NEWS ANALYSIS : Iran’s Islamic Revolution Enters Critical Period : Mideast: Low turnout, large protest vote cast doubt on president’s second term. There is pessimism on economic, social issues.

With the official announcement Sunday that President Hashemi Rafsanjani won reelection to a second and final four-year term, Iran enters a critical period that may determine whether the Islamic revolution can survive long-term, U.S. analysts say.

A new depth of disillusionment was reflected in the vote held last Friday, widely described as sluggish and unenthusiastic.

In a four-way race, Rafsanjani won 63% of the total, but less than 58% of Iran’s 29 million voters cast ballots, election officials announced. The tallies were a stark contrast to the 1989 election, when he won 94.5% of the vote and the turnout was almost 70%.

The second-largest vote went to Ahmad Tavakoli, the right-wing former labor minister who had attacked the government for economic mismanagement. His surprisingly high 23.8% was widely considered to be a protest vote.

But the outcome was never in doubt since Rafsanjani’s other rivals--a former member of Parliament and a university chancellor--were largely unknown and Iran’s low-key campaigns set records for brevity.

Together, Rafsanjani’s three opponents tallied more than 35% of the vote. The lone opponent in 1989 won only 5.5%.

Unlike the high expectations for a new era when he was elected in 1989--less than two months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death--Rafsanjani’s reelection is marked by pessimism at home and abroad over the prospects of improvement in economic, political, social and foreign policy problems.

“Rafsanjani was not able to assert his control or push through his program during his first term, and it now looks unlikely for his second term,” said Eric Hooglund, an Iran scholar and editor of the Middle East Journal.

The Iranian leader, a former Khomeini student who evolved into a dynamic political figure, faces an array of problems:

* Economically, the geostrategic country has been floundering under the burdens of sagging oil prices and reconstruction from the eight-year war with Iraq.

* Since the 1979 revolution, Iran’s population has almost doubled, from 34 million to about 60 million--numbers that the country cannot educate, feed, house, provide social services for and employ.

* Politically, disaffection is soaring, allowing the radical right wing to gain significant ground--and possibly eventually emerge as the first viable internal opposition.

* And diplomatically, the Islamic republic has been unable to re-establish strong relations with the West, which are essential for loans and foreign investments necessary to energize Iran’s economy.

The cycle is unlikely to be broken anytime soon, analysts predict. Indeed, if Rafsanjani starts off his second term by injecting new energy in his proposed economic reforms, already soaring unemployment and inflation are only likely to worsen--in turn further challenging the revolution.

“The key now is not religious credibility or revolutionary credentials. The key to legitimacy is delivering goods and economic performance,” said R. K. Ramazani, a University of Virginia specialist on Iran.

During his first term, Rafsanjani began converting Iran’s troubled economy to a free market, including decentralization and privatization of industries, businesses and services.

But his government has lacked both the will and the domestic support to take the final steps for the Iranian version of shock therapy reforms undertaken in Eastern Europe.

Discontent has become increasingly visible. After last year’s parliamentary elections, the regime was jolted by serious unrest over prices of food, housing and essentials in four key cities.

To prevent alienating voters, the regime has allowed large quantities of the country’s limited foreign currency to be used to buy consumer goods rather than for longer-term capital investments. Tehran has also taken on the highest foreign debt since Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign.

The situation is so precarious that some analysts compare it to the months preceding the shah’s ouster in 1979.

Besides internal woes, the world’s only modern theocracy is also facing growing pressure from abroad, mainly for its support of Islamic extremist groups and rearmament.

In the weeks ahead, Rafsanjani is expected to make changes in his Cabinet to deal with both economic problems and foreign policy.

And he tried to strike an optimistic note Sunday. “That a considerable majority of people supported the (economic) program is a great asset for me and my colleagues that would encourage us to execute the rest of the program with confidence,” he said in a radio message.