Vol. 77/No. 26      July 8, 2013

Crowds awash with purple ribbons, Rowhani’s campaign color, came out June 15 after the vote results were announced. Chants demanding release of political prisoners were punctuated with blaring car horns. Demonstrations took place in a number of cities and rural areas throughout the country, a contrast to protests in 2009, which were centered in northern Tehran, the capital’s more affluent section.

Slogans demanding freedom for political prisoners were also prominent when large crowds gathered in Tehran on the evening of June 18 to celebrate the qualification of Iran’s national soccer team for the 2014 World Cup. “Some young women were also heard chanting for the end of the female dress code,” reported the Los Angeles Times

The Coordinating Center of the Islamic Labor Councils in Tehran province wrote a letter June 17 to the president-elect demanding independence of labor organizations from the government and bosses and protesting the erosion of wages from inflation in violation of the Labor Law, the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency reported. The Labor Council is one of six workers groups that has filed a complaint with the Civil Justice Court challenging government-set wage scales.

The only one of the six presidential candidates to describe himself as a “moderate” in the June 14 election, Rowhani got nearly 51 percent of the vote, far more than any of the other five. The Iranian government said over 70 percent of the more than 50 million eligible voters cast a ballot.

As in every other election, the government’s Guardian Council vetted hundreds of prospective candidates. The council approved eight who were close enough to the ruling circles of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including Rowhani, who has held various high-level government responsibilities for the last two decades. That figure was reduced to six when two candidates withdrew a few days before the election.

There is no evidence that the election was rigged, as some U.S. big-business papers suggested. Based on media reports, the capitalist rulers of Iran were as surprised at the election outcome as those in the U.S.

The election campaign highlighted the deep factional divisions of the Iranian rulers. The candidate most widely seen as the pick of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was barred from the race, as was former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Ahmadinejad’s two main opponents in 2009, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have been under house arrest since February 2011 for advocating mass demonstrations as part of a “plot” to foment a “velvet revolution.” Hundreds of thousands came out in Tehran with democratic demands in wake of mass protests beginning in Tunisia in December 2010 and Egypt in January 2011.

As the world capitalist crisis deepens, ruling-class divisions in Iran have been amplified by relentless imperialist pressure and growing concern over the potential for struggles to develop among the country’s toilers.

Rowhani echoes ‘reformists’

While Rowhani insisted he was not a reformist, his campaign echoed some of their themes. “My slogan is to save Iran’s economy,” which requires “reconciliation with the world,” he said, according to the Financial Times. “Centrifuges should spin, but so should industries and people’s livelihoods.”

As a results of years of sanctions on oil trade, banking and financial dealings, many factories in Iran have closed or operate well below capacity. While government figures put the rate of unemployment at 13 percent, it “unofficially” stands around 23 percent, according to the Huffington Post. Official inflation stands at more than 30 percent. And the value of the national currency, the rial, has dropped 50 percent over the last year.

Rowhani was Iran’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005 and remains a supporter of Iran’s nuclear program. While Washington and its allies say Tehran is developing nuclear weapons technology, Tehran maintains its program is solely aimed at producing electric power and medical isotopes.

Rowhani has criticized the morality police, who harass women to impose a strict Islamic dress code; called for lifting restrictions on the Internet; and vowed to provide women with equal job opportunities and to free political prisoners “in consensus with higher officials.”

By contrast, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s current nuclear negotiator, who was initially seen as the top front runner, campaigned under the slogan of “no compromise, no submission” in relation to the nuclear program. He also said at an all-women rally at the end of May that “women’s core identity lies in motherhood.”

Rowhani’s campaign really picked up in the final three days before the vote, when prominent figures and spokespersons of the reformist opposition urged their followers to vote for him. These included former presidents Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami.

Supreme Leader Khamenei quickly congratulated Rowhani, calling him the “people’s choice.” Police didn’t interfere with the various street celebrations. Demonstrations in 2009 were met with a stiff crackdown in which dozens were killed and scores wounded and jailed.

“The Obama administration and its European allies,” the Wall Street Journal wrote June 16, “intend to aggressively push to resume negotiations with Tehran on its nuclear program by August” — i.e. when elected-President Rowhani will step into office.

US gov’t announces new sanctions

The Treasury Department May 30 imposed punitive measures against an Iranian company, an Iranian state agency and more than 50 individuals. The next day it hit eight Iranian petrochemical companies and one company based in Cyprus and Ukraine.

On June 3 an executive order imposed sanctions on anyone or any entity involved in “significant” trading or owning “significant” amounts of rials outside of Iran, a move aimed at making Iranian currency unusable in the world market. The same order also imposed sanctions on transactions with Iran’s auto industry, which is among the country’s most important economic sectors.

The next day the Treasury Department imposed sanctions against 37 companies in Germany, South Africa, Croatia and the United Arab Emirates, claiming they had been set up to circumvent sanctions against Iran.
 
 
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