Hooshang Amirahmadi is not your typical candidate for the Iranian presidency. A tenured professor of public policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a decidedly snazzy dresser, Amirahmadi is literally worlds away from the man he hopes to succeed: the virulently anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the fact that he hasn't lived in Iran for nearly 40 years -- and that most experts think he has no chance of getting approval from Iran's Guardian Council to even stand in the election -- does not appear to have killed any buzz from his four-month-long campaign.
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So far, seven other candidates have announced their bids for Iran's presidential election, scheduled for June 14, but many of the political heavyweights -- including Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, lawmaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, and Ali Akbar Velayati, a top foreign-policy advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- have yet to throw their hats in the ring. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, is rumored to be fighting an uphill battle to position his former chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, to succeed him. Regardless of the outcome, Iran's next president will inherit a souring standoff with the United States over the Iranian nuclear program, as well as a strained economy. Amirahmadi, however, claims he can take care of all that.
The professor plans to travel to Iran the first week of April, then officially register as a candidate in May, and wait for approval from the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics that oversees elections in Iran. Contrary to a recent report from Fox News, the Guardian Council has not yet approved Amirahmadi's candidacy. ("Thanks for the support, Fox News," he told me, "but they never get anything right.")
When I sat down with Amirahmadi in a Manhattan hotel lounge in February, he was sporting a light-gray suit, red tie, and white pocket square. He had just finished scolding a reporter from Le Monde who had indelicately implied that he had no chance of winning. "Why are you even interviewing me right now if you've already decided I have no chance?" Amirahmadi retorted. "I mean honestly, why?"
Amirahmadi left Iran in the 1970s after refusing an order to join the Shah of Iran's party. He then earned a Ph.D. in planning and international development at Cornell University and began a career working to improve U.S.-Iran relations. He has published 20 books and scores of articles on Iranian politics and economics. In 1997, he founded the American Iranian Council, a bipartisan think tank focused on bettering relations between the two countries. He has traveled to Iran dozens of times over the years and likes to think of himself as a shuttle diplomat, regularly participating in development projects and political conferences in the Islamic Republic.
It wasn't until the spring of 2005 that Amirahmadi made a big political move, registering as a presidential candidate within only a few weeks of the election. He failed to get the Guardian Council's approval because he registered late, according to his version of events. (Most analysts suggested he would have been barred no matter what.) He did not run in 2009, but decided to contest this year's election in part because of what he sees as favorable social and economic trends for his candidacy.
"For one thing, I think that Iran of today is very different from Iran of 2005 or 2009. U.S.-Iran relations have never been this bad. Sanctions on oil, sanctions on banks, sanctions on all kinds of other stuff," he explained. "I think that some of the most key problematic trends are coming together -- on the U.S.-Iran front, on the economy, on factions."
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