As a result, there are likely to be competing tickets running for the Majlis from the right.
The conservatives, who call themselves principleists, have been trying for months to come up with one united party structure that will field one united ticket to oppose the ticket that President Ahmadi-nejad is expected to field.
From the left, few reformists are even thinking about a reformist ticket. There is near unanimity on boycotting the balloting. The dissenting voices are generally from the 40-odd reformists who won election four years ago and want to run for re-election. They are expected to run as individual and independent candidates.
The fear on the right is that if the principleists split into multiple factional tickets, that may open the door for Ahmadi-nejad’s ticket to barrel to victory.
Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign minister in the 1980s and the foreign policy adviser to the Supreme Leader in recent decades, said his hopes for a unified principleist ticket are dimming.
Velayati has been actively trying to form a united ticket for months. He said his efforts and the efforts of others along the same line have been hampered by those principleists who have stood aloof from the unity effort.
At this point, those who have opposed the unity effort have coalesced around what is called the Islamic Revolution Resistance Front (IRRF).
At the moment, it looks like the trend is toward two principleist tickets. But many analysts expect that the unity committee itself will break apart if the IRRF continues to refuse to join. And, at that point, the IRRF could break apart.
Fusion tickers have rarely worked in Iran where the drive to unity is very weak and the individualist stand is very strong. The unity effort appears to be failing very early this year. Generally, unity efforts are strong at first and collapse when the leadership has to anoint one candidate in each constituency. At that point, unannointed wannabes commonly see no benefit to unity and go their own way.
But if Velayati sees a lack of unity now, four months before the elections and before the candidate list-crafting begins, then the prospects for principleist unity appear dim.
The reformists may have a much better chance of forming a united ticket for the simple reason that so many reformists are boycotting the vote that those seeking to field a ticket may actually have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find viable candidates.
There are just 17 weeks left to the election.