Iran’s 'Deep State' Suffers a Stinging Defeat
Muhammad Sahimi
Politics, Middle East
Pro-reform candidates did surprisingly well at the ballot box.
Nationwide elections were held in Iran on Friday, February 26, for the Majles (Iran’s parliament) and the Assembly of Experts, a constitutional body that appoints the Supreme Leader and can, at least theoretically, fire him as well.
The results for both the Majles and the Assembly have been resounding victories for a coalition between the reformists and the moderate supporters of President Hassan Rouhani, aligned with two former presidents, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. Together with the independents, the coalition has captured at least 150 out of 290 seats in the Majles, including every single seat for the greater Tehran district, which has thirty representatives in the Majles. In the elections for the Assembly, fifteen out of the coalition’s sixteen candidates running in Tehran Province were elected, including, the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, a non-cleric candidate, Mohsen Esmaili.
While the victories have been interpreted as a stinging defeat for the conservatives that have controlled the two organs for years, they in fact represent a crushing defeat for Iran’s “deep state,” the secret and semisecret networks of security and intelligence officers and agents in those parts of the government that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls directly. Let me explain.
Over 12,100 people had registered with the Ministry of the Interior to run for the Majles. In Iran’s complex and undemocratic electoral process, the Ministry of the Interior must first certify the eligibility of the candidates. The ministry, which the Rouhani administration controls, approved over 11,300— representing nearly 94 percent of all candidates—with the rest having cases before courts, prior convictions, and so on. The next step was approval from the Guardian Council, another constitutional body that vets the candidates for all elections except those for city councils. It was at this stage that the “deep state” exerted its behind-the-scenes influence and prevented over 50 percent of the candidates from running.
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