Ali Khamenei casts ballot as Iran elects new president

Iran's supreme leader opened a presidential election Friday in which ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi is seen as all but certain to coast to victory over his vetted rivals.

After a lacklustre campaign, turnout is expected to plummet to a new low in a country exhausted by a punishing regime of US economic sanctions that dashed hopes for a brighter future.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cast the first ballot in Tehran and then urged Iran's nearly 60 million eligible voters to follow suit before polls are set to close at midnight (1930 GMT).

"The sooner you perform this task and duty, the better," the 81-year-old Khamenei said. "Everything that the Iranian people do today until tonight, by going to the polls and voting, serves to build their future."

But enthusiasm has been dampened by the disqualification of many candidates and the deep economic malaise which has sparked spiralling inflation and job losses, the crisis deepened by the Covid pandemic.

"I'm not a politician, I don't know anything about politics," a Tehran car mechanic who gave his name as Nasrollah told AFP. "I have no money. All families are now facing economic problems. 

"How can we vote for these people who did this to us? It's not right."

Election placards are relatively sparse in Tehran, dominated by those showing the austere face of frontrunner Raisi, the 60-year-old chief of the judiciary, in his trademark black turban and clerical robe.

Raisi has been named in Iranian media as a possible successor to Khamenei. 

For the exiled Iranian opposition and rights groups, Raisi's name is indelibly associated with the mass executions of leftists in 1988, when he was deputy prosecutor of Tehran's Revolutionary Court, although he has denied involvement.

The election winner will take over in August as Iran's eighth president from incumbent Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who has served the maximum of two consecutive four-year-terms allowed under the constitution.

- Dashed hopes -
Ultimate political power in Iran, since its 1979 revolution toppled the US-backed monarchy, rests with the supreme leader.

But the president, as the top official of the state bureaucracy, also wields significant influence in fields from industrial policy to foreign affairs.

Rouhani's key achievement was the landmark 2015 deal with world powers under which Iran pledged to limit its nuclear programme and refrain from acquiring the atomic bomb in return for sanctions relief.

But high hopes for greater prosperity and a reopening to the world were crushed in 2018 when then-US president Donald Trump withdrew from the accord and launched an economic and diplomatic "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran.

An Iranian woman walks past banners of presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran.–AFP

While Iran has insisted its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only, Trump accused it of secretly seeking the bomb and of destabilising the wider Middle East through armed proxy groups.

As old and new US sanctions hit Iran, trade dried up and foreign companies bolted. The economy nosedived and spiralling prices fuelled repeated bouts of social unrest which were put down by security forces.

Iran's ultraconservative camp -- which deeply distrusts the United States, labelled the "Great Satan" or the "Global Arrogance" in the Islamic republic -- attacked Rouhani over the failing deal.

Despite this, there is broad agreement among all the election candidates that the country of 83 million must seek an end to the painful US sanctions in ongoing talks in Vienna aiming to revive the nuclear deal.

- Vetting process -
Out of an initial field of almost 600 hopefuls for the presidency, only seven -- all men -- were approved to run by the Guardian Council, a body of 12 clerics and jurists.

Among the prominent figures disqualified were conservative former parliament speaker Ali Larijani and populist former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Then, two days before the election, three of the seven approved candidates dropped out of the race.

The only reformist still running is low-profile former central bank chief Abdolnaser Hemmati, who has promised to revive the economy and, unusually in Iran, heavily involved his wife in campaigning.

"For the first time since the foundation of the Islamic republic, the election of the president will take place without any real competition," wrote former French ambassador Michel Duclos in a commentary for Paris think-tank the Institut Montaigne.

Tehran blacksmith Abolfazl told AFP of his disappointment as a patriot who took part in the 1979 revolution.

"I am over 60 years old, and in my youth I revolted against the shah of Iran," he said. "I took part in a revolution to choose for myself, not so others can choose for me.

"I love my country, but I do not accept these candidates."

Iran has often pointed to voter participation for democratic legitimacy -- but polls signal the turnout may drop below the 43 percent of last year's parliamentary election.

Results are expected around noon Saturday. If no clear winner emerges, a runoff will be held a week later.

Timeline
Iran elects a new president Friday, with the ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi widely expected to take over from moderate Hassan Rouhani who has served two terms.

Here are landmark events in the history of the country, once known as Persia, since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy and established an Islamic republic.

- 1979: Islamic republic -
After months of protests, on January 16, 1979, the US-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, leaves the country.

Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini makes a triumphant return from exile in Paris on February 1.

Ten days later, the shah's government falls. Public radio hails "the end of 2,500 years of despotism".

An Islamic republic is proclaimed on April 1.

- US hostage crisis -
Radical students take 52 Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, to protest the ex-shah's admission to hospital in the United States.

Washington severs diplomatic relations in 1980. The hostages are only freed on January 21, 1981, after 444 days in captivity.

- 1980-88: Iran-Iraq war -
Iraq attacks Iran on September 22 after Iraqi president Saddam Hussein tears up a 1975 treaty on the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway.

This triggers a gruelling eight-year war that is estimated to have cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.

It ends on August 20, 1988 with a UN-brokered ceasefire.

- 1989: Khamenei takes over -
Khomeini dies on June 3, 1989. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, president since 1981, becomes supreme leader.

Moderate conservative Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is elected president.

Re-elected in 1993, he orchestrates a relative opening up of the government and post-war reconstruction.

Rafsanjani's reformist successor, Mohammad Khatami, runs up against conservative opposition during his two terms from 1997 to 2005.

In 1999, the government faces the biggest protests since 1979, pitting pro-Khatami students against the police.

- 2002: 'Axis of evil' -
US president George W. Bush names Iran as part of an anti-American "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

- 2005: Ahmadinejad era -
Populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected president in June.

During his tenure, Iran resumes uranium enrichment. That alarms the West, which suspects Tehran of wanting to produce a nuclear weapon, something Iran has consistently denied.

A crackdown on nationwide protests against Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009 hobbles the reformist movement.

- 2015: Nuclear deal -
The election of moderate cleric Rouhani as president in 2013 marks a warming of relations with Washington and the rest of the world.

Iran reaches a deal on its nuclear programme with world powers, including the United States, on July 14, 2015 after 21 months of negotiations.

It gives Tehran relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for limits on its atomic activities.

- 2016: Saudi standoff -
In January Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia and its allies cut or scale back relations, after the Sunni kingdom's execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr which prompted demonstrators to ransack the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

- 2018: US quits nuclear deal -
US president Donald Trump on May 8 abandons the nuclear deal and begins reimposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.

A year later Tehran begins gradually stepping back from its own commitments.

- 2020: Top commander killed -
On January 3, a US drone strike kills top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, heightening fears of a direct confrontation after a string of incidents involving Gulf shipping.

Five days later, Iran launches a volley of missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq, but the standoff later eases.

- 2021: Gulf, Israel tensions -
The Revolutionary Guards in January seize a South Korean-flagged tanker in the Gulf amid a dispute over billions in frozen oil funds, the latest in a series of incidents there. The ship is released in April.

The same month, Iran claims Israel is behind an explosion at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant.

In a surprise move in May, the conservative-dominated Guardian Council disqualifies key establishment figure Ali Larijani from the June 18 presidential election. 

It approves a field of candidates dominated by ultraconservatives, with judiciary chief Raisi seen as favourite.