IT’S that time again when Iranians face an all too familiar dilemma. As the country goes to the polls this month in perhaps one of the most significant presidential elections in years, the choice for most voters is pretty stark.

Go ahead and vote and by doing so implicitly legitimise an undemocratic state or shun the ballot and expose the election for the sham that it is.

This will be Iran’s 13th presidential election since 1980, and while many of us here in the West will probably give it little notice, it would be wrong to underestimate the importance of this vote. In fact, it would be foolish to underestimate the significance of Iran as an international player such is the substantial influence it wields in parts of the Middle East far beyond its borders.

Iran’s hand can be felt in places as wide ranging as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. And its continued efforts to develop nuclear weapons frequently has Israel on its toes and intervening on a covert level.

Important as the June 18 ballot is for ordinary Iranians its outcome then matters enormously on a variety of regional and international levels. It’s important also to remember that today’s Iran is a very different place since its last presidential election in 2017.

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Over the past few years, it has reeled from anti-government protests which were brutally suppressed. It’s a nation also that finds itself in a deep economic crisis with the inflation rate running at 50% and only worsened by the international sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme.

Ever since former US President Donald Trump ditched the nuclear accord three years ago and reimposed sanctions on Iran, Tehran has been rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, enriching it to higher levels of fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up production.

While talks continue in Vienna in the hope of reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with world powers, their outcome will almost certainly be determined by whoever becomes Iran’s next president.

And on that very point the consensus among Iran watchers is that a “conservative” or hardliner will most likely win in keeping with the wishes of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

To say that many younger activists for reform in Iran are disillusioned with the current political set up would be an understatement to say the least. Hopelessness would perhaps be a more accurate description of their current mood, only underlined by the fact that the country’s powerful unelected 12-member constitutional vetting body the Guardian Council over seen by Mr Khamenei, have just disqualified all other presidential hopefuls bar seven.

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“Reformists are deprived of an active participation in the election,” Azar Mansouri, a spokesperson for the Iran Reformists Front, was cited as saying in the wake of the decision

“What the Guardian Council did... is in violation of people’s rights to vote in free elections... and has made elections meaningless,” she added.

Such is the level of concern over the moves that even some members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), known for their strong hostility to any political dissent, described the election as anti-democratic.

These who did receive a green light from the Guardian Council are almost all Mr Khamenei’s men. Among them is incumbent judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, the man many regard as by far the top candidate.

The 60-year-old Mr Raisi, who has a long history of involvement in human rights abuses and was allegedly one of the main perpetrators of Iran’s mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s, is a fairly new face to the public, but he undoubtedly owes his rise to prominence by having the backing of powerful allies.

Such is the alarm over hardliners like Mr Raisi taking charge, that unconfirmed reports last week suggested that outgoing moderate President Hassan Rouhani sent a letter to the supreme leader asking him to allow reformist and moderate candidates to be qualified in order to level the playing field.

President Rouhani’s appeals appear to have fallen on deaf ears, setting the scene for a victory for the ultraconservative cleric Mr Raisi who is also frequently mentioned as a possible successor to Mr Khamenei.

Many observers say that the Supreme Leader’s main priority above all else is “regime preservation,” and the election of Mr Raisi would ensure that process was consolidated much to the disappointment of those who have set their sights on reform.

There is of course a certain irony in that it was former US President Trump’s decision to pull out of the nuclear accord and impose swingeing sanctions that effectively started the demise of reformer hopes and emboldened hardliners, who saw Mr Trump’s move as proof that Iran could never trust western powers.

Now, such is the stage-managed nature of the election after the Guardian Council’s endorsement of the seven candidates, that many reformers feel the only course of action they can take is to boycott the elections.

With dissatisfaction among the electorate now at its peak, some within the reformist ranks feel a low voter turn-out would deal a substantial blow to Iran’s hardline rulers who still need a high turnout to prove the legitimacy of the political system.

If recent polls by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (Ispa), which is close to the government, are anything to go by then turnout could be one of the lowest in the Islamic Republic’s history.

The latest figures show a 7% drop in expected turnout to just 36% since the list of candidates was announced by the Guardian Council, while the hashtag "No Way I Vote" is now trending on Persian social media.

And so, the scene appears set for a future hardline government most likely under the presidency of Mr Raisi and with virtually no centrist or reformist opposition. That being the case it’s pretty much a given that what we will see is a more assertive Iran in the months and years ahead. An Iran that will doubtless extend its already pernicious influence across the region adding perhaps to even more instability in the Middle East.

It will be an Iran too ruled by those who regard talks with the US and West as almost pointless. It’s a gloomy prospect for those ordinary Iranians so desperate for change and a chance to reengage with the world. As for those embattled reformers June 18 will mark a moment of reckoning from which they will find it hard to recover.

David Pratt is Contributing Foreign Editor The Herald. Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.