A new generation of Iranian leaders is emerging that is ideologically far more hardline

Iranian Elections and the Future of the Regime

A new generation of Iranian leaders is emerging that is ideologically far more hardline than what the country has produced since the founding of the Islamic Republic 45 years ago. Their rise is the result of the regime seeking to preserve itself in the face of a public increasingly disillusioned with an order long dominated by theocrats. The unprecedented scale of engineering in the country’s 2024 elections underscores an intensifying internal power struggle ahead of the succession of a new supreme leader.

Electoral engineering designed to give Iranian conservatives the upper hand dates back to the 2004 parliamentary elections. Ahead of that vote, the Guardian Council, a 12-member clerical body with the power to vet candidates for public office, announced the mass disqualification of reformists, a rising force since the 1990s. But rather than end the political infighting, the elimination of the reformists actually worsened it over the next 20 years, as competing conservative factions began to spar.