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[AcademicSaucer]

Hassan Rouhani is on course for a landslide victory and being re-elected to serve a second term in office after initial official results from Iran’s presidential race put the reformist-backed incumbent far ahead of his conservative rival, Ebrahim Raisi.

“Hope prevailed over isolation,” former president and key Rouhani ally Mohammad Khatami posted on Instagram, along with a photo of Rouhani making a victory sign, Reuters reported.

He had gathered momentum as conservatives keen to win back control of the government coalesced behind Raisi’s initially lacklustre campaign.

In Iran’s unique and uneasy hybrid of democracy and theocracy, the president has significant power to shape government, although he is is ultimately constrained by the supreme leader.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a hardliner thought to favour Raisi in the election and as a possible successor for his own job, generally steers clear of day to day politics but exerts ultimate control over Iran through control of powerful bodies from the judiciary to the revolutionary guards corp.

Fear of a Raisi presidency prompted many in Iran to vote. In Tehran, even political prisoners such as prominent human rights lawyer Narges Mohammadi, cast their votes inside the notorious Evin prison. Also voting yesterday was Iran’s eminent poet, Houshang Ebtehaj. Iran’s double Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi voted in Cannes while participating at the festival.

Rouhani’s victory will be welcomed by Iranian reformists as well as the country’s opposition green movement.

Opposition leaders under house arrest, Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi, had also urged people to vote for Rouhani. The president changed his tone on the campaign trail in order to appeal to the opposition. “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein” was a ubiquitous slogan chanted by Rouhani fans in almost every place he campaigned in the three weeks before the vote.

Source:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-for-landslide-in-huge-victory-for-reformists

 

[E-phonk]

That's great. Was in Iran a few months ago and most people i talked too looked hopefull to the future after the lifted sanctions with the west.
Even newspapers were talking about all the opportunities Iran would have in the near future.
That was in october.

Sucks for them that the US elections went the way they went, as they had high hopes that normalisation of their relations with the US and Europe would bring them a chance to fast progress.

 

[Gnome Scat]

Good for them, but as long as the Supreme Leader has power they will never be able to make true progress.

 

[Shambalakan]

These last weeks were so stressful and I'm really happy now! It was a big "no" to populism.

 

[Golden_Pigeon]

Nothing have really changed in Iran since Rouhani was elected, and the system would still be the same.

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood are secularist compared to those iranian reformists.

It's crazy that people under house arrest like Mehdi Karroubi are still supporting Rouhani since he promised they would be free last time he was elected.

 

[watershed]

This just makes the US' last election even more pathetic. The Iranian people recognized the threat they faced from a conservative candidate and turned out to vote in droves. We couldn't muster the same.

 

[ShutEye]

This just makes the US' last election even more pathetic. The Iranian people recognized the threat they faced from a conservative candidate and turned out to vote in droves. We couldn't muster the same.

Somehow someway the US media was worse than a theocratic media. Let that sink in

 

[Fallout-NL]

That's great. Was in Iran a few months ago and most people i talked too looked hopefull to the future after the lifted sanctions with the west.
Even newspapers were talking about all the opportunities Iran would have in the near future.
That was in october.

Sucks for them that the US elections went the way they went, as they had high hopes that normalisation of their relations with the US and Europe would bring them a chance to fast progress.

I was there as well around that time, was still there the day Trump was elected. You could tell it affected them (as it did me ).

 

[BobLoblaw]

This just makes the US' last election even more pathetic. The Iranian people recognized the threat they faced from a conservative candidate and turned out to vote in droves. We couldn't muster the same.

The US was proof enough for the rest of the world apparently. I'll take that sacrifice. Trump is out the first chance we get, by impeachment or by election.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

The thing that surprised me the most is the prisoners being able to vote

 

[TestOfTide]

Would be fairly ironic if in 10-20 years Iran became a NATO Ally and Turkey became what Iran was.

 

[samn]

The thing that surprised me the most is the prisoners being able to vote

Just as they should be.

 

[ntropy]

reform what exactly?

 

[Josh7289]

Somehow someway the US media was worse than a theocratic media. Let that sink in

Capitalist media vs. theocratic media. It's really a coin toss which is going to be better in any particular case, since neither are going to be focused primarily on informing people.

 

[Hesemonni]

Isn't it ajatollah in the end who calls the shots though?

 

[Weckum]

Isn't it ajatollah in the end who calls the shots though?

It is, and calling Rouhani 'reformist' is a bit too... positive.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

reform what exactly?

Iran's image to people who don't follow the news enough to realize that they haven't reformed anything.

 

[Syder]

Remember when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the current boogeyman for the West?

 

[Iksenpets]

This just makes the US' last election even more pathetic. The Iranian people recognized the threat they faced from a conservative candidate and turned out to vote in droves. We couldn't muster the same.

Iranians also have some lived experience with how refusing to turn out for flawed candidates can fuck you over, since Ahmedinajad's first election happened against a backdrop of people boycotting the vote to protest the system after efforts at reform were stifled by conservative elements of the state during Khatami's reformist presidency.

What I'm basically saying is Trump is our Ahmedinejad.

(Also Americans really should have learned this lesson from Nader/Bush, but people still seem in denial about that 17 years later.)