Iran's Elections: A Little Media Criticism

Western media editorializes through labels and subtle signals when covering Iran.

After Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (in office 2021-2024) died in a helicopter crash on May 19, Iran held presidential elections in two rounds on June 28 and July 5. The first round was contested by the six candidates approved by the Guardian Council, whose authority is a major shaper of the electoral playing field. The reformist (more on this label below) candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won the most votes in round one (44%), followed by the hardliner (more on this label soon as well) Saeed Jalili (40%). Meanwhile, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, seen by many observers as the establishment candidate, finished the first round at just 14%, in a distant third. Pezeshkian and Jalili then faced off in the second round, which Pezeshkian won with 55% to Jalili’s 45%.

Coverage of Iranian politics in Western media revolves heavily around these two labels - “reformist” and “hardline/r” - with “reformist” sometimes swapped out for “moderate,” and “hardliner” sometimes swapped out for “conservative.” (In fairness, these terms appear in coverage beyond the Western media too, for example in Arabic reporting and analysis, and the term “reformist” is also used in Farsi, but I would argue that Western media’s use of the terms carries a particular political valence.)

The terms “reformist” and “hardliner” both do have some real explanatory power vis-a-vis Iranian politics, reflecting divisions that have spanned numerous presidential elections. Former President Mohammed Khatami (in office 1997-2005) is a key reformist figure, as was 2009 runner-up Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Former President Hassan Rouhani (in office 2013-2021) is also often categorized as a reformist (he endorsed Pezeshkian in the first round). Hardliners include Raisi as well as figures such as former President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (in office 2005-2013). There have been genuine policy differences across those administrations and among those figures. So the terms are indeed useful.

But I have two main critiques of Western media’s usage of the “reformist” and “hardliner” labels. First, Western media interpret and describe Iranian politics, particularly presidential politics, largely in terms of how politics might affect Iran’s policies vis-a-vis the United States and the West more broadly. Perhaps this media tendency is only natural, but I find it highly exaggerated in Iran coverage versus, say, American media’s coverage of French politics. My second critique is that Western media offers a barely veiled moralizing narrative that positions the reformists as the good guys while often simultaneously questioning their sincerity.

For example, here is how the AP opened their pre-election profile of Pezeshkian, with my comments inserted in brackets:

After the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, Iranian lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian wrote that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family.” [i.e., he’s a good guy for saying this]

Days later as nationwide protests and a bloody crackdown on all dissent took hold, he warned that those “insulting the supreme leader ... will create nothing except long-lasting anger and hatred in the society.” [i.e., he’s weak/subservient for saying this]

The stances by Pezeshkian, now a 69-year-old candidate for Iran’s next president, highlight the dualities of being a reformist politician within Iran’s Shiite theocracy — always pushing for change but never radically challenging the system overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. [i.e, pushing for change is good but the reformists are lame, hence Iran is doomed without revolution from below]

And here’s the opening of the AP’s pre-election profile of Jalili:

Hard-line Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili may have been Tehran’s top nuclear negotiator for years, but he won no plaudits from Western diplomats sitting across the table as he repeatedly lectured them on everything while offering nothing. [i.e., he’s a fanatic]

[…]

Now Jalili, 58, stands on the precipice of being elected as Iran’s next president as he faces a runoff election Friday against the little-known reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon. With Iran’s nuclear program enriching uranium at levels near-weapons grade, a win by Jalili may again see already-stalled negotiations freeze. [i.e., only Iran can ultimately be responsible for the success or failure of negotiations]

Meanwhile, Jalili’s own hard-line vision for Iran — derided by opponents as being in the style of the Taliban [i.e., the AP thinks those opponents are right, Jalili is like another purported U.S. enemy] — potentially risks inflaming a public still angry after the bloody security force crackdown that followed the demonstrations over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini. She died in police custody after she was detained over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab. [i.e. the hardliners are going to get themselves overthrown by pushing people too far]

A lot is woven into these media depictions, obviously - for many readers, any individual piece of Iran coverage comes against the background of decades of depictions of Iran’s leaders as fanatical and aggressive, and of the Iranian people as being at their most authentic and sympathetic when they are protesting against their government. (The best satire of Western media coverage that I’ve read is by Ladane Nasseri - one key line: “Unlike the U.S., which wants the best for all the people in the world, Iran wants the worst for the entire universe itself included.”) One doesn’t have to be an apologist for Iran’s rulers to think that journalism about Iran is often very simplistic and full of stereotypes.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the “reformist” appellation is particularly contested among analysts and commentators. One sign of that contestation is that Iranian writers of various ideological stripes often put the label in quotes rather than taking it as a straightforward descriptor. Here are two very different examples of commentators questioning the label - the first, urging the U.S. to “confront” the Iranian state, suggests that “reformists” are disingenuous as negotiators; the second, writing from the left, argues that the reformists are both tamed by the Supreme Leader and less reformist than in years past. From multiple vantage points, then, there are challenges to the accuracy and meaningfulness of the “reformist” label.

Indeed, this second piece, by Eskander Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, is the most sophisticated analysis of the elections I’ve read yet, and it’s worth quoting at greater length:

Almost every Iranian president to date has come to blows with the supreme leader when they have tried to pursue their own agendas. From Abolhassan Banisadr in 1981 to Mohammad Khatami in the 2000s, to the more recent administrations of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and even Hassan Rouhani, relations have inevitably deteriorated, often leading to estrangement and finally the president’s expulsion from the real sites of power. In his campaign, Pezeshkian decided to address this issue by openly discussing the limitations of the president’s office. He told voters that he was not a miracle-worker, that his authority was constrained, and that he could only bring about change in areas under his immediate control. In those beyond his remit, he pledged to enter negotiations on behalf of the people. He would not confront the entrenched interests at the heart of the system but rather work with them constructively. This brand of centrism is a far cry from the Khatami years, where parliamentary democracy and neoliberal globalization were thought to represent the End of History, and from the more radical promises of ‘political development’ (towse’eh-ye siyasi): a common euphemism for democratization and constitutional reform. Yet it nonetheless represents a significant break with the past three years.

Notably, one reason why analysis like this piece is important is that it goes beyond the two key questions Western media seem to care about, those questions being (1) what will Iran’s foreign policy be, specifically vis-a-vis nuclear negotiations? and (2) will there be protests that culminate in an overthrow of the current state? The narrow focus on those two issues leaves out many others, above all economic concerns, which received virtually no acknowledgment in the AP profiles I excerpted above (or in many other examples of Western coverage of the elections).

In contrast, Sadeghi-Boroujerdi’s piece shows that the economy is both important to Iranians as an issue in and of itself and that the economy is interconnected with the issues of foreign policy and protests: “[One] fraction of the ruling class does not want to upset the apple cart. One of the main reasons they flocked to Pezeshkian was the hope that he could bring the economy under control, stabilize the domestic arena and calm international tensions in the shadow of the Gaza genocide.” Sadeghi-Boroujerdi is pessimistic about the prospects for serious change, including on management of the economy, and hence we are back to the limits of reformism: “What this amounts to is a possible shift in tone, style, competency, policy priorities and ‘governance’ strategies, within clearly defined limits.” In a way, that phrasing is close to what I critiqued in the AP piece on Pezeshkian - a kind of pessimism towards Iran. The difference, though, is in the degree of sophistication; whereas much Western media offers a version of the Iranian political landscape as comprising two factions (lame but perhaps redeemable reformists versus scary and irredeemable hardliners), some of the better commentary gives us a more three-dimensional picture of the Iranian domestic scene.

The flaws in Western media coverage are more apparent than ever in light of a spate of new books on Iranian politics, especially by Iranians and Iranian-Americans, that have come out in the past decade or so. Narges Bajoghli’s Iran Reframed, Pouya Alimagham’s Contesting the Iranian Revolution, Shirin Saeidi’s Women and the Islamic Republic have all been helpful to me in thinking about Iran, for example. There are ways to write and talk about Iran, in other words, that do not boil down to a flat, moralizing narrative and that instead get at the complexity of one of the world’s most important countries.