Reformists Are Optimistic as Iranians Vote for President

Iranians went to the polls today in a close presidential race, with hardliners wishing for a high turnout that would show support for the Islamic state had not withered and liberals hoping that a reformist candidate would pull off an upset.

Supporters of reformer Mostafa Moin said Thursday that they had detected a late surge in his favor. But polls say Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic and wealthy cleric who was president from 1989 to 1997, remained in the lead.

With seven candidates in the race, it seemed likely that Iran would be forced to hold a runoff for the first time since the 1979 revolution. A second round will be held if no candidate wins 50%.

Hours before the balloting began at 7 a.m., President Bush sharply criticized the election, saying it fell short of democracy because candidates needed to be cleared by the Council of Guardians to get on the ballot.

“Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy,” Bush said in a statement. “The June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record.”

Initially the Guardian Council, an unelected panel answerable only to the country’s unelected supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had ruled that no reformers could run. But the ayatollah intervened, ordering the council to reverse its decision and put Moin and a less-known reformer on the ballot.

Samak Baqeri, an election supervisor at a school in northern Tehran, predicted this morning that Bush’s comments would increase voter turnout.

But Dr. Mohsen Janati, the head of the school who also was serving as an election supervisor there, said that young people were yearning for more democracy. He said that was the main issue in the election, but that young people were discouraged. He predicted only half of them would vote.

Compared with those in other Mideast countries, an Iranian election is a brash and Western-style affair, with rallies, heavy advertising and imaginative campaign gimmicks. The hard-line clerics have a history of recognizing the democratic results even when they are unpalatable to them, such as the surprise victory of current President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, in 1997. He was reelected in 2001.

When given the choice in recent years, voters have almost always sought reform and liberalization. But politicians espousing change also have been accused of raising expectations that they could not deliver on because of the conservatives’ control of key ministries, the judiciary and now the parliament.

As he scrambled to respond Thursday to calls on his cellphone, Mostafa Tajzadeh, a top strategist in Moin’s camp, said: “We might experience an avalanche tomorrow, one like that of the Second of Khordad eight years ago,” referring to the date of Khatami’s 1997 victory.

“Our society has understood that they must come to our rescue,” said Tajzadeh, who was a deputy interior minister in Khatami’s first Cabinet.

When Rafsanjani finally confirmed his candidacy in May, many in the media and among the public believed he would be the clear front-runner. This belief was strengthened by initial surveys, most of which put the 70-year-old cleric well ahead of other candidates.

“They told us the reforms are dead,” said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, a sociology professor and another leading reformist. “And, just between us, we reformists believed that we were dead too!

“But it’s all been a myth. The media have been fooled by Rafsanjani, just wait and see,” Jalaipour said.

As opposed to Rafsanjani, who has not traveled to meet the electorate though his campaign has spent millions of dollars posting Iran’s streets with his image, Moin focused on face-to-face meetings.

Moin and his staff traveled through Iran’s provinces in recent weeks and held meetings with citizens of all backgrounds. Their elevated optimism arises from the feedback they have received, they say. In Ilam, an impoverished city on Iran’s western border, Moin couldn’t enter a 2,000-seat auditorium because it was too packed, a campaign staff member pointed out.

Moin’s staff draws comparisons with Khatami’s victory eight years ago, when most surveys showed conservative candidate Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri slightly ahead in the polls. Khatami received 70% of the vote.

“Our experience in Iran tells us that people don’t show their opinions in polls but at ballot boxes,” said Saeed Shariati, head of the campaign’s public relations.

Bush’s statement, meanwhile, was followed a few hours later by a blunt criticism of the Islamic regime from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Their language was consistent with administration efforts both to isolate the ruling elite in Tehran and spotlight undemocratic practices in the region, especially among those governments opposed to U.S. policies.

During a news conference at the State Department, Rice described Iran as a country that was becoming more closed in a region that she said was becoming politically more open.

“The Iranians are moving in the wrong direction,” she told reporters.

Noting the large number of candidates for lower office who also were disqualified by the Guardian Council and the absence of women candidates, she labeled the poll “illegitimate.”

“When you have ... women as a class and then thousands of people arbitrarily, as far as I can tell, told they cannot run.... I can’t see how one considers that a legitimate election,” she said.

Iranian women are allowed to run for parliament but not the presidency.

Although the Bush administration also is pushing for democratic reforms in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it has done so with a far lighter touch.

Siamdoust is a special correspondent and London Bureau chief Daniszewski is on assignment in Tehran. Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.