Re-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivers a televised speech in Tehran, capital of Iran on May 20, 2017. Picture by Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images. All rights reserved.There is an old debate in Iranian politics, about who is controlling who – is the government controlling the people or are the people controlling the government? Following the presidential elections in Iran on May 19th, there have been various analyses and articles, aiming to show the significance of the elections and Rouhani’s win. What such analyses often tend to overlook, however, is the different attitudes Iranian people take towards the election and the results. Even among those who voted for Rouhani, there is disagreement about how hopeful and content one should be with the win, as well as about what lies ahead.
Attempting to fill this gap in the analyses, we offer two different personal views on the elections, one more hopeful and one more pessimistic. We both supported Rouhani in the elections (one more reluctantly than the other), but we have different outlooks on what this win means and what lies ahead for Iran.
Moujan
I witnessed a snowball forming in the run-up to the presidential elections in Iran. As someone who has been outside of Iran for years, I only have access to the behaviors of people online, on social media. In the weeks before the elections, I could sense a feeling of hope coming to the foreground, in the way friends and family were speaking about the election: ‘this is our chance’ they would say. These feelings grew more and more as the election day got closer.
