Bahonar to Sleep on Presidential Chances for 2021

The twelfth chapter of presidential elections in Iran has been opened for a while. The new episode will reach its climax on May 19, 2017 and in the end, one man will come out as the winner. Will the presidential palace in Pasteur welcome Hassan Rouhani once again or will someone else seal in his own name the eighth presidential term?

Although past episodes tell us that the precedent in Iran is based on reelection and Rouhani could already be viewed as the winner in 2017, this is not a certainty, enough to stop other men of politics from stepping in. Even though no one has officially raised the flag of candidacy, the span of speculations is wide that it embraces the diplomat sheikh’s past competitors Ghalibaf, Jalili and Rezaei as well as men the likes of Tavakoli, Aref, Zarif, Zangeneh, General Soleimani, Ahmadinejad and Larijani.

The reformists are apparently to back Hassan Rouhani in any event. Even though Aref is sporadically put forward, the giant names among the leftists believe it is either Rouhani or no one.

Gestures and moves made by the principlists indicate that they have no finalized candidate. They have however spoken of a phenomenon; it is not yet clear whom the principlist phenomenon, not found among their “burn agents”, will be.

One name is making the rounds through word of mouth; one dearly missed in the recent parliamentary election and some are speculating that the February absence is rooted in a May comeback: Mohammadreza Bahonar.

A suicidal move to quit parliamentary politics

Kissing the Majlis chair goodbye all of a sudden is the suicidal operation in the capacity of a man like Mohammadreza Bahonar, a sixty-four-year-old principlist whose 28 years of membership in the parliament had made him a powerful man of lobby. For several terms in a row, the path to the chairmanship had to pass by him, either when it was Haddad Adel who took the chair with Bahonar’s help and lobby or when Larijani set foot in Baharestan and the Kerman-born parliamentarian became Larijani’s right hand for in-house developments.

In spite of the fact that he has been a top parliamentarian throughout these years, he had started engaging in trans-parliamentary politics since he became the director general of the Iranian Society of Consulting Engineers. He is now the main man of Front of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader, sitting on a chair that belonged to Asadollah Asgaroladi for many years. Perhaps it is the chair that made the ‘engineer of the parliament’ pursue politics away from Baharestan and its political department for a while.

Bahonar’s behavior in leaving Baharestan however was much of a surprise. Few would imagine his intention of leaving Majlis would be realized in this election. Without a premonition, he said farewell to the Majlis in silence to exemplify what he had said days before the enrollments: “A champion should kiss the mat goodbye before losing his gold medal”.

It seems as though Bahonar will be pursuing his other ambitions in the world of politics in the seventh decade of his life; ambitions including the establishment of several parties within the Islamic Republic’s political system where partisanism and partisan faith is institutionalized.

In the meantime, some speak of the Kermani politician’s resolution to shift from Baharestan toward Pasteur – a decision he experimented with in the 2013 presidential race but abandoned midway. Now, after his resignation from the parliament, his name is once again heard in rumors about potential presidential candidates.

When the young Bahonar turns into an operational politician

He climbed up the ladder of politics under the shadow of his brother, as he has admitted several times without hesitation to say that it was through his martyred brother that he became involved in political relations. After the assassination and martyrdom of the then Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonr, a founding member of the Islamic Republic Party, the younger brother nominated himself for the party’s central committee upon insistence by Ayatollahs Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani to keep alive the name of his martyr brother in the realm of politics.

Bahonar quickly appeared as a smart politician and came out of his brother’s shadow. The company of giants such as Ayatollah Khamenei, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Nategh Noori, Hassan Rouhani, Asadollah Asgaroladi and others turned him into an operational agent in the political scene. Whereas he never found a place higher than deputy speakership in the parliament during all his years in Majlis, everyone knows he was the leader backstage in many of the parliamentary terms. As he once admitted, his ballots for Speakership were better than Haddad Adel but discretion called for the Speakership of Haddad and Bahonar considers this as his political self-sacrifice.

His smartness forged him as a man of Majlis lobbies as he was able to go around the chairs and shift the atmosphere in favor of a decision when Majlis needed his power of lobbying.

It seems that in the seventh decade of his life, Bahonar is not willing to remain a man of parliament anymore. The death of Asgaroladi motivated him more than ever to distance from the parliament and become involved in partisan developments within the principlist camp. He has tried hard to keep the Front of Followers at the center of the principlist camp but the problem of neo-principlists and the rightist radicals has plagued him as well.

These days however, Bahonar’s name has transcended such affairs but is heard as a potential presidential candidate. Despite the fact that he has repeatedly denied this, sporadic remarks made by the principlists indicate that Bahonar could be the very candidate the camp is to introduce into the race.

Bahonar is probably smarter than to involve himself in the elections without due preparation. He knows too well that the tradition of reelections in Iran and Rouhani’s approach in the past three years gives the sitting president high chances in the upcoming election.

Bahonar’s candidacy in a situation like this will make him appear as a burn agent, terminating his chances for the future. This perhaps makes him a potential nominee not for the moment but for the solar calendar year 1400 (2021-2022). In the interval, he may be able to realize his wish of establishing several parties on the one hand and bringing all the principlists around the same table on the other hand, in order to pave his way to the presidency.