Why Ahmadinejad Just Might Lose

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Why Ahmadinejad Just Might Lose

by Telmah Parsa

Iranian university student Telmah Parsa on the divergent groups—Iran’s young hipsters versus their deeply religious parents—that could sway Friday’s presidential election, and why the country’s semi-democratic process is still much richer than the Middle East’s other faux elections.


“I’ve never voted. Heck, the election page in my ID paper is still blank,” observed my friend Cyrus last week in the cafeteria. “But this time it’s different. I do not want that dickhead to be our president again.”

When I’m talking to Cyrus, it’s hard not to get distracted by his Playboy necklace. The white bunny has gotten him into trouble several times with the police, but he keeps it prominently displayed nonetheless. The necklace clearly marks Cyrus as one of Iran’s young hipsters, part of an under-30 generation that comprises nearly three-quarters of the population.

“Why not Ahmadinejad?” I ask.

“Because he’s one crazy son of a bitch,” Cyrus says.

The really agonizing choice before young Iranians is not selecting a presidential candidate. Rather, it’s determining how much to be invested in this faux election.

Cyrus rarely talks about anything but girls, so it was surprising to hear him sound off so passionately about politics, in his own colorful way. He’s going to the polls on Friday to prevent the recurrence of what he calls a “four-year-long nightmare.” He doesn’t care who wins the race, as long as the new president is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Politically conservative and devoutly religious, my parents are the antithesis to Cyrus in every way. Their main source of information is state-run TV, whose head is directly chosen by the supreme leader every five years. Not surprisingly, my parents have a great respect for Ayatollah Khamenei.

“I’ll vote for whomever the supreme leader approves,” my mother recently declared during dinner. She meant of course Ahmadinejad, whom few doubt is Khamenei’s favorite son. A campaign ad for Ahmadinejad even features a direct quote from the supreme leader: “With Ahmadinejad the revolution returned to its original track.”

As for my father, well, he has no interest in reform. During the 1999 student uprising, when masses of young people mobilized on university campuses to protest repression, my father knew whom to blame for the unrest.

While the TV showed the supreme leader declare, in a shaking voice, that he would pardon those students lighting his picture on fire (prompting sobs from the mosque’s audience), my father telephoned the office of then President Khatami to deliver an angry message: “God damn you reformers for bringing this on us. God damn you!”

By voting for Ahmadinejad, my father hopes to prevent the recurrence of those tumultuous times, “when anti-revolutionaries roamed the country and values were being eroded every day by the reformers.”

My parents and Cyrus form the ends of two divergent vectors—whose outcome will determine whether Ahmadinejad enjoys the spotlight for another four years.

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