Mohsen Rezai, who ran four years ago but came in fourth and last with just 1.7 percent of the vote, said he would be a candidate in the balloting to be held next May or June.
“My participation in the upcoming presidential election is certain. I’m in it to win,” Rezai said.
Rezai was the commander of the Pasdaran for 16 years, including all but the first months of the Iran-Iraq war. Upon retiring in 1997, he became the secretary of the Expediency Council under Chairman Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. Rezai continues to hold that post.
In 1998, he was embarrassed when his son defected to the United States. The youth stayed in the United States for eight years, taking American citizenship, but then quietly returned to the family fold in 2006. Later, he moved to the UAE. Last November, he was found dead in Dubai. The coroner ruled he had taken an overdose of an anti-depressant drug used to treat schizophrenia.
The father never criticized his son publicly and, in fact, even blamed himself for his son’s troubles, saying he had been a neglectful father during the war years, paying little attention to the boy.
After the 2009 election, Rezai took a middle position between those who said it was a fraud and those who backed the results. He said he had observers at 1,000 polling stations who had given him the results from those locations. He said he would support the election outcome if the government would release the results for all of the 40,000-plus polling stations, so he could check the accuracy of the published totals. The government said it would do so. It never did.
No government, even under Mohammad Khatami, has released the individual ballot box vote figures. Ballots are usually counted locally and the accuracy of the published totals, released only at the level of the 366 counties, could be checked if the ballot box components of those county totals were ever published.
It isn’t yet known on what issues Rezai will try to campaign next year. But last month he said Iran is not advancing very rapidly and the public is growing more dissatisfied with every passing day.
Rezai said, “The fact is that a sense of social and economic dissatisfaction is rapidly growing among the people.”
The Islamic Labor News Agency quoted him as saying, “While the Iranian people have managed to overcome such obstacles as tyranny, invasion and war, we have not been able to make a leap beyond those obstacles.”
Rezai argued that the Islamic Republic should loosen the very centralized controls it has applied to the economy ever since Reza Shah launched his modernization program in the 1920s. Calling it “economic federalism,” Rezai said Iran will make an economic leap forward if it allows the provinces to act more independently when it comes to economic development.
He said, “Some are still wary of valuing the various ethnicities and fear giving executive power to the provinces and cities. But before Reza Shah, our country was managed federally, so Iranians already have such an experience.”