May 9, 2017

Iran’s incumbent moderate president, Hassan Rouhani — who is seeking a second term — has changed his approach ahead of the May 19 presidential elections. In the past few days, Rouhani has become unprecedentedly straight and clear in his speeches, injecting more hope in his supporters.

Since the beginning of the presidential election campaigns, conservative candidates — namely Ebrahim Raisi, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Mostafa Mirsalim — have been attacking the moderate government of Rouhani, saying he has been unsuccessful in solving people’s problems such as unemployment. And from the beginning, Rouhani unexpectedly didn’t answer many of the criticisms and only tried to explain his plan for the second term, a decision that made his supporters angry. Now he has changed his tactic, responding to every challenge laid forth by his conservative rivals.

On May 7, in a speech in Orumiyeh province in northwest Iran, Rouhani said, “They state that [everyone] must pay their taxes, but no one asks them [if they] have paid [their] taxes where [they] are the manager?"

In recent days, one of the slogans that conservative Raisi has emphasized is to tax the influential and wealthy companies and figures instead of poor people. However, Raisi is the custodian of the holy shrine of the eighth Imam of Shiites and hasn’t paid taxes since he took office in the last year.

Rouhani also slammed conservatives for questioning freedom of expression in his government, saying those who silenced people in recent years and issued media bans on figures are behind these slogans against his administration.