A week ago, Iran had a parliamentary election. On Sunday night (U.S time) Israel will have its third parliamentary election in less than a year. Both stories didn’t make big headlines in the US, and understandably so.
Iran: Iran’s parliamentary election resulted in the conservatives strengthening and the reformists faltering. Following the US’s reinstalling sanctions and the assassination of General Suleimani, the reformist approach to foreign relations was seen in having gotten Iran nothing but humiliation and economic hardship. The Guardian Council, perhaps feeling emboldened, disqualified nearly half the candidates for the parliament, including 90 sitting members. Voting turnout was 42%, the lowest since the 1979 revolution, and a miserable 25% in Tehran, the populous reformist heart of the country. In a way, the election results were unsurprising. It remains to be seen if the shift to the right will continue through the presidential election next year.
Israel: Third verse, just like the second, and just like the first. Israel’s parliamentary elections of April and September both failed to achieve a governing coalition. The latest polls predict little movement, and another period of failed coalition negotiations, followed by a fourth election, is a favored possibility. In the meantime Netanyahu’s Likud coalition continues as a caretaker government. There have been some realignments on the right and the left, but the blocks seem the same. This time, Netanyahu has failed in all of his previous maneuvers to avoid trial on counts of bribery and other corruption, in three different cases. The trial is scheduled to open in two weeks. It doesn’t matter at all to the people who vote for him, but it might make some of his potential coalition partners a little squeamish. They’ll probably get used to it, though.
For both countries, what could be significant elections might end up an exercise in more of the same. With the ongoing Democratic primaries and Coronavirus dominating the news (and the latter dominating Iran news), I cannot fault the media for not front-paging either of these stories.