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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his archconservative challenger held dueling rallies in northeastern Iran on Wednesday, the final day of campaigning before a closely watched election.

With voters preparing to go to the polls Friday, Rouhani is a slight favorite over Ebrahim Raisi, a former attorney general who is custodian of Irans most important Shiite Muslim shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where both candidates held rallies.

As fears over a confrontation with the Trump administration have given way to more mundane economic concerns, Iranian voters will choose between Rouhanis promises to create jobs by continuing a tentative rapprochement with the West and Raisis pledges to dole out cash subsidies to the poor.

Irans quadrennial presidential elections are heavily choreographed by the theocracy. The slate of candidates is determined by an unelected, 12-member Guardian Council and the usual restrictions on dress code and free speech are somewhat relaxed to generate enthusiasm among voters.

High turnout at the polls more than 60% of eligible voters have cast ballots in every Iranian presidential election since 1997 confers legitimacy on the political process, and by extension the mullahs leadership.

After two candidates from a field of six dropped out in recent days part of the choreography the election has turned into a two-man race between Rouhani, a relative moderate on social issues, and Raisi, a religious conservative who is close to Irans ruling clerics.

Although there are few reliable opinion polls, Rouhani appears in good position to win reelection. Every Iranian president since 1981 has secured a second term.

But there are questions about the intensity of Rouhanis support as voters weigh his signature achievement the 2015 deal he struck with six world powers to curb Irans disputed nuclear program in exchange for an easing of international sanctions.

While many Iranians supported Rouhanis effort to end their countrys isolation and avert military conflict with the United States, there is growing frustration that the results of the agreement including an increase in oil exports have not translated to real economic benefits for most people.

In one presidential debate, Raisi likened the agreement to a check the government has been unable to cash. But just as President Trump has failed to tear up what he once called the worst deal ever, Raisi has not indicated he would back out of the agreement if elected.

Analysts say Rouhani faces flagging enthusiasm among his urban, educated base because he has been unsuccessful in relaxing the rules surrounding Iranians social lives, including dress codes and speech restrictions. And an angry protest that greeted Rouhani when he visited the site of a deadly coal mine explosion this month signaled discontent in the provinces.

There may be a lot of voter apathy in Iran right now, said Alireza Nader, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corp. Its not clear if a great majority of people are going to come out and vote for Rouhani. Hes the most attractive candidate when you put him up against Raisi. But he has vulnerabilities.

If turnout among Irans 56 million eligible voters is low, analysts said Rouhani could struggle to win a majority Friday. That would open the door to a runoff election in which Irans ultra-conservative deep state, including the powerful Revolutionary Guards, could mobilize support for Raisi.

The little-known hard-liner who is best known for presiding over the 1988 executions of thousands of political prisoners, Raisi is widely seen as the preferred candidate of and possible successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

An archetype of the theocracy, Raisi nevertheless has run as a populist, promising to revive cash handouts in a bid to appeal to the working-class supporters of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Most experts agree the policy would return Iran to the economically disastrous days of the isolationist Ahmadinejad, but the promises have gained resonance in a country with stifling unemployment.

At a pro-Raisi rally in Tehran this week, low-income and conservative supporters said Rouhani had sold out Iran by signing the nuclear deal and has gotten little foreign investment or jobs in return.

Others said Rouhanis promises of social freedoms were leading to moral lassitude.

My husband is sexually provoked by these ladies in their tight dresses, said Noreyye Mahdi, a 26-year-old draped in a full-length black abaya on a warm afternoon. I hope Mr. Raisi will contain them. And he has promised to provide jobs for the unemployed.

The avuncular Rouhani has tried to rally his base by promising further social freedoms and criticizing Irans security forces for attempting to sabotage the nuclear deal in part by displaying a missile with the sign, Death to Israel, during a recent military parade.

His campaign issued an economic policy statement that criticized cash giveaways as unfeasible, while casting himself as a pragmatist focused on achievable goals, such as controlling inflation and increasing economic production.

Overall Rouhani has been a candidate whose message has been, implicitly, that if you dont vote for me, things could get even worse, Nader said.

At a spirited campaign rally last week at a basketball arena in Tehran, thousands of Rouhani supporters demanded the release of opposition leaders who have been under house arrest since 2009 election protests were violently crushed by state security forces.

The arena is named Hijab, for the Islamic veil, yet many of the attendees were women who eschewed the mandatory headscarf a sign of the greater social freedoms of election time.

Rouhani promised to have the remaining sanctions against Iran lifted a long shot because many stem from Iranian security forces ballistic missile program and support for militant groups. To cheers from the crowd, he promised a further easing of social restrictions.

I have honored all the promises I campaigned on four years ago, Rouhani said. If I have failed to deliver on some of my promises, it is because they [the hard-liners] have prevented me from doing so.

For young, Western-oriented Tehran residents, Rouhani remains popular.

Reihane Taravati, a 26-year-old who was among several Iranians arrested in 2014 for participating in an online video set to Pharrell Williams hit summer anthem Happy, credited Rouhani with securing her release after he tweeted, Happiness is our peoples right.

He has saved us from war, and if he is out of office, we dont know what will happen to us, Taravati said. If the extremist candidate wins, then we will definitely face war. Trump in the White House and a hard-line president here in Tehran then, bang!

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Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia

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Iran's President Rouhani Is The Favorite In Friday's ...

Israel has often had hostile relations with its Muslim neighbors. But right now its greatest enemy may be Iran, which has one of the most powerful militaries in the region and has for years been openly hostile toward the very existence of Israel.

The situation may only be getting worse, with Iran seemingly on the rise since the Obama administration hatched a deal with the country that lifted international sanctions and gave the Islamic Republic approximately $100 billion in frozen assets.

Israels relations with Iran have changed since the Jewish states founding in 1948.Up until 1979, the two countries had relatively close ties.With Israel sometimes at war with its Arab neighbors, the non-Arab Iran was an important ally.

Gulf states warm to Israel, see possibility of Palestinian peace deal

But in 1979, the Islamic Revolution, with its leader Ayatollah Khomeini, took over in Iran, and Israel became the enemy. Iran closed the Israeli embassy and cut off diplomatic relations. It referred to Israel as The Little Satan. (The Great Satan was reserved for the United States.)

Still, even with officially hostile relations, Israel supported Iran in its war against Iraq from 1980 to 1988, selling it arms and even destroying Iraqs Osirak nuclear reactor in a surprise air strike in 1981.

Then, in 1989, the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei assumed power and relations took a turn for the worse. Khamenei referred to Israel as a cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world.

While Israel and Iran have not had open military clashes, they have battled each other through proxy fights. In the past few decades, Iran has sent weapons and hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-Israel terrorist groups, in particular Hezbollah and Hamas.The Israeli military has spent much time preventing or responding to attacks from these groups.

There have also long been rumors that Israel might strike one of Irans nuclear facilities, but so far this hasnt happened.

Netanyahu: US, Israel have 'grand mission' to confront Iran threat

Nevertheless, Israel has fought against Iran in more surreptitious ways, particularly regarding attempts to stop or slow down the nations development of nuclear weapons.

For instance, in 2008 to 2010, the malicious Stuxnet computer worm, developed by Israel and the United States, severely disrupted Irans nuclear program.

Also, starting in 2010, a number of Irans nuclear scientists were assassinated, and its generally believed Israel and its intelligence agency Mossad were behind the killings.

Today, some fear if Iran becomes more powerfuland especially if it attains nuclear weaponsclashes may escalate.

At present, in addition to bad blood between Iran and Israel, the Islamic world itself is split, with centuries-old Islamic denominational strife coming to the fore. Iran is the heart of the minority Shia denomination, while most of the Middle East is Sunni, with its center arguably being in Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca, Islams holiest city.

Iran and Saudi Arabias relations have become increasingly strained, and many Arab nations fear the rise in influence of Iran. This may cause them to look toward Israel, with its powerful military, as a helpful entity that contains Irans power and perhaps even stabilizes the region.

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Israels public enemy No. 1 may be Iran and tensions are ...

ISTANBUL Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was reelected to a second term by a landslide, the interior minister declared Saturday, presenting him a resounding endorsement of his plans to end Iran's pariah status and rejoin the global economy.

With 57 percent of the vote, Rouhani defeated his hard-line rival, Ebrahim Raisi, who had the backing of the ruling clergy and allied security forces. He also won a clear mandate to push through domestic reforms and pursue talks with the West, building on the nuclear deal he negotiated with world powers. That agreement, which Rouhani and his cabinet clinched during his first term, constrains Iran's nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.

The landslide victory gives Rouhani a mandate he did not have during his first term, said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of Eurasia Group, a political risk firm.

He'll remain a centrist, Kupchan said. But will be more aggressive in pursuing reforms.

Rouhani and his reformist backers also dealt a devastating blow to Iranian conservatives, most of whom supported Raisi and scoff at the soft power of the incumbent leader's diplomacy.

Turnout reached roughly 70 percent, with about 40 million Iranians casting ballots nationwide Friday. At stake was whether Iran would continue to open up to the world or return to the diplomatic and economic isolation of the past.

Raisi and his supporters appeared to favor policies associated with former president and populist firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was under his leadership that the United Nations began sanctioning Iran for failing to halt its uranium enrichment program.

[Former president Ahmadinejad wanted to run. Irans election vetters said no. ]

But while Rouhani managed to remove sanctions, economic growth remains slow and unemployment high. Many Iranians still live in poverty, and Raisi, who heads Iran's largest religious endowment, seized on the discontent to appeal to the poor and run a populist campaign. The effort, though, ultimately failed.

Despite poor economic conditions, [Iranians] said no to populism and empty promises of government subsidies, said Reza H. Akbari, a researcher on Iranian politics at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

This is especially refreshing given the recent rising populist trends in Europe and the U.S.," he said. The Iranian system is far from fair and balanced. However, Iranians demonstrated their belief that the most effective path to reform is ... through the ballot box.

Iran's president commands the state's vast bureaucracy and also has the ability to shape foreign and domestic policy. But all matters of the state must eventually be approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a body of theocrats.

There were worries before the vote that Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's shadowy but most powerful security institution, would rig the results to ensure a Raisi win. In the 2009 election, widespread suspicions of fraud led to a grass-roots protest movement by reformists against the state and then-president Ahmadinejad. The demonstrations were brutally quashed, and the opposition leaders including Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi remain under house arrest.

Its very noteworthy that Khamenei did not force a Raisi win, Kupchan said. There has been speculation that Khamenei had chosen Raisi as his potential successor.

The erstwhile successor to the leader took a body blow tonight, he said. And the path to a more moderate successor to Khamenei is now at least somewhat clearer.

On the international front, Iran will have to confront the more bellicose administration of President Trump. As presidential vote in Iran took place, Trump landed Saturday in Saudi Arabia, which is Iran's main rival. His administration has placed the nuclear deal under interagency review and recently imposed new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program.

[Trump campaigned against Muslims, but will preach tolerance in Saudi speech]

Still, Rouhani has pledged to continue to negotiate with the United States to persuade them to lift non-nuclear sanctions. Despite the tensions, Rouhani sees Iran as benefiting from the West and from foreign investment. And, apparently, Iranian voters agree.

Iranian voters sent a resounding message to the Trump administration, Akbari said. They are committed to the path of diplomacy and moderation. They stand behind Rouhani's attempts to break the country's isolation.

At home, Rouhani will probably struggle with more progressive political reform. He has failed to secure the release of Mousavi, Rahnavard and Karroubi from house arrest. Iran enjoys greater access to social media and the Internet, and reformist publications and Facebook pages flourished. But activists and journalists are still detained and jailed. Even with his strong mandate, it is unclear how much he will be able to achieve.

Rouhani will continue to face an uphill climb on political reform, Kupchan said.

According to Akbari, The moderate and reformist elements within the society are fully aware of Rouhani's shortcomings when it comes to human rights and guaranteeing social freedoms.

However, they decided to give him a second chance to deliver on his promises, he said.

Read more

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Opinion: Theres no clear winner for America in Irans presidential election

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Iranian President Rouhani wins reelection by a landslide - Washington Post

The Pentagon said Friday that a rare U.S. airstrike against pro-government forces in Syria targeted a convoy of Iran-backed troops, appearing to mark an important shift in the country's war.

The attack Thursday struck militants fighting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad as they advanced toward an air base manned by U.S. Special Forces and Washington-backed rebel groups close to the Jordanian border.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the attack was necessitated "by offensive movement with offensive capability of what we believe were... Iranian-directed forces inside an established and agreed-upon deconfliction zone."

If confirmed, it would be the first U.S. strike on Iranian proxies during seven years of war in Syria, signaling a possible escalation against Assad's most important ally.

Under the Obama administration, U.S. forces steered clear of direct confrontations with Iran and its proxies across Syria, Iraq and Yemen, prioritizing the upholding of Washington's nuclear deal with Tehran above all else.

"If U.S. troops are now engaging directly with Iranian militias, escalation in the absence of a well-wrought plan could inflame the conflict in Syria and further afield," Thanassis Cambanis, a fellow at the Washington-based Century Foundation, wrote in a research note published Friday.

Rebel commanders said the convoy, made up of Syrian and Iraqi militiamen who now form the bulk of Assad's fighting force, retreated after the U.S. attack and had not attempted to advance again by sunset Friday.

The airstrike comes at a time when the U.S. presence in Syria has become increasingly visible. Last month, the Trump administration launched the first direct U.S. attack on Assad targets, striking an air base in the central province of Homs in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians in the country's northwest. On the ground, the U.S. presence in Syria is also becoming more visible, as American troops back Kurdish-led forces fighting the Islamic State.

Aerial bombardments have ebbed across Syria since early May, after Russia, Iran and Turkey backed a deal to freeze fighting between government and rebel forces across four "de-escalation zones."

In areas outside of that pact, the cease-fires have freed up resources on all sides and triggered a scramble for influence around the fringes of Islamic State-held territory in eastern Syria.

The area is home to lucrative energy and agricultural sites that will be vital to Assad's government if it is to win economic independence from its Russian and Iranian backers.

Control of eastern Syria also includes the power to block or link up Iranian supply routes from Tehran to its most important proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

"Regime-allied militias advanced from the west and got bombed when they tried to enter our area. They have been advancing in recent weeks, bombing us heavily as they came," said Col. Muhannad al-Talla, a commander of Maghawir al-Thawrah, a Pentagon-backed rebel group at the al-Tanf air base.

Syrian officials bridled at Thursday's airstrike. On state television, an unnamed government official described it as a "flagrant aggression" by the "American-Zionist project in the region."

In Geneva, a fresh round of talks between Syrian government and opposition officials made little headway this week as the two sides refused to meet in the same room and none of the agenda's main issues was discussed.

Missy Ryan in Washington and Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul contributed to this report

Continued here:
US airstrike in Syria targeted forces directed by Iran: defense secretary - Chicago Tribune

So its a good win for the Iranian regime and its enormous population of young people and a bad win for Trumps regime, which would far rather have had an ex-judicial killer as Iranian president so that Americans would find it easy to hate him. Maybe Hassan Rouhanis final-week assault on his grim rival candidate and his supporters those whose main decisions have only been executions and imprisonment over the past 38 years paid off. Who among Irans under 25s, more than 40 per cent of the population, would have wanted to vote for Ebrahim Raisi whose hands had touched the execution certificates of up to 8,000 political prisoners in 1988?

So the man who signed Irans nuclear agreement with the United States, who struggled (often vainly, it has to be said) to reap the economic rewards of this nuclear bomb truce with the West, who believed in a civil society not unlike that of former president Mohamed Khatami who supported him in the election won with 57 per cent of the vote, backed by 23 million of the 41 million who cast their ballot. The corrupt and censorious old men of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the bazaaris and the rural poor the cannon fodder of the Iran-Iraq war as they often are in elections have been told they no longer belong to the future.

But what a contrast this election has been to the vast congress of dictators and cut-throat autocrats greeting Donald Trump in Riyadh just as the Iranian election results were announced. Save for Lebanon and Tunisia and Pakistan, almost every Muslim leader gathered in Saudi Arabia treats democracy as a joke or a farce hence the 96 per cent victories of their leaders or an irrelevancy. They are there to encourage Sunni Saudi Arabias thirst for war against Shia Iran and its allies. Which is why the Saudis will be appalled that a (comparatively) reasonable Iranian has won a (comparatively) free election that almost none of the 50 dictators gathering to meet Trump in Riyadh would ever dare to hold.

There are those who will remember, of course, that executions proceeded apace under Rouhanis previous presidency though not on the Golgotha scale of the 1988 executions and that Rouhanis revolutionary credentials are clear: just before Saddam Husseins Iraqi invasion of 1980, he managed to re-organise Irans tattered post-revolutionary army. But if Raisi symbolised the repressive past, Rouhani, however imperfectly, represents the future. For now.

Because everything depends on how he will respond to the madness of the Trump regime and its willingness to support the Sunni war machine with more than $100bn of weapons against Iran and its allies and friends. Rouhani must pray that Irans response can be political he does at least have the satisfaction of knowing the voter turnout in Iran this week was 70 per cent against Americas miserable 58 per cent in the Trump-Clinton election last year. Iranians are a very political people and take their presidential polls seriously, even if only six out of 1,600 potential candidates were allowed to stand.

As they will the next man to be chosen as Supreme Leader when Khamenei departs. This critical position without any precedent in Islam, it is now regarded as untouchable could go to Ayatollah Sayed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a man who, as head of the judiciary, reduced some of Irans more vicious punishments without being a true reformer. But this was true of old Hashemi Rafsanjani, the ex-president and Richelieu of Iran who died earlier this year. No one in Iranian politics can talk of reform and civil society without acknowledging the revolution and the martyrs of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

It was in the aftermath of this First World War-style conflict that the mass executions began. The only prominent cleric to stand against them was Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, whose courageous and moral decision cost him the Supreme Leadership. He spent the rest of his life under virtual house arrest. Khamenei took his place. And among the brutal men who then showed their Islamisism in the execution chamber, a massacre of prisoners that came to be known as the national disaster, Raisi could not expunge his name. Perhaps his only compensation today is that many of the Sunni Arab leaders gathered in Riyadh to applaud Americas mad President have almost as much blood on their hands. But they got elected.

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Rouhani's victory is good news for Iran, but bad news for Trump and his Sunni allies - The Independent