The Guardian Council sacrificed the elected state’s legitimacy to bring a hardline conservative to power. Raisi was not handed a popular mandate as Rouhani had been, and thus his primary focus would be satisfying the desires of the Supreme Leader rather than the public at large.

The Supreme Leader turned his sights on preserving the radical ideological origins of the revolution along with his legacy. On the anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding, in February 2019, Khamenei laid out his vision in a manifesto titled the “Second Phase of the Revolution,” focusing on the economy in the context of U.S. sanctions rather than cultural issues.

The 2017 Iranian presidential elections followed shortly before the U.S. election. During his reelection campaign, Rouhani sought to retain the moderate and reformist vote that he had received four years earlier. So he advocated for fewer restrictions on political and social life.

Khamenei long opposed negotiating with Western powers, but he allowed Rouhani to pursue his foreign policy proposal of warmer ties with the West, partly because international sanctions against his regime had ravaged the country’s economy. Khamenei hedged and warned against trusting the United States, while at the same time lending tacit approval to the effort.

Ironically, while Khamenei and the IRGC executed the 2009 electoral coup to retain their preferred candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he would fall out of Khamenei’s favor during his second term. While deferential, Ahmadinejad cherished his nominal independence from Khamenei, as his political brand was that of a populist representative of the people.

Immediately after the results were announced, peaceful demonstrations began and quickly grew in size, initially overwhelming and paralyzing the regime’s security forces. In the early going, riot police provided the first line of security, beating back advancing demonstrators with tear gas and brute force. As images of violence spread, the protests grew and soon were the largest Iran had witnessed since the Islamic Revolution, dwarfing the 1999 student protests that were their direct antecedent.

Although he harbored misgivings that he would again be stymied from governance by Khamenei and the IRGC were he to win office, in February 2009, former President Khatami announced his intention to seek the presidency. Based on name recognition and nostalgia, Khatami seemed like the most viable candidate to win an election against Ahmadinejad, whose iconoclasm and economic shortcomings had dampened enthusiasm among many less extreme conservative Iranians.