How Donald Trump could decide Iran’s election

Tehran

Waiting to vote in Iran’s parliamentary election last year, Navid Karimi told me about his plans: to get a well-paid job with his recently acquired engineering degree, go on a road trip in the US and avoid dying fighting in Syria.

Fifteen months on, as the country votes in a presidential election, I met him again in Tehran.  He is yet to find a job; the road trip, the result of being introduced to Jack Kerouac by an uncle educated in Illinois, is not going to happen anytime soon with the uncertainties surrounding Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban; but he has so far managed to avoid conscription and being sent to Syria.

It is the lack of a job which is having the most direct impact on the life of 23-year-old Navid. Many of his friends are in the same situation; two out of the three of them who joined us for chai are unemployed. Their complaints were much as one would hear in these parts and elsewhere -- lack of opportunities, corruption and inefficiency, politicians being out of touch with ordinary people.

Yet Navid and his friends are all going to vote to keep President Hassan Rouhani in power. It is not just because of the past of the main challenger left in the race, Ebrahim Raisi, although that is ghastly enough. The candidate for the hardliners was once a judge in the 'death commissions' which sent thousands of political prisoners to the gallows and firing squads. But it is what Raisi will mean for the future that worries Navid.

'He is talking like Ahmedinejad who came along saying that he would clean up corruption and look after the poor. But my father warned me, don’t even think of voting for Raisi. Remember what happened with Ahmedinejad,’ said Navid. 'No, I am sticking with Rouhani.' One of his friends nodded. 'Ahmadinejad set us back 20, 30 years, we are only just beginning to get over him.'

There was high expectation last year that Iran’s signing of the nuclear deal with international powers would lead to massive economic boom. That has not happened, as Rouhani’s opponents have been keen to hammer home.

But the President’s supporters do not blame him for the failure to fulfil economic expectations. The fault, they insist, lies with the Americans who have tried to block the lifting of sanctions and are browbeating international banks into not working with Iran. And now there is added concern on that front, the threat from the most powerful populist in the West.

'Maybe things would have improved if Obama had remained. But Trump wants to do us harm. But he is a horrible man in every way, so creepy,'  said Zahra Farzhan,  a 24-year-old law graduate, adjusting her turquoise headscarf, which was styled in the urban Iranian style. 'I feel sorry for his daughter, she seems so nice.'

During his election campaign, Trump had declared that the nuclear deal was the 'the worst in history' and that he was determined to 'dismantle this disastrous mistake'. The messages from his administration since then have been contradictory and confusing. It acknowledges, albeit grudgingly, that Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal, yet is now threatening punitive measures. Trump has said that the Iranians 'are not living up to the spirit of the agreement' while failing to explain what this actually means. He says his administration is carrying out a 'comprehensive review of Iran policy'.

Trump, meanwhile, is about to embark on his first presidential foreign trip, taking him to Saudi Arabia and Israel, two states which view Iran as the enemy. Israel considers Tehran to be an existential threat and the Sunni Saudis are fighting proxy wars against Shia Iran across the region. Trump is due to make a 'landmark speech' in Riyadh. It will, according to the American media, deliver a combative line on Iran with regards the nuclear deal. It will also reiterate the charge that Iran is exporting terrorism.

This will reinforce the views of Iran’s hardliners that the West -- and the US, in particular -- cannot be trusted and Rouhani has been a fool at best and criminally negligent at worse in signing the nuclear deal.

'How can what Trump says be anything but damaging?' said Siavash Sharivar, a civic society organiser who has been helping the Rouhani campaign. 'There are unfortunately people here who will use it against the President and, also, to whip up feelings against foreigners. What we want is to open up Iran, not close it more.'

Sharivar was speaking at a rally for Rouhani at the Shobada Centre, in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Square. Around three quarters of those present were young, and half of these were women. An orchestra with violins and cellos along with Iranian string instruments like the setar and tanburs played traditional and modern music. The crowd chanted 'we are building a new Iran.'

A Raisi rally the following evening was a very different affair. Tens of thousands were present, a sizeable number bused in from rural areas. Men and women were segregate; there were Koranic readings and martial music in between roars exhorting their candidate and castigating Rouhani. There were scuffles; men and women fainted.

Raisi had his share of women supporters there, almost all dressed in black. One, Mahasti Saidi, knew what to blame. 'It is Barjam [the Persian word for nuclear agreement] which has weakened Iran, we need to end it, we want our security back.' But would that not lead to re-imposition of tough sanctions?' Hassan, her brother, was adamant. 'So what, we have had hardship before, we will rebuild our country. We know the Americans are our enemies. Rouhani's ‘reforms’  have only helped the rich. They have done nothing for us.'

But it may be a mistake to apply stereotypes here. During a visit to Qom, Iran’s Shia Vatican, a bastion of conservatism intrinsically linked to Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution, there were people there who had the expected anti-Rouhani sentiments.  But there were also some who were pro-Raisi who urged caution. Imam Haidar Abbasi said 'Some reforms were necessary and should be kept. Barjam was not a bad thing and we must not let the Americans trap us into abandoning it.'

Ali Reza, a 22-year-old history student who had waited for Abbasi to finish, wanted to stress that 'just because I live in Qom does not mean I am conservative. Most in our generation understand that Rouhani must be allowed to go on with his reform and need another term. And we really want to be open to the world, we want to meet people of my age in other countries, we want to travel. Please mention this.'

At the other end of the age spectrum, 74-year-old Sabbatallah Bahadouri had made the pilgrimage to Qom a number of times from his home near the Iraqi border. He remembers life in the Shah’s reign. 'We had more money and more freedom in some things, but there were lot of restrictions on religion. Of course those days will never come back,' he reflected. 'I am going to vote and I am going to vote for Rouhani, we need more freedom in Iran, not less.'

Kim Sengupta is defence and diplomatic editor of the Independent