Iran’s Victor Urges Unity in Wake of Vote

Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appealed for unity Saturday after his fundamentalist movement overwhelmed the country’s struggling reformers and centrists in a lopsided election. But opponents braced for what they feared would be curtailed freedoms at home and a more confrontational policy abroad.

“Today is a day when we have to forget all our rivalries and turn them into friendships,” Ahmadinejad said, even as his defeated opponent, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, expressed anger at what he called “institutionalized” interference in the voting.

In his first statement since winning Friday’s runoff, Ahmadinejad, the ultraconservative mayor of Tehran, told state radio that his mission would be to create a powerful Islamic state that could be an example for the world. He will take office in August.

The magnitude of the hard-liners’ triumph signaled a watershed moment in Iranian politics, reversing the eight-year experiment with political and social reform begun in 1997 after the first inauguration of President Mohammad Khatami.

The old status quo, in which some arms of Iran’s government were moderate while others were conservative or fundamentalist, is no more. In the new alignment, the governing bodies are united in one fundamentalist ideology under the control of the unelected supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In this capital city, women voiced fears of a crackdown on their style of dress and makeup or that young militiamen would enforce other measures to halt the spread of Western culture or “un-Islamic” behavior.

One of the government’s chief critics, however, speculated that the Islamic conservatives’ aim would be a state along the lines of the “Chinese” model, allowing enough social and economic liberty to win the people’s acquiescence but coupling that with a repressive political system.

Despite the surprising sweep of Ahmadinejad’s victory over Rafsanjani in the runoff vote Friday, racking up more than 61% of ballots, supporters of the mayor kept their celebrations muted for most of the day.

On Saturday night, however, hundreds of Iranians gathered in front of Ahmadinejad’s house in a working-class area of west Tehran, chanting and calling for the new president to come out. “The shark hunter is coming, the shark hunter is coming,” said the crowd, which included members of pro-government militias.

“Shark” is a derisory nickname sometimes applied to Rafsanjani, referring to the senior cleric’s lack of facial hair.

A government official said that in the wake of the hard-fought campaign, marred in both rounds by allegations of official interference and voter intimidation, Khamenei wished to avoid public displays that might heighten international tensions or internal divisions.

Shortly after the results were announced, Khamenei issued a statement thanking both candidates and the population at large for taking part. Final official figures indicated that fewer than six in 10 eligible Iranian voters had turned out, down from the 63% participation in the election’s first round, but not as low as the first reports early Saturday had indicated.

“Through a magnificent display of national solidarity and public participation, you have proved your firm resolve to defend national independence and bravely safeguard the interests of the country and the Islamic Republic establishment,” Khamenei said, according to IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency.

The government said the turnout had proved the election’s legitimacy and amounted to a rejection of the United States, where President Bush and members of his administration had denigrated the election as undemocratic.

“The massive turnout in both rounds proved people’s interest in deciding their own destiny, and it was a clear disagreement with America’s policies,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

An aide close to Rafsanjani said the defeated candidate intended to raise no formal objections to the vote but was miffed at the support allegedly given his rival by the military and militias.

The aide, Mohammed Atrianfar, said the candidate had prepared a statement saying that his sense of responsibility to the Islamic state would prevent him from registering his discontent at the “institutionalized” directing of votes to his opponent, a reference to allegations that members of the Revolutionary Guard had been told how to vote by their superiors.

Although some people interpreted the 48-year-old Ahmadinejad’s victory as mainly a desire for generational change, Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister who led the banned Freedom Party here, said it was a calculated seizure of power by the hard-liners.

“It is not a matter of changing the old guard. It is a matter of a new move by the military institutions to solidify their power,” Yazdi said, speaking to BBC Television on Saturday. “They have the majority in the parliament. They have access to the judiciary system. Now they want to have the executive branch of government totally in their possession.”

Yazdi, who had spoken of the authorities wanting to pursue a Chinese model in Iran, said he was not sure it would work.

“I’m afraid that they cannot persuade” the population, he said in the BBC interview. “That is why they would increase the social pressure, particularly on the young boys and girls.”

Meanwhile, many fashion-conscious women who in recent years under Khatami have been wearing makeup and toenail polish again or getting by with skimpy, colorful hair coverings with short jackets or tunics, said they feared the enforced return of more conservative garb.

“We would resist if we could, but we cannot stop it,” said Sanaz Bazarjan, a 21-year-old manager of a sports club. “Maybe next week we will have to be in a boiling dress.... We will have to be held accountable to some 15-year-old boy [in the militia]. Why should we have to do what he says?”

Despite the allegations from Rafsanjani and defeated reformists that the military, the militias and the clergy had worked unfairly to pump up Ahmadinejad’s share of the vote, sometimes resorting to intimidation, it seemed difficult to argue that the mayor had not struck a populist chord with millions of voters.

His piety and simple lifestyle, his call for a return to revolutionary values and his attacks on corruption and the privileges that the wealthier segments of society enjoy turned out to be the perfect strategy to defeat Rafsanjani, who has long been a member of the country’s political and economic elite. Many voters said that as the president for eight years before Khatami, the 70-year-old Rafsanjani had already had his chance and fallen short.

One Ahmadinejad voter in south Tehran said she was tired of a divided government, especially at a time when the region appears more dangerous, with the war in Iraq just across the border and the United States making noises about Iran’s nuclear program and its record on democracy, terrorism and human rights.

“People need to have unity now like in the early time of the revolution,” said Masoumeh Sherazy, a sales agent dressed in a black chador covering. “What America has done in Iraq convinced people to vote, not for Ahmadinejad, but for unity.”

But many Rafsanjani voters took the opposite view: that the possibility of a confrontation with the United States made it all the more important that an experienced, open-minded moderate such as Rafsanjani be in charge.

“The U.S. is now going to be unsure about our president. If Rafsanjani was elected, obviously everything would be OK,” said a photo shop proprietor in north Tehran, speaking to a reporter in English and asking to be identified only as Matt. “But the main fact is, no one can count on [Ahmadinejad] about nuclear power in Iran.”

Special correspondent Nahid Siamdoust in Tehran contributed to this report.