objective of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) in Iran is to lobby for the Kurdish case in Iranian Kurdistan. My purpose is to conduct meetings with Iranian dissidents outside Iran in order to realize a possible front among the Iranian opposition against the Islamic Republic of Iran. So I’m trying to provide information about the case of Kurdish people inside Iran, the situation of political prisoners, and violations of human rights in Iran. I’m trying to send this message to different political parties and the EU parliament which cares about Iran, to divert their attention from Iran’s nuclear project building to these humanitarian issues.

Q: Do you feel that the situation in Iran can help your party achieve its goals?

Our party was outlawed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini despite our efforts to find peaceful solutions to the Kurdish issue in Iran, so they have failed to adjust themselves to our demands and forced war on the Kurdish people. Since we were outlawed we haven’t carried out any legal activity in Iran, so we cannot participate in any changes inside the country. However, the majority of our members are living inside Iran, those who had to flee Iran when their activities were discovered have settled in Northern Iraq or in Europe or America.

Q: There are numerous other Kurdish parties. Do you all share the same objectives? Are you united in any way?

The objective of the majority of mainstream Kurdish parties in Iran is to achieve federalism and to ensure self-rule for Kurds in Iran. Unfortunately, we have not managed to establish a broad form among these political parties. My party, the KDP, has been working on this issue, to have a united front among the Kurdish political parties against the Iranian regime.

Q: If there was cooperation between the various Kurdish parties, do you think that a ‘Kurdish Spring’ would emerge?

The Kurdish issue has become a reality since the start of the Arab uprising, but the Iranian regime does not allow its own Kurdish people to play any part in their political process. For the time being, every part of Kurdistan is concentrating on the solution in the section [country] to which it belongs: the solution is inside Iraq for Kurdish people, Syria for Kurdish people, and Turkey too. So I don’t see a common agenda to establish a Kurdish state.

Q: Two years ago, Le Figaro newspaper accused your party of killing an Iranian nuclear scientist. You have denied these allegations. Why do you think these charges were brought against your party?

My party has deep belief in a democratic movement and we have always tried to find solutions based on democratic values. Mr. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was killed in Vienna while sitting and discussing the Kurdish issue, and Sadegh Sharafkandi [secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI)] was killed in Berlin.

I would like to emphasize that we do not have any relation to terror acts, or to killing people at all. It is not true; we have not conducted any militant attack against a single person inside Iran. Our policy is to concentrate on a civil movement. But the Iranian regime has always tried to connect us to Western countries, saying that we are pro-American and how we are trying to portray the Kurdish issue as a separatist movement, or as a pro-Western movement, and that we are cooperating with Western countries against Iran. These are all false accusations.

Q: What is your relationship to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq?

The policy of the KDP in Iran is not to interfere with Iraqi internal affairs [or] the Kurdish regional government. Our headquarters are in northern Iraq only because we are not allowed to conduct our political activities inside Iran; that’s why our office is there. We respect both the Iraqi government and KRG; we do not have any problems with them.

Q: What is the situation like for Sunni Kurds in Iran? Are they denied any rights because of their beliefs?

There are a lot of Sunni problems in Iran, but ethnic problems in particular: the denial of Kurdish rights, both as a nation and group inside Iran. The Iranian regime’s ideologies and values are based on Shi’ite principles; they do not allow the Sunnis to have the same rights as the Shi’as in Iran. So the discrimination is totally concrete, but the Kurds are both Sunni and Shi’ite.

In the Kurdish cities, the Sunni Kurds have the freedom to build their mosques. But in the cities that have a majority Shi’a population and a minority of Sunnis, then the problems emerge. There have been problems with Sunni mosques in Tehran for many years. So in terms of establishing Sunni institutions in Iran, they are constrained.

Q: Are you officially supporting any of the candidates in the presidential elections?

No, we have boycotted the elections as I have mentioned our party is outlawed. We cannot have any political activity inside Iran, so we do not have any opportunity to have a say in these elections.

I have not seen any agenda from the presidential candidates regarding human rights, a case for the Kurdish people in Iran, or democratic values and human rights which are based on the international charter of human rights.

The elections are not democratic, as they are totally controlled by the government and its institution. Mr. Khamenei has the last word; he has tried to organize the election in favor of their policy, in accordance to their strategy and own purposes. This is why we have boycotted the elections. We had no other choice.

Q: Do you think that Hassan Rouhani is being genuine in his speech about granting rights for Iranian minorities if he wins the elections?

I believe that the Iranian reformist movement is trying to have a different policy from the conservatives. At the time of Mr. Khatami there was some sort of freedom, in comparison to his predecessor, there was some opportunity for people to express themselves. Right now, if Rouhani is trying to represent Khatami and the reformist movement, there seems to be a problem. It’s not easy for a president to maneuver while the velayat-e faqih [guardianship of the jurist] is present, it will not allow him to practice his belief. Rouhani mentioned ethnic minorities, but it cannot have a possible solution. I believe that when the elections are over probably we may have an answer to this question, because we still don’t know Rouhani’s chances in comparison with the others [presidential candidates].

Q: Is your party offering any assistance to the Kurdish refugees on Syria’s borders?

As we are in Iraqi Kurdistan we do not have any affiliation with this. We have contacts with different political parties in Syrian Kurdistan and we have always tried to remain united. [We] have worked as much as possible to establish a democratic government in Syria [so that] everyone, regardless of their ethnic and religious background, should be given an opportunity to participate in the build-up of Syria after Bashar Al-Assad.

Q: What are your views on the situation in Syria? What is your stance on Iran aiding President Bashar Al-Assad?

I believe that Iran is backing Bashar Al-Assad’s regime; Iran is doing everything possible to prevent the fall of Al-Assad. The Iranian opposition groups are not in favor of this policy. The Iranian people are suffering because of the economic situation as Iran is investing millions of dollars in order to save Assad’s regime.

I believe this regime has to go. Iran will lose this battle, and when Iran has lost Bashar Al-Assad then it will start to create more problems somewhere else in the Middle East. Iran is trying to save itself; its strategy is to create a crisis outside Iranian borders in order to decrease the crisis inside Iranian borders, to preoccupy the states in the region with the crisis of Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon. This is the policy of the Iranian regime.

Female supporters of Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili hold up his posters during a campaign rally on May 24, 2013 in Tehran, Iran. (MAJID SAEEDI/Getty Images)

Rather dramatically, there was no place among the approved candidates for former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was struck off the list—surprising many who believed the government would never ban someone of such importance in Iran. But since the unrest that followed the 2009 elections, Rafsanjani has been hugely critical of the leadership. It is clear that Khamenei will not allow anyone who might become a focal point for opposition and grievance to stand. He will not allow 2009 to happen again.

It does show the sad state of affairs in Iran when Hashemi Rafsanjani, a conservative, was seen as the great hope for reform in the country. However, he is one thing above all else: a pragmatist, and a mercantile pragmatist to boot. A billionaire himself, he believes Iran needs to be ‘open for business.’ Indeed, during his presidency, he tried to heal relations with the US by offering Washington the possibility of lucrative oil pipelines through Iran, believing his overtures would be met by a receptive US steeped in the school of Kissingerian realism. (He was wrong.) Without doubt, he was the P5+1′s favored presidential candidate.

But there is no place for him. In fact, of the eight candidates approved by the Guardian Council, only two have a chance of winning. The first is Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, the current mayor of Tehran, currently serving his second term after his initial election in 2005. Qalibaf has a long history of service to the Islamic Republic: at the age of nineteen, he was made a commander in the Iranian defense forces during the Iran–Iraq War, serving with enough distinction to be later appointed a commander of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force. He has boasted openly of beating protestors with sticks during the 1999 student uprising, after which Khamenei personally appointed him head of the Iranian Police Forces. He was also successful in suppressing the student protests in 2003 and the protests following the 2009 elections. He is a regime man to his core.

As the former head of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force, he has the vote of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds force, which more than likely means that he has much of the organization behind him. His election campaign received another public endorsement when, on May 28, 120 members of Iran’s parliament (more than 40 percent of its total) signed a declaration of support for him.

Qalibaf has recently tried to present himself as a more moderate politician by condemning Ahmadinejad’s denial of the holocaust and calling for a more balanced international diplomacy. These efforts could help win him support from among the more moderate elements within Iran’s conservatives, including some that might have voted for Hashemi Rafsanjani. How sincere he is remains to be seen, but his attempts to play to the center ground indicate some awareness of the need for a change in policy.

He is also the only real threat to the man considered to be the favorite: Saeed Jalili, Iran’s current chief nuclear negotiator. Jalili has held the post since 2007, when he was chosen to replace Ali Larijani. The latter had resigned in exasperation after repeated clashes with Ahmadinejad, who believed him to be insufficiently robust in nuclear negotiations with the West. Jalili is an ideological ally of the supreme leader himself, and thought to be Khamenei’s personal choice for president. Depressingly, he is by far the most outspoken hard-liner among the eight candidates approved.

Jalili opposes détente with the West “a hundred percent” and promises no compromise “whatsoever” over Iran’s nuclear program. An anonymous Iranian analyst described Jalili as “the perfect follower of Khamenei.”

Along with Qalibaf, Jalili has garnered the support of a coalition of conservative clerics and IRGC commanders known as the traditionalists. High-ranking clerics have begun endorsing him, and a powerful paramilitary organization, the Basij, is helping to organize his election campaign.

Khamenei recently said that the best president “is the one who powerfully resists the enemy and will turn the Islamic Republic into an international example for the oppressed people of the world.” Jalili fits this bill perfectly. Indeed, he appears to privilege “resistance” above all else. While Iran’s economy continues to plummet due to international sanctions—reeling from high inflation and a battered currency—Jalili refuses to seriously address the issue. During a recent televised interview, he said that the country should cut its dependency on oil revenues and establish a “resistance economy” in order to “foil the conspiracies against Iran.” Judging by his rhetoric, Jalili believes Tehran is fighting an ideological war in which the economy is secondary. Indeed, he has said on several occasions that the sanctions offer an opportunity for economic growth.

With frontrunners like this, it does not look like change will come to the Islamic Republic any time soon, and certainly not from the top. But as the international sanctions make life progressively worse for millions of ordinary Iranians, Khamenei’s continual failure to address the country’s problems in favor of surrounding himself with loyal underlings may prove to be a serious mistake, for him and for the regime itself.

Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (C), the spiritual leader of Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya, surrounded by followers, leaves the Abu Bakr Mosque in Brooklyn to surrender to US immigration officials in July, 1993. HELAYNE SEIDMAN/AFP/Getty Images

Since the fall of the Mubarak government, there has been much opportunity to reconsider and revise narratives of Egypt’s history. For instance, observers have had to reconsider the political potency and identity of the Salafi movement. Previous to the 2011 uprisings, this Islamist trend was on the whole politically quietist, but attained surprising success in the legislative elections of 2011/12. The Mubarak government never rewrote history as much as its predecessors—the regimes of Sadat and Nasser—but there were nonetheless “red lines” that could not be breached by certain groups when writing their version of history. The Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya, once a notorious terrorist group and now a player in the political process, is one of these groups that have taken advantage of a new, post-revolutionary era of historiographical permissiveness. Stepping out of the shadow of Mubarak, the group has been busy revising its history.

This is not the first time the Gama’a has re-evaluated its past. The story of Gama’a's evolving historiography leads us back through the last twenty years, a period in which it has undergone great transformations. Through the late 1990s, the group was suppressed by the state on account of its violent activities, and by 2000 thousands of its members and most of its leadership were in prison. In March 2011, the Gama’a estimated the number of its imprisoned members at 50,000, although this is probably an overestimate. However, in the late 1990s, the Gama’a's leadership made a deal with the state whereby they would tour prisons and re-educate members, aiming for de-radicalization and eventual release.

The leadership of the Gama’a—among them Nagih Ibrahim, Karam Zuhdi, Essam abd Al-Meguid, Usama Ibrahim Hafez, and Essam Darbalah—co-authored a series called Silsilat Tashih Al-Mafahim (The Series of Correcting Conceptions). The Silsilat provided the jurisprudential logic for the group’s peace-making with the state, its de-radicalization, and the relinquishment of violence. Significantly, this literature had to deal with the group’s past, including its suspected involvement in the assassination of President Sadat, and its participation in what Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges calls the “low-level war of attrition” with the state in which hundreds of civilians, security officers and Gama’a members were killed.

Important in understanding the historiography of the Silsilat is the fact that its authors were stuck between two audiences: first, the state, which had almost complete power over their freedom, health and lives, and, second, the group’s own membership. So, while it had to convince the state that its violent stage was over and that it was a veritable candidate for rehabilitation, it also had to maintain a modicum of its historical identity as an organization to preserve the loyalty of its members.

The Silsilat seemed to condemn the violence of the 1990s as misguided, blaming it on youthful exuberance, and emphasized the group’s non-violent activities. Some critics portrayed this rejection of violence as merely strategic, rather than doctrinal.

Since 2011, the Gama’a has effected wholesale reorganization and re-politicization—as well as a provisional revision of its history. It held its first internal elections shortly after the January 2011 uprisings and created its formal political wing, the Building and Development Party (BDP), in June 2011.

However, the shadow of the Gama’a's violent past still hangs over it. The group’s application to register the Building and Development Party was dogged by objections. Initially, the Committee for Party Affairs denied the application on the grounds that the BDP was formed on a religious basis, which was unconstitutional. More significant than this was an obstacle other Islamist parties also had to overcome: the dozens of private, civil suits brought against its formation. Indeed, it was not only the state that objected to the Gama’a's violent politics. The group is responsible for the 1997 massacre at Luxor, which killed over sixty people and hardened the hostility felt by much of the public towards the Gama’a.

And so, like the Silsilat, the Gama’a's new historical revision has to walk the line between contrition and reclamation of its history. As a vote-seeking organization, it cannot alienate the public, but at the same time it intends to redress official narratives that condemned it as a terrorist organization. A constant refrain of the group since January 2011 has been the promise that it will not return to violence—between March and September 2011, it made at least seven statements that recidivism is not a danger. However, this guarantee has been undermined at points by more bellicose statements of the Gama’a, such as Mohamed Salih’s avowal in October 2012 that the group “will fight for the application of God’s law, even if that requires bloodshed.”

The Gama’a and the BDP’s active participation in the political arena also brings to light the tensions of this revisionist history. Attending the commemoration of the October 1973 War in 2012, the Gama’a leader Tariq Al-Zummur was faced with a quandary over the extent to which he commemorated a war in which one of the Gama’a's arch-enemies—former Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat—is the official hero. Zummur stated: “This victory [in the October War] cannot be attributed to any single president, no matter how important he is…. We have not honored Mubarak for his airstrike, because he turned into a dictator who took his people lightly, rigged the elections and stole the country’s resources.”

Clearly, the Gama’a is more comfortable vilifying a less controversial enemy—Hosni Mubarak—than attempting a complete overhaul of the last thirty years of Egyptian history. Indeed its role in official events ties it to a certain degree to the official historical narratives, the very history that it seeks to refute.

Yet the Gama’a's version of history has become bolder, and it has sought to merge its story into the general discourse of the injustice of the Mubarak regime. At the founding of the BDP, Zummur answered a question about whether the BDP would give a guarantee against the exclusion of other parties (read: secular parties). He gave the BDP’s guarantee to this effect by referring to the notion that, under the Mubarak regime, the Islamic current had experienced the greatest degree of exclusion, repression and torture. Thus, the Gama’a is attempting, by venturing a counter-narrative of its history, to turn vice into virtue. Instead of the Gama’a's history as an illustration of its moral turpitude, which makes it unfit to participate in politics after January 2011, the Gama’a's suffering under the security apparatus gives it legitimacy to take part in governing Egypt.

Indeed, in January 2012, Tariq Al-Zummur attempted the Gama’a's boldest historical revisionism so far, by stating at a joint conference between the Gama’a and the Nour Party that the assassination of Sadat was a preamble to the January 25 revolution. In this historical revision, the Gama’a becomes the pioneer of the Arab Spring in Egypt, its “50,000 imprisoned members” predecessors of the imprisoned protestors, and its slain members the first martyrs of Tahrir Square. This is quite a contrast to the Silsilat’s rejection of violence, whether it was strategic or doctrinal.

This bold claim has not been repeated, and the Gama’a's confidence in the persuasiveness of its new history is difficult to gauge at this stage. As the revolutionaries say, “al-thawra mustamira”—the revolution continues—and so does the battle of narratives explaining what the revolution meant, who led it, and where it is heading.

The debate over how to portray the Gama’a’s history continues, too. The biography of ex-Gama’a member Khalid Al-Birri, Al-Dunya Ajmal min al-Janna (Life is more beautiful than Paradise, trans. Humphrey Davies), is to be made into a film directed by Magdi Ahmed Ali. This is more than likely to clash with the Gama’a's forthcoming book on its own history, which was announced in October 2012. The latter should give us an even clearer idea of the extent to which the Gama’a is attempting to (re-)revise its own place in Egyptian history.

An Algerian woman leaves a voting booth before casting her vote at a polling station in Algiers during local elections on November 29, 2012. FAROUK BATICHE/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to The Majalla, France-based Algerian analyst Anouar Malek said, “Bouteflika won’t leave office because that would mean the fall of many heads that enjoy privileges under his regime.” He added that “it would also affect those who have found a favorable environment to indulge in corruption during his fourteen year reign.”

The Algerian constitution stipulates that if the President of the Republic is unable to carry out his duties due to a serious and long-lasting illness, the Constitutional Council will declare the office of President of the Republic vacant using detailed procedures. If Bouteflika becomes incapable of performing his duties, his replacement would have to be approved by the junta. “If Bouteflika remains in power ’til the end of his current term, he would obviously take part in choosing his successor,” Algerian political expert and former army officer Ahmed Adimi told The Majalla.

It is quite obvious that the Algerian government is not ready for a perfectly transparent presidential election. Since the country became independent in 1962, the military has always chosen the president, from Ahmed Ben Balla in 1962 to Mohamed Boudiaf, who was brought back from his exile in Morocco and later assassinated six months later on June 1992, to Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999.

Like his predecessors, Bouteflika belongs to the independence war generation, but he rules a country in which 70% of the population is under the age of thirty and who have very little memory of this era. “We have to give power to the new generation of rulers; the period of revolutionary legitimacy is over,” Hichem Aboud, writer and editor-in-chief of Mon Journal, said to The Majalla. It is clear that in an environment where the president is very close to the elite and strongly linked to the security forces, it might not be a bad idea to see the ascension of a younger generation into power. But any drastic change looks to be excluded in a country that suffered the Islamic uprising and bloody civil war in the 1990s, which caused more than 300,000 casualties.

“Most Algerians hope for a soft and a fair transition; they want a candidate who has sufficient energy for solving the country’s most complicated problems, but the successor has to go through political reforms gradually and avoid any drastic changes,” Geoff Porter, director of North Africa Risk Consulting, told The Majalla. In the mean time, there is already one official candidate for the 2014 presidential elections: former prime minister Ahmed Benbitour. Others may emerge when Bouteflika’s intentions towards running a fourth term are made clear.

Among the potential candidates are the current prime minster, Abdelmalek Sellal, and the seventy-year-old former head of government Mouloud Hamrouche, who well may receive support from Hocine Aït Ahmed, an iconic figure of the Algerian revolution. In the case that Bouteflika is unable to complete his current term, his temporary replacement until the elections will be the Senate chairman, Abd-el-Kader Bensalah.

Although Bouteflika’s last appearance in public was on April 17, at the funeral of a highly-ranked official, his presence in Algerian politics continues to dominate political discourse even while he is out of the public eye. His health has gone beyond being a permanent feature of Algerian politics, and has also raised the issue of media censorship in the country. Last Sunday, the Algerian authorities censored the newspapers Mon Journal and its Arabic version, Djaridati, for the first time in decades, after they printed information about president’s declining health.

For Hichem Aboud, head of both newspapers, the authority’s attitude confirms that the information they had on Bouteflika’s health was accurate.

Pakistani army troops patrol during the general election in Rawalpindi on May 11, 2013. FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images

Last weekend’s general elections in Pakistan are significant for a variety of reasons. For the first time in the country’s history—and, unless the unexpected happens—there were will be a democratic transition of power from one civilian government to another one.

The vote was the clearest demonstration of the country’s young, vibrant civil society and private media, which can trump political corruption and the ever-looming specter of militant violence. Despite Taliban threats to disrupt the elections—bomb attacks across the country killed more than twenty people—there was record turnout.

These elections were also faithful to Pakistan’s tradition of diversity when it comes to contenders. From former popular cricketer Imran Khan to actress and former model Musarrat Shaheen, and from radical Sunni cleric Ahmed Ludhianvi to the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, A. Q. Khan, the variety of agendas and political programs is in itself a remarkable sign of a thriving democracy.

The responsibility of forming a government will fall on the shoulders of the two-time former prime minister and steel tycoon Nawaz Sharif, along with his Muslim League. The challenges his new government faces are many and varied. These include an economic crisis—Sharif needs to urgently strike a deal with the IMF to overcome a serious budget crisis—and the country’s calamitous infrastructure.

But one issue in particular, that of violent conflict, will continue to haunt the nation’s efforts to escape from its recent, troubled past.

So far, the change of government is showing some promise on this front. During the electoral campaign, Sharif declared his commitment to put an end to the scourge of militant violence. He has expressed concern about the US drone campaign in the tribal areas (which is not surprising, given his strong nationalistic credentials) and the internal hostility it generated towards the Pakistani government. He has also been vocal about the need to reach out to India, make peace with the Taliban, and pacify the border with Afghanistan, although he has made no substantial declarations on the ongoing insurgency and sectarian violence in Baluchistan, the country’s western province.

But there is a long way from words to deeds. The Pakistani army and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) control foreign and defense policy. Their allegiance to the central government remains in doubt. It was the army, at the time led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who overthrew Sharif in 1999.

These two entities are a state within the state. They are obsessed with India and its potential influence in Afghanistan, and will continue to feed this obsession while Kashmir’s borders remain contested. Equally destabilizing are the close relations that many elements of the army and the ISI maintain with Islamic militants across the country, who the former see as an informal army to be used in the event of war with India and a tool to exert influence over developments in neighboring Afghanistan.

Unless the roots causes of the various conflicts, at home and in the region, are addressed, Pakistan will continue to be a nation at war with itself, living in a daily state of emergency.

Iranian men register their candidacy for the upcoming presidential election at the interior ministry in Tehran on May 9, 2013. ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON, Asharq Al-Awsat—Hassan Rouhani, a reformist presidential hopeful and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, revealed on Tuesday that before the presidential elections in 2005 “British diplomats had predicted the then-mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would become Iran’s next president.”

According to the Entekhab news website, he made his comment immediately after submitting his application for candidacy at the Interior Ministry, while answering questions from reporters.

Rouhani will be the main reformist candidate if neither Hashemi Rafsanjani nor Mohamamd Khatami decide to run in the upcoming June 14 election. Rafsanjani has not yet announced whether or not he will run, although his decision will become clear by the Saturday, May 11 deadline to submit applications. His decision will also determine the reformist/moderate camp formation.

Dr. Mansoor Farhang, the first Iranian representative to the UN after the Islamic Revolution, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the “presence or absence of Hashemi Rafsanjani in Iran’s upcoming election is of little importance, as he has lost his previously significant influence within Iran’s security and military circles.”

Farhang regards the fuss around Hashemi Rafsanjani’s nomination a “tactic merely concerned with preserving his remaining status within the regime.”

On the third day of registration, both Iran’s former intelligence minister, Ali Fallahian, and Mohammad-Baqer Kharazi, the secretary-general of Iranian Hezbollah, submitted applications.

None of three candidates of the 2+1 coalition said to be favored by Ayatollah Khamenei, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Ali Akbar Velayati, have registered yet. The lingering uncertainty over who the other candidates will be has prevented the 2+1 coalition from finalizing their choice of nominee.

Speaking to the FARS news agency, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel announced that “the three members of the coalition will register and wait until the vetted candidates are declared by the Guardian Council.”

Mohamamd Baqer Qalibaf also reiterated his promise that he “will act according to the coalition pact to support only one candidate,” FARS news agency reported on Thursday. It is understood that the 2+1 coalition will choose the most popular of the three candidates as determined by a pre-election poll.

Also on Thursday, Hojjat Al-Islam Musa-Pur, a spokesperson for another conservative coalition nicknamed the “Coalition of 5,” confirmed that it will nominate Hojat Al-Islam Abutorabi-Far, the deputy speaker of the Majlis. This coalition is made up of mid-ranking conservative MPs and former ministers. It is believed that they are trying to secure a share of the cabinet seats, as it is widely thought that their candidate has no chance of winning.

In a parallel development, the Iranian judiciary has held the seventh court session questioning three previously influential judiciary officials accused of misconduct that lead to the deaths of four detainees arrested in the midst of the 2009 election unrest, said the pro-reform website Kalameh on Wednesday, May 8.

Saeed Mortazavi, the former chief prosecutor in Tehran, is among the accused who are being questioned by the court. The judge has prohibited the media from reporting on proceedings.

Iranian university professor Soraya Malekzadeh registers her candidacy for the upcoming presidential election at the interior ministry in Tehran on May 8, 2013 (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

The elections are the first since the infamous 2009 elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was fraudulently reelected to a second presidential term, sparking mass demonstrations—and a brutal government crackdown on protesters—across the country.

So all eyes will be on Iran this June, as the cliché goes—and not just those of Iranians. Diplomats from the P5+1—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany—will also be watching the elections, hopeful that they will produce a more reasonable nuclear negotiating partner than Ahmadinejad to drive the process forward.

But we have been here before. In early 2005, Western nuclear negotiators were confident that Iran’s presidential elections would see pragmatic former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani return to office. Instead, the election was won convincingly by an international unknown: the hardline former mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Today, Western diplomats once again look to forthcoming elections to re-calibrate Iran’s domestic politics in their favor.

The hope, though, is more wishful than expectant. For a start, who will run? (Ahmadinejad himself is constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president, and thus is barred from seeking a third term.) Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, the leaders of what may loosely be described as the opposition—the so-called Green Movement—have been under house arrest since early 2011, and the many Iranians opposed to the ruling status quo have been brutally suppressed.

Moreover, an election in Iran is a carefully managed affair. Before they can run, all candidates must first be approved by the Guardian Council, who can—and do—strike off the lists those they deem ‘unsuitable’ for the presidency. In practice, this makes it almost impossible for reformers to get through—and those that do, like former President Mohammad Khatami, find themselves stymied and frustrated at every turn once they do gain office. Indeed, Khatami is not likely to seek election this time around, leaving those reformist-minded Iranians with little in the way of choice, short of boycotting the elections completely.

Only a handful of candidates will be on the final list that the Guardian Council unveils later this month, which will overwhelmingly consist of candidates considered loyal to the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Given the problems the regime had with opposition figures during the last elections, the supreme leader and his allies will do all they can to ensure there is no repeat of the trouble that, at certain points in the summer of 2009, had many questioning the regime’s ability to survive.

Among the likely favorites are former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and former nuclear negotiator Hasan Rouhani—all good regime men, unlikely to cause trouble in any real way.

But, in what is a clear indictment of Ahmadinejad’s time in office—which has seen the economy disintegrate and international isolation increase—all of the main candidates have vowed to make a clear break with the president’s style of leadership. Ahmadinejad is widely blamed for worsening Iran’s situation both domestically and internationally; he is a largely unpopular figure both within the elite and the populace at large. And while all the candidates support Iran’s ‘inalienable’ right to enrich uranium, Ahmadinejad’s nuclear negotiating stance has been attacked by many, including Rafsanjani himself, for bringing down the world’s anger on Iran. The criticisms, however, amount to nuances of diplomatic behavior—all are agreed on the fundamentals that underpin the Islamic Republic.

With all candidates keen to distance themselves from the incumbent as they begin their campaigns before the season has even officially opened, the government is also getting into election mode. The past month has seen a huge increase in controls and blocks on Internet traffic as Tehran attempts to stifle opposition voices during the election period.

Meanwhile, the only liberal-leaning candidate that is likely to be considered by the Guardian Council is former vice president Mohammad Reza Aref, who served in Khatami’s administration. He is largely an unknown, and very unlikely to find any great success at the ballot box; while it is true Ahmadinejad was never expected to win in 2005, he, at least, enjoyed the supreme leader’s approval.

The picture one month before the elections is depressingly familiar: once again, the world watches and waits for some kind of change in Iran. Unfortunately, the result of June’s elections, even if a more reasonable figure than Ahmadinejad is elected (which will not be difficult), is likely to be more of the same.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a speech under a portrait of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. ATTA KENARE/AFP/GettyImages

LONDON, Asharq Al-Awsat—Iran’s supreme leader recommended against spreading ideological dogma and divisive comments in a meeting with groups of religious orators, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday. This may be an attempt to reduce tensions in the run up to the country’s presidential poll scheduled for June 14.

Religious oratory, or maddahi, is a traditional Shi’a ritual in which a devout layperson recounts a historical narrative about the suffering of the Ahl-Al-Beyt (the Prophet Mohammad and his family) and Shi’ite imams. Its role before the revolution was largely confined to private religious ceremonies held at mosques and the houses of devout Shi’as. This changed after the revolution of 1979, and in particular since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei became Iran’s head of state in 1989.

Shi’ite orators have significantly influenced public opinion in the last two decades. They have acted as the unofficial leaders of pressure groups dedicated to enforcing their own ideas of Islamic norms, organizing street protests and the storming of premises deemed to be subversive.

Both Hashemi Rafsanjani and Seyed Mohammad Khatami’s governments had to contend with opposition from religious orators, who occasionally undermined their authority.

During Ahmadinejad’s first presidential campaign in 2005, many prominent orators supported his candidacy, describing him as a pious individual, free of corruption and dedicated to the tenets of the Islamic revolution.

But due to Ahmadinejad’s adamant support of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, many of his former advocates from among the religious orators have turned against him over the past four years.

At this juncture, more political and ideological rancor is the last thing Iran’s supreme leader desires. Any bitterness and instability due to political rhetoric during the presidential elections will likely complicate attempts to deal with Iran’s nuclear negotiations, Western economic sanctions and, above all, Ahmadinejad’s disobedience and attempts to branch out from his original political and religious constituency.

In a parallel development—and in line with Ahmadinejad’s repeated threats to reveal embarrassing information as part of his feud with his opponents—Tehran newspapers published an unconfirmed report from an anonymous source close to Ahmadinejad revealing his real number of votes in 2009’s disputed election on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, the news website Baztab published what it alleged was an excerpt of an audio recording in which Ahmadinejad holds a conversation with a top election official, who informs the president that his “real vote is about 16 million.”

According to the recording, the same official then told the president that a decision had been made to announce that he had received 24 million votes to make his victory seem more categorical, and preempt claims from the opposition that the poll was rigged.

The report said Ahmadinejad objected to that move and demanded that he be declared the winner on the basis of the actual number of votes he received.

Ahmadinejad’s office denied the existence of such a recording on Wednesday.

An Iranian opposition supporter gestures as she takes part in an anti-government demonstration at Tehran University in the Iranian capital on December 7, 2009. AFP/Getty Images

LONDON, Asharq Al-Awsat—Hojjat Al-Islam Mohammadian, the supreme leader’s representative to Iran’s universities, has harshly criticized the decision to close universities during the upcoming presidential election, according to Fars news agency. Mohammadian addressed the fourth nationwide congress of Iran’s university faculty members on Thursday, April 25.

The office of supreme leader in universities is a powerful institution overseeing universities in addition to official government administration and policy control.

In a swift response, the deputy minister of science and technology, Hossein Naderi Manesh, rejected the government’s interference in university teaching.

In an interview with the Isna news agency, Naderi said: “The ministry does not interfere with the universities’ calendars, and it is up to individual universities to decide what to do.” However, he admitted that his department has issued a ministerial directive to all universities stating that exams should not be held in the two-week period surrounding the elections.

Universities in Iran have historically been politically active, and have occasionally played a decisive roll in major political developments. In particular, prior to elections many politicians and potential candidates tend to hold speeches or question-and-answer sessions on university campuses.

This practice has become something of a tradition in the run up to each election, and is aimed at attracting the student vote. For various political reasons, only politicians loyal to the establishment get the chance to take advantage of such lively—albeit controlled—interaction with students.

In July 1999, a protest by a number of Tehran University students against the closure of a reformist newspaper ended with a bloody crackdown on those involved. The tragic episode has caused a lingering embarrassment for both the conservative-backed judiciary and security forces, while the government of former reformist president Seyed Mohamamd Khatami proved incapable of protecting the students’ right to express themselves in safety.

Government control of university campuses has been strengthened during Ahmadinejad’s administration. But in a surprising move less than 2 months ago, Ahmadinejad issued a letter asking his minister to dismiss the chancellors of two big universities, accusing them of “weak performance that is not in line with [Ahmadinejad’s] government’s intention to promote lively debate and interaction.”

Ahmadinejad’s intervention raised some eyebrows within the conservative faction, who feared he might be intending to make room for potentially controversial events at the universities in which Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei could improve his image. Ahmadinejad’s order to replace the university chancellors has not yet been implemented, and seems increasingly unlikely as more time passes.

Winning over university students is crucial for conservative candidates, whose popularity rating is far below that of moderate figures like Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Written by Ali Pedram

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani casts his ballot for the parliamentary elections in Tehran on March 2, 2012. STR/AFP/GettyImages

LONDON, Asharq Al-Awsat—Pro-reformist website Baztab has reported that an internal poll has been conducted by an unknown state organization in Iran to gauge the opinions of the electorate in the run up to the presidential election. The leaked document reveals a strong indecisiveness and deep division among the electorate.

According to the poll, former reformist president Seyyed Mohammad Khatami is the most popular, but only 20 percent of respondents reported intending to vote for him. Rahim Mashaei, the candidate supported by current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came in eighth place, with only 4 percent of respondents planning to vote for him. Another former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, came in second place, with 15 percent of likely voters intending to cast their ballots for him.

There is no evidence that the poll is genuine, much less that it was conducted according to credible methodology. However, the fact that both the conservatives and Ahmadinejad’s faction, the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, have not yet declared their final candidates might suggest some element of truth in the poll’s findings, especially regarding the level of uncertainty among the electorate.

Predicting the outcomes of Iran’s June presidential election is difficult given the uncertainty surrounding potential candidates and their respective factions.

Ahmadinejad’s performance over the last eight years has made the Iranian political map far more complex to read for foreign observers and insiders alike.

His unpredictability and self-styled presidency seem to have fundamentally challenged the structure of power enshrined in Iran’s constitution. In the middle of Ahmadinejad’s second presidential term, a number of MPs raised the possibility of revising the constitution in order to replace the position of president with a prime minister. In their view, having a prime minister would fit much better with the overall hierarchy of the Islamic Republic, given the Supreme Leader’s ultimate power.

Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 amazed many observers, especially considering he was a newcomer rivaling the incumbent Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Many analysts have since tried to explain his success in challenging Rafsanjani. While some observers argue that the 2005 elections where engineered by a powerful conservative faction, re-branded as principalists, many simply point to the apathy and disappointment of Iran’s middle class with the performance of the reformist faction under president Khatami.

However, what became clear after the 2005 election is that the traditional voting trends in Iran have changed. In the absence of established and transparent political parties, short-lived political factions are still emerging and becoming active so as to appease the electorate and ensure the required participation.

An integral part of this process is the steep increase of potential and self-declared candidates who have publicly announced their intention to run for office. Many of them are members of known political groups and are politically very conservative. This makes their willingness to be nominated for the presidency more surprising, as their chances of winning the office are minimal. Perhaps their goal for their candidacy is to promote debate and prepare the people for a real competition to take place in the final stages of this election.

By Ali Pedram