The job of Iran’s president is a study in humiliation

Pity the Islamic republic’s elected presidents. For over three decades their fates have ended in censure, ignominy or early death. The last, Ebrahim Raisi, died in May in a mysterious helicopter crash. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a president in the 1990s, suddenly died in his swimming pool. Mir Hossein Moussavi, a contender many Iranians believe lost the election in 2009 to rigging, has spent 13 years under house arrest. Muhammad Khatami is banned from the airwaves, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is banned from travel. Several remain butts of public ridicule.

“The affairs of the country must be administered on the basis of public opinion expressed by the means of elections,” says the constitution, and it names the president as Iran’s second highest official. But his prerogatives are hobbled by myriad unelected forces wielding real power. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s crack force, the state broadcaster and a triad of assemblies and councils vet all posts, including the president’s. At the pinnacle the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, answers only to God.

Collectively, they reduce the president to an apologist onlooker when their bullyboys round up protesters or fire missiles around the region. They trip them up should they question policy, blame them if the regime fails and sneer when their terms end.

Why go through the farce? A sociologist might put it down to a Shia yen for self-flagellation. A hunger to succeed the supreme leader, aged 85, might be a lure. But of past presidents only Mr Khamenei won the spot, in 1989. He seems keen to stop a repeat.

He has warned candidates in this election against straying from the regime’s mores or cosying up to America, choosing the very day for his speech when Shias believe the Prophet Muhammad named Ali, his son-in-law, to succeed him. Yet a cohort of believers, or shura, elected other successors ahead of Ali, an icon for Shias. Islam’s Sunni majority still accepts that verdict. As long as he reigns, Mr Khamenei seems determined to deny Iran’s people a real presidential choice. ■

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