The Roots of Iran's Election Crisis

Abstract

The Iranian leadership's handling of the dispute over the June 2009 presidential election not only bitterly alienated a sizeable proportion of the population; it also deeply split the ruling clerics. The government has lost the support of many ranking Islamist figures, whose continued backing is necessary to maintain its coherence and effectiveness, and its legitimacy has been eroded. If it fails to modify its authoritarian Islamist mindset and power structure to claw back some, if not all, of its lost clerical and public support, the scene is set for a greater popular backlash in the long run. The current turmoil, ostensibly sparked by the election results, stems from a confluence of factors, including growing public discontent with the regime's theocratic behaviour, economic mismanagement and foreign-policy embarrassments, especially since Ahmadinejad became president in 2005. These are symptomatic, however, of deeper structural problems in the nature of the Islamic government that has evolved in Iran.