Possible key to a different Iran

There is something slightly surreal about the victory of the only cleric among Iran’s six presidential candidates being greeted as a moderate triumph and a sign of hope on a range of fronts.

Hasn’t clerical rule, after all, been among the most baleful aspects of Iranian existence post the 1979 revolution?

Furthermore, isn’t Hassan Rowhani — who won more than 50pc of the popular vote last Friday, thereby obviating the need for a second-round run-off — very much an insider? Would his candidacy not have been thwarted had he been viewed as a serious threat to the Islamic establishment?

Well, many of the Iranians who poured out on to the streets of Tehran in a celebratory mood over the weekend would be inclined to take a somewhat more optimistic view.

The popular mood certainly offered a contrast to 2009, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election was widely considered to have been guaranteed via electoral fraud. Two of the more prominent would-be reformists who contested it, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, are still under house arrest.

After the 2009 experience, it would not have been particularly surprising if large numbers of Iranians had stayed away from the polling booths last week. Instead, they came out in force: polling hours had to be extended as at least 72pc of the electorate decided to have its say.

For many, it seems what made the choice easier was Rowhani’s endorsement by ex-presidents Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. The former wanted to run himself, but was among those weeded out, alongside hundreds of other would-be candidates, by the Guardian Council, ostensibly on account of his age.

The latter chose not to stand, and is deemed to have persuaded his protégé Mohammad-Reza Aref to pull out from the race in order to avoid dividing the reformist vote.

There was no such pooling of resources at the other end of the arguably narrow political spectrum, which divided the conservative vote and facilitated Rowhani’s massive lead over his nearest rival.

It has even been suggested that Saeed Jalili, an inveterate hardliner who has lately served as Iran’s nuclear negotiator, was put up by the establishment as a means of encouraging a larger turnout, based on the expectation that a substantial proportion of the electorate would feel obliged to make an effort to keep him out of the presidency.

If that was indeed a thought-out tactic, it seems to have worked. At the same time, it is true that Rowhani’s success serves to legitimise a framework that is unquestionably deplorable on any number of counts. After all, power ultimately still resides in the unelected supreme leader. It is possible to challenge it, as Ahmadinejad has occasionally done. But the extent to which it can be undermined, even on the basis of an unequivocal popular mandate, remains indeterminate.

Which is not to suggest, of course, that Rowhani necessarily has any intention of attempting anything along those lines. Yet the Iranians who celebrated his success seem to harbour greater expectations. They may well be disappointed, just as so many of Barack Obama’s supporters have been. But then again, who knows?

Notwithstanding his insider status, Rowhani has been credited with utterances that, within the given context, offer cause for hope of changes not just in style but in substance. He has spoken of human rights and attacked the concept of prisoners of conscience; there have been none-too-veiled references to a more relaxed dress code for women and relatively unhindered internet access; the notion of transparency on the nuclear front has been revisited amid a critique of the sanctions that account for some of Iran’s most potent economic woes.

In his capacity as a nuclear negotiator under Khatami, he helped to stall uranium enrichment and made the West an offer it ought not to have refused. Caught up in its absurd “axis of evil” mindset, the Bush administration was disinclined to be reasonable, but Western interlocutors such as then British foreign secretary Jack Straw found Rowhani “warm and engaging” who was “tough but fair to deal with and always on top of his brief”.

Rowhani resigned as negotiator after Ahmadinejad took over, and this time around is making no promises on enrichment, but is evidently keen to improve relations with the West and to re-establish diplomatic ties with the United States.

An intensification of the proxy confrontation in Syria in the weeks before the president-elect takes over from the incumbent could make that much harder, whereas a place for Iran at the conference table, should international talks on Syria be convened, would be a sensible gesture.

The extent to which Rowhani can institute any changes without the concurrence of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is indeed dubious, but the clerical hierarchy isn’t totally immune to popular pressures and can ill afford to entirely ignore the new president’s mandate, should he indeed be inclined to push for reforms.

It is vital though that, if he extends any feelers after taking over in August, they ought not to be peremptorily spurned.