The winner of Iran’s Friday runoff election will be described in news headlines as either a benevolent “reformist” or a heartless “hardiner.” In reality, Masoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili merely compete to become the Supreme Leader’s yes-man. 

Such was the conclusion of more than 60 percent of Iranians who declined to participate in last week’s first presidential election round. According to an official tally, a record low of only 39.9 percent of the 61.45 million eligible voters bothered to participate in Iran’s faux-democratic process. 

Last week’s poorest election turnout since the 1979 Iranian revolution was “lower than expected,” Supreme Leader Khamenei acknowledged Wednesday, according to the state-run Tasnim news agency. “We hope that people’s turnout for the second round will be important and a source of pride for the Islamic Republic.”

Only four regime-approved candidates competed in last week’s round, vying to replace the late president, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19. None of the four men were able to secure the necessary 50 percent to avoid a runoff.

Widely described as a “reformist,” the mild-mannered Mr. Pezeshkian is a heart surgeon by trade, who is backed by politicians favored by Western supporters of the Islamic Republic, such as the former foreign minister, Javad Zarif.  Mr. Pezeshkian led last week’s contest, as the three men he competed with split the “hardliner” votes.

Mr. Jalili, a veteran diplomat who came second last week, is widely described as the hardest of these hardliners. He opposed the nuclear talks with America that Mr. Zarif negotiated with President Obama’s team. President Biden struggled to revive nuclear diplomacy throughout his term in office. Now commentators hope that a Pezeshkian victory would renew the talks. 

Friday’s runoff election “has the potential to put Iran back on course to engage with the west,” The British Guardian reports from Tehran. Nevertheless it adds that “members of the young middle class sitting in Tehran’s Cafe Elie compete to express their disdain for the political process.”

Those youngsters might know what some Westerners seem to ignore. Between Messrs. Pezeshkian and Jalili there is “a distinction without a difference,” the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun. “There are differences in style, in tone, in some views, but I don’t believe these have an effect on strategic decisions, which are made by the Supreme Leader.”

Mr. Khamenei and the men around him are charged with directing strategy on relations with America, on Mideast wars, and, most consequentially, on the breakout timing of turning the Islamic Republic into a nuclear-armed power.

Yet, what about domestic issues that the Cafe Elie crowds are mostly interested in? “Women today don’t want someone else to decide their marriage, education, career, clothing, and lifestyle,” Mr. Pezeshkian said in a debate this week, attempting to scare young voters from voting for the highly ideological Mr. Jalili. 

If Mr. Pezeshkian wins the presidency, however, he would have little influence on, say, mandates that force women to keep their hair covered. The Supreme Leader, rather than the president, controls the various bodies charged with enforcing the social, ideological, and religious edicts that have ruled the Islamic Republic since 1979 and became ever-harsher under Mr. Khamanei.    

“So-called ‘reformists’ have proven to neither have the will nor capability to push for any meaningful reform when they or their coalition partners have been at the helm,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, tells the Sun.

UANI has recently issued a report on Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’s election manipulations designed to fit the Supreme Leader’s agenda. The 85-year-old Mr. Khamenei is “laser focused on the succession, and for him someone who calls himself a reformist is a risky gamble,” UANI’s Mr. Brodsky says. 

Other analysts counter that to appease anti-regime sentiments that are growing on Iranian streets, Mr. Khamanei might actually be rooting for Mr. Pezeshkian to win on Friday. Either way, however, the winner would mostly do the Supreme Leader’s bidding. 

At the same time, if Mr. Khamenei is incapacitated or if he dies, the elected president will hold one of three caretakers who would determine policies. That is likely a reason for Mr. Khamenei to opt for Mr. Jalili, who is closer to his own ideology than Mr. Pezeshkian.

To avert being tagged as a Khamenei opponent, Mr. Pezeshkian has made an effort on the campaign trail to turn himself into a paragon of the revolution’s ideology. That is why tagging the candidates as “reformist” or “hardliner” is meaningless.

“The problem with these labels, and the fights over them, is that they are relative and tell us more about the analyst than anything else,” Mr. Ben Taleblu says.