The Only Bright Window of Hope: Why I Am Voting for Rouhani

Note: The following text is a response I gave to the question posed by the magazine Andisheh-ye Pouya as to why I am voting for Rouhani. This piece was published in issue 42 of the magazine.

"Why am I voting for Rouhani?" The answer to this question might have been difficult if Rouhani's rivals were different people, or if the country's circumstances were otherwise. A vote for Rouhani is a vote for regulatory normalization aimed at ending the process of "division by two minus one" among the country's political forces. This process means dividing the country's political society into two parts and then eliminating one of the two. A process that must one day be stopped.

Let me explain this point a little further by referring to the political typology of the country.

In my view, the country's myriad political currents, large and small, can be summarized into two major currents: exceptionalism and normalization.

Exceptionalism is a three-pronged current and has three different meanings in the three domains of (1) state-building, (2) politics and international relations, and (3) political forces, as briefly outlined below.

(1) In state-building, exceptionalism sees itself as responsible for resolving the crisis of hegemony within the hard core of the main ruling bloc, and furthermore, considers the people, their quest for participation, and the claimant and critical elites as nuisances to the establishment of its all-encompassing hegemony.

(2) Exceptionalism at the level of politics and international relations is, in brief, the combination of three beliefs about the unique characteristics of a national unit: a. The history and formation process of this national unit has made it different and distinct from all other national units. b. This national unit has a historical mission to spread and establish specific values throughout the world. c. Characteristics a and b together have bestowed upon that country a superior status, standing, and dignity, based on which a state can consider itself exempt from the general historical laws governing national units and their nature and destiny, as well as exempt from the rules of international law. It can define its relations and dealings with other national units not on an equal footing with them and place itself on a horizon superior to ordinary global relations.

(3) In political sociology, exceptionalism describes certain political forces within the social sphere of the state and the hard structure of power. Exceptionalist forces, firstly, consider the rules of the political game not as the framework for their political activity, but only respect, validate, and deem them necessary to observe insofar as they guarantee their victory in competition with other political currents. The goal is victory, whether through adherence to the law or through the use of extra-legal tools. Secondly, they consider the definition and provision of national interests as a function of pursuing global and historical goals and missions, and if national interests and expert plans for securing national interests conflict with the pursuit of historical and global programs and missions, they give priority to the latter, not the former. And thirdly, in political recruitment and membership, they impose exclusionary and monopolistic criteria, such that the unquestioning, uncritical loyalty and subservience of members is guaranteed.

Normalization is also a three-faceted current: (1) forward-looking conservatism, (2) backward-looking conservatism, and (3) regulatory conservatism.

(1) Forward-looking conservatism seeks to normalize the existing conditions by changing the current value-based, legal, and juridical criteria according to which the existing conditions are abnormal. This normalization program is a type of forward-looking conservative program that adapts the evaluation criteria to the existing conditions in such a way that the existing conditions, although abnormal by the founding and initial criteria, henceforth become the new normal system.

(2) Backward-looking conservatism pursues the normalization of existing conditions by changing the status quo and realigning it with the original founding criteria. Many reformists and principlists pursue various parts of these two normalizing projects, although they disagree with each other on the interpretation of the founding values and the analysis of the status quo.

(3) Regulatory normalizers in domestic and foreign policy seek to dispel the securitized atmosphere and achieve peace of mind and freedom from existential anxiety at the level of national governance. Regulatory normalizers see their most important task as restoring normal conditions to governance, what is termed Desecuritisation.

If we liken the first and second types of normalization to blue and red clubs, each seeking victory over its rival, regulatory normalization seeks to establish or revive the football federation, especially when one of the two teams, blue or red, or both, have placed the elimination of the opponent outside the stadium on their agenda.

Regulatory normalizers proceed on the simple principle that political football is impossible with only one team. Purple, in this sense, is the color of regulatory normalizers, as it is a combination of blue and red; while it works with both the red team and the blue team, it is itself neither blue nor red in essence, content, or ideology.

Normalization in the regulatory sense draws its vital energy and force of action from establishing an alternating and continuous current between the other two poles, namely retrospective normalization and prospective normalization, and whenever it merges with one of them or fails to maintain a balance between them, it dissolves. Regulatory normalization is accepted by both sides of the rivalry between normalizers of the first and second types in crisis conditions when the fear of annihilation becomes pervasive, but exceptionalists, even when the national unit faces existential threats from within and without, equate the empowerment of normalization with their own death.

The Rouhani government is a normalizing government in the third sense, a regulatory government that both delivered the Islamic Republic's governance from the fear of annihilation and existential threats through the de-escalation of the JCPOA, and provided the grounds for the return of competition and cooperation between normalizers of the first and second types, and, of course, stood in opposition to the exceptionalists. Both the first and second types of normalizers and the exceptionalists have a clear track record of dividing by two and subtracting one from political forces. But regulatory normalization both stands against the exceptionalists and, by establishing an alternating and continuous current of cooperation and competition between normalizers of the first and second types, stands against the 'subtracting one' from political forces that are inevitably always 'divided by two'.

About four years ago, one item from the eight-year miracle of the third millennium's miracle for the Iranian people was an inflation rate equal to that day's inflation in Venezuela. Another item from that millennium miracle was the convergence of Iran's inflation growth rate with the accelerating slope of inflation in Venezuela. Today, less than four years into Rouhani's presidency, the magnitude and momentum of inflation in Iran have been curbed and are close to becoming single-digit, yet for a year now, the people of Venezuela have been trapped in the straits of rampant inflation that has now skyrocketed, and no way out is open to them. The inflation situation in Iran could have been like the inflation situation in Venezuela if the normalizing Rouhani government had not been formed in the year 1392.

About four years ago, in addition to suffocating and crippling economic sanctions, Iran faced an existential threat. Successive Security Council resolutions had pushed Iran onto the steep and slippery slope of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, a situation from which no nation or country had ever emerged without sliding into the abyss of a devastating, foundational war and enduring famine and widespread deaths from medicine shortages and nationwide cuts to electricity and drinking water. All this was the result of eight years of demagogic 'global management' that had given a legal and legitimate standing in the international system to a global consensus against Iran, thus making Iran a suitable target for deep-destabilizing intervention, and had provided enemies with so many cheap and easy pretexts that they could make enmity toward Iran global, universal, and consensual, and portray it as a legal, humanitarian, and preventive approach. Two years after the establishment of the Rouhani government, Iran exited the state of existential threat, and Iran's existence and territorial integrity were freed from the anxiety of annihilation. Our situation today could easily have been the situation of any of the region's wrecked countries, from Libya to Syria, from Iraq to Afghanistan, if the normalizing and regulatory Rouhani government had not been formed in the year 1392.

Now, although Iran has been delivered from external threats and the abyss of inflation, six super-crises, as Dr. Nili calls them, still stalk dragon-like beneath the feet of our people and our unified national sovereignty. Solving these super-crises is beyond the managerial capacity of either of the dual forces of Type 1 or Type 2 normalization. The exceptionalists, as they demonstrated between 2005 and 2013, are not only incapable of understanding and resolving these crises, but are themselves part of the problem. One must look at Rouhani's main rivals and see that one is the principal representative of the exceptionalists, and the other is their self-appointed representative. Rouhani's minor rivals are each a weak representative of Type 1 or Type 2 normalization. That leaves Rouhani's first vice president, whom Rouhani himself fully represents. But beyond this, Rouhani is the symbol of the mainstream of regulatory normalization.

Now, in my view, voting for Rouhani signifies the sole possibility of keeping open the only bright window of hope on the dark horizon of accumulated and compounded super-crises—crises for which no other political force or current, apart from the regulatory normalization of Rouhani and his colleagues, possesses either the capacity or the idea to resolve.

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The Only Bright Window of Hope: Why I Am Voting for Rouhani

Author: Mohammad Mehdi Mojahedi

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