On 28 January at the Frontline Club, a panel chaired by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer discussed the possible start of a new chapter for Iran following the election of Hassan Rouhani as president. Rouhani is not only in favour with the Supreme Leader and political hardliners but also backed by reformists, due to his running mandate “moderation and wisdom”.

Elizabeth Palmer, Shashank Joshi and Kelly Golnoush Niknejad discuss change in Iran

Palmer started by asking the panel if there had been change for the good since the election of Rouhani?

British-Iranian Emmy award-winning foreign affairs journalist, Ramita Navai said:

“He is the man who can change things, he’s a real insider. . . . He really knows how to negotiate the hardliners. . . . He’s also of course in favour with the big man . . . the supreme leader.”

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, hosted by The Guardian said:

“The initial optimism that came with Rouhani’s win is definitely wearing off. When he released a group of prominent political prisoners before his UN trip hope went up that he was going to free [former presidential candidates Mehdi] Karoubi and [Mir Hossein] Mousavi and his wife [from house arrest] and when he didn’t do that . . . they were hoping that would legitimise an election they had taken part of.”

Packed house for tonight's Iran debate as our panel discusses the changes we have seen in the country pic.twitter.com/8JuPBJPuYW

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) January 28, 2014

Shashank Joshi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said that the nuclear deal, which was implemented on 20 January, would be the start of Iran becoming more economically viable internationally, but it is not the end:

“The so called ‘Joint Plan of Action’ . . . it was the biggest breakthrough for 10 years in the nuclear dispute. . . . [But] going from an interim deal to a final deal is very, very hard. . . . The one thing that unites those who hate the deal and those who love the deal is that both have a propensity to see this as the thin end of a wedge to a bigger rapprochement. . . . [Rouhani’s] mandate is to ease reconciliation for economic reasons, economic renewal, it is not a mandate for unconditional friendship with the west.”

@shashj on converging strategic interests btwn the West and #Iran: "Iran never easy to deal with even with mutual interests" @frontlineclub

— Julia Macfarlane (@juliamacfarlane) January 28, 2014

Iran’s success depends on economic success but the west has a dilemma. Former British ambassador to Iran (2002–06) Sir Richard Dalton said:

“The outside world . . . has got a genuine dilemma because the Iranian regime is not one which one would want to see strengthened. One would want to see aspects of the way it treats its own people and the way it behaves in the region weakened, frankly. . . . But at the same time, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and above all ensuring that the Iranian programme will not be misused in future is such a high priority issue that there are certain features that are going together with a solution which include boosting Iran’s growth rate. . . . In justification, an Iran that is prospering is an Iran that is more likely to reform long term.”

How much domestic pressure is there for the government to affect change, Palmer asked. Arron Reza Merat of the Economist Intelligence Unit said:

“Your question presupposes that there is a strong . . . democratic apparatus to press politicians to do anything and in Iran . . . the elite run Iran, the elections though do have some democratic elements in them are really just changing fractions within the original systems.”

An audience member asked whether the reformists have any hope in having an effect on the system. Merat said that there was hope in Rouhani’s relationship with the Supreme Leader and political hardliners:

“The one hope I think that the reformists have is that they’ve got a reformist-backed president who has the support of not only the reformists but the hardliners and this hasn’t happened since [former president Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani’s first term [in 1989]. . . . Ever since then Iran has been utterly polarised . . . nothing happens in Iran unless you have both sides on board.”

Sir Richard Dalton, Arron Reza Merat and Elizabeth Palmer discuss change in Iran

A final question from the audience asked what would be the significance of having Mousavi and Karoubi released? Dalton said:

“From my perspective I can’t imagine the streets of Tehran would be filled with people supporting them the day they came out. People are a lot more practical than that at the moment.”

Navai said:

“It is symbolic. It will signal that Rouhani has the power to change, the power to release them. . . . They are still perceived as a threat . . . it’s a fear apparently that if they do release them that the reformists, however dormant they are, will be strengthened before the parliamentary elections [in 2016] and of course the hardliners are very keen that Rouhani doesn’t gain ground in the parliamentary elections.”

Watch or listen back here:

With just over a week to go until Iranians go to the polls to vote for a new president, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 5 June discussed the question: who will be the next president of Iran and why does it matter?

The chair of the discussion, former assistant editor and foreign editor of The Times Martin Fletcher started off by saying:

“Eight hundred and sixty-eight Iranians, mostly men – a few of them women – applied to run in next week’s election. Eight were selected by the Guardian Council . . . a body of people loyal to the Supreme Leader, and only those deemed ideologically sound were allowed to run. . . . So as an exercise in true democracy, as an expression of popular will, I think it’s clear that next week’s vote is pretty much a charade.”

Saeed Barzin, an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006 added:

“It is not fair in any sense of the word in terms of the access to media, political meetings, coverage of television et cetera. It is not fair.”

Analysing how the votes will be divided in the forthcoming Iranian election @bbcpersian pic.twitter.com/HG4qqjFBvI

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) June 5, 2013

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, said that censorship has been unprecedented:

“Even if they were to take off all the filters there’s really not much going on in terms of campaigning. Posters aren’t there, rallies aren’t there, the headquarters aren’t in the same way that they were in 2009. . . .The regime probably has more faith in the opposition than the opposition has in itself. Even the smallest openings, whether it’s the death of Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri . . . you can see any tiny opening creating a space.”

On whether he thought the election would be a significant one, Barzin said that it would probably not be free or fair and that there would be some cheating but it could still instigate change:

“They could make changes – you don’t have to be democratic country to change; you don’t have to have free elections to change; Iran has lived in the modern period for over a hundred years under dictatorships. . . . It has changed as a society . . . as a political entity . . . as an international element. So these elections are significant in the sense that they could bring change. I feel there is something in the wind.”

Fletcher questioned the panel on who they thought would be the eventual winner? Would it be Saeed Jalili, Iran’s nuclear negotiator?

Golnoush Niknejad said:

“I think he’s the least popular . . . someone said that Jalili is more like a scarecrow; he’s probably brought out to scare people to come to the polls to vote against him.”

Roger Cohen, one of the last journalists to leave Iran after the 2009 elections and op-ed columnist for The New York Times, continued:

“The need to try and get a crowd out is a very important one, [but] I don’t know how they will engineer that . . . I think they have a real problem after 2009.”

Does it really matter who is president? Fletcher asked. To which Roberto Toscano, Italian Ambassador to Iran for five years (2003-2008) replied:

“The difference between national interest and regime interest is glaring. There are certain things that the country has to do, for instance getting economy on a more healthy ground . . . and secondly, international relations. Everybody knows in Iran that in order to become a normal country you have to reach a modus operandi with the United States. Anybody who can deliver that will become unbeatable.”

New insights thanks to the great panelists at the @frontlineclub on #Iran's election tonight

— كريسطوف (@SheikhCJ) June 5, 2013

On whether the Iranian people want change and to be part of the Arab Spring Barzin said:

“The Iranian middle class is afraid of the Arab Spring, they don’t want cars burnt, they don’t want houses being smashed up, they don’t want violence, they’re afraid of it . . . the Iranian middle class want change but it has to make sure that it is not a violent one. It is not prepared to take that risk.”

Cohen continued:

“In few places on the face of the Earth is there a society that is so out of sync with the regime governing it. Iranians are highly educated, sophisticated people. Because there is an extreme dichotomy between the people and their government… and one day it will happen.”

Watch the full event here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/sets/archive-first-wednesday