Qalibaf and Jalili Campaigns Blame Each Other for Presidential Election Defeat

Three days after the conclusion of Iran's 14th presidential election, which ended with the victory of reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, the conservative faction known as the "Revolutionary Front" has become divided, with both the campaigns of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Saeed Jalili blaming each other for their electoral failure. Additionally, the emphasis on the "ethnic votes" for Masoud Pezeshkian has become another point of post-election debate among conservatives regarding their defeat. On July 15, Pezeshkian was declared the winner of the presidential election with over 16 million votes, while his conservative rival, Saeed Jalili, garnered over 13 million votes. Qalibaf's campaign issued a statement attributing the conservatives' failure in this election to Jalili, stating that if he had withdrawn before the first round, the "Revolutionary Front" would not have lost and the "end of the era" of Ebrahim Raisi would not have occurred. The statement referenced a meeting involving Qalibaf, Jalili, and "a prominent figure from the Resistance Front," noting that "the concerns of system loyalists for Jalili's withdrawal were due to Qalibaf's high standing in the bipolar polls and the possibility of bipolarization and fear of Jalili by the opponent, which we saw happen." Qalibaf's campaign did not name the "prominent figure from the Resistance Front," but in the days leading up to the first round of elections, Ismail Qaani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was mentioned as a participant in this meeting, which failed to reach a consensus on a single conservative candidate. Qaani's presence at this conservative meeting in Mashhad faced significant criticism regarding why a military commander was interfering in politics. Qalibaf's campaign further stated that "clear reasons" for Jalili's withdrawal from the election were ignored, resulting in the failure of the Revolutionary Front and the end of the era initiated by martyr Raisi. The Islamic Republic refers to Ebrahim Raisi and his entourage, who died in a helicopter crash on May 30 of this year, as "martyrs of service." The arguments from Qalibaf's supporters and his campaign were met with a response from Amir Hossein Sabati, a member of parliament and senior advisor to Saeed Jalili, who stated in a note on his Telegram channel: "Based on the popularity index, Jalili had more votes and naturally should have remained in the race," adding that "after the first round, it became clear that his votes were about three times those of Qalibaf." Sabati criticized Qalibaf, claiming that if he had withdrawn "in favor of Jalili, Jalili could have finished the race in the first round." In the first round of the election, Qalibaf received about three million votes, while his conservative rival managed to secure over nine million votes. Masoud Pezeshkian received over ten million votes in this round and proceeded to the second round alongside Saeed Jalili. In the days leading up to the second round, many government institutions and media outlets were accused by Pezeshkian's campaign of intervening in favor of Jalili, and this campaign called on oversight bodies, especially the Guardian Council and the judiciary, to investigate the matter. No report regarding this complaint has yet been published, and the Guardian Council has confirmed the validity of the results of both rounds of the election. Amir Hossein Sabati, Jalili's advisor, also highlighted what he termed the "ethnic votes" for Masoud Pezeshkian, stating: "Both sides have almost equally won the provinces (in 16 provinces Pezeshkian received the highest votes and in 15 provinces Jalili), but due to the strong ethnic votes in four provinces—Ardabil, East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan—Pezeshkian was able to become president with less than a three million vote margin." According to him, the vote difference between Pezeshkian and Jalili in these four provinces was "two million and 956 thousand votes, and the total vote difference across all 31 provinces was about two million and 850 thousand votes!" Jalili's advisor concluded that "the main and decisive advantage for Pezeshkian in this election was not his discourse or political approach or even some of the political and cultural bipolarities, but rather his ethnic votes in four provinces." This argument, raised by many Jalili supporters on social media and even some abroad, has faced criticism from another group of conservatives, including Alireza Zakani, a candidate in the same election, who withdrew from the race alongside Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi before the first round. Zakani stated in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that "ethnic interpretations of the votes of the nation's elected representatives undermine religious democracy and disrespect the judgment and authority of the wise and insightful Iranian society." Yasser Jabraili, former head of the Strategic Evaluation and Monitoring Center of the Expediency Discernment Council, who supported Saeed Jalili in this election, also deemed the "ethnic analysis" of the election results as "mistaken and unrealistic." He expressed concern that this analysis "could activate the fault lines that were likely to become active during the elections in the post-election period. Dr. Pezeshkian has become president with 16.3 million votes, not 2.7 million!" Some conservatives have also directed their criticism at the Guardian Council, claiming that by endorsing Masoud Pezeshkian, the election was "engineered" in favor of the reformists. Mohammad Manan Raisi, a representative from Qom in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, noted in a statement referring to the members of the Guardian Council: "It is unfair that they sit comfortably and without foresight at a desk under an air conditioner for five or six days and, without the necessary analysis, deliver a combination to us in a non-transparent process that cannot be corrected even with the continuous efforts of revolutionary youth and clerics under forty to fifty-degree heat." He added: "Honestly, if the election were to be engineered (even if inadvertently) in favor of reformist friends, could the arrangement of candidates have been announced better than this?!" Elections in Iran are conducted far from global standards, and the Guardian Council, whose members are appointed directly and indirectly by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, only approves a limited number of candidates. This council, whose secretary is the 97-year-old Ahmad Jannati, has disqualified many candidates over various periods, including high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic.