An Unexpected Game Change: The Iran Election and Flying under the Radar

Election is one of the most popular incidents that attracts the attention of people not only inside the country, but also internationally. It is one of the main examples of tough competition and Politicians always do their best during the election to gain a competitive advantage. Thus, thinking strategically is crucial in any rivalry, in particular when it comes to election. In this post I deal with the recent presidential election of Iran and how the elected president used strategic thinking and won the election by using the golden eagle strategies and techniques.

Iran presidential election starts by registration of the candidates and after the evaluation by several organizations, the final candidates enter the final presidential stage. In the recent election of Iran there were 7 final candidates from which two were independent, three of them made a new party together (called 2+1) who mostly belonged to the conservative alliance, and two from the reformist coalition. From the reformist party, one of them declared himself as being more moderate than reformist, but still was seen as a member of reformist coalition by people and belonged to that party.

During the first days of the election most people predicted either Ghalibaf (the Mayor of Tehran) or Jalili (the top negotiator of Iran on nuclear program) are going to take the lead and win the election. Both of these two candidates belonged to the conservatives. The reformists on the other hand, did not have much chance to win the election until the last three days when there was a game change.

One of the reformist’s candidates withdraws from the election so that the votes of the reformist party stays in one place and for one person.
Mohammad Khatami, the former president of Iran who is popular among Iranian youth joins to back Rohani who is now the only reformist’s candidate.
Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran also backs the reformist’s candidate. He is also popular among many people in Iran.
Hasan Rohani, who is now the only candidate from reformist coalition used the current economic problems and decline of Iran currency in the international market as a tool for his campaigns in the last days by announcing a key as his symbol.

These three major incidents happened in the last three days of election and lead to a big change. This is not a complicated strategy and could be done in many cases; nevertheless, the secrets behind these actions are timing and flying under the radars.

For months no one knew a lot about Rohani, who is now the new president until the very last steps in the election campaigns. On the contrary, the campaigns of conservatives seemed to be more successful and eye catching. Flying under the radars and staying passive until the very end of election was a pure golden eagle strategy. The plan and the implementation were so accurate and on time, that the opponents could not do any counter attack. They did not have any time to think or adjust themselves.

The golden eagle has variety of hunting techniques for each prey. One of its common techniques is to fly so low that the prey cannot even find out the existence of the eagle in the area. By flying under the prey’s radar, the golden eagle gets as close as possible and with a sudden pop-up and dive it catches the prey.

Flying under the radar and entrepreneurial intelligence have been discussed before. However, it is not only the business world that benefits from such strategic approaches, but such strategies are inevitable part of other sectors such as politics, sports, military, and anything with rivalry concept.

During the election campaigns in Iran, the action of the reformists took place on the right time, in the right place and in the best way and resulted in a remarkable game change. The winner got rewarded and benefited from using the golden eagle strategy and techniques; whereas, the others never had the golden eagle strategy on hand.

Having had the panoramic view, prey focus, opportunity orientation, and vast home range, they could do much better in their competition. A vast home range could help them a lot to have a plan B and a counter attack plan when the left party revealed its major plan and attacked. A vast home range could help them better do crisis management, while the opportunity orientation could help them have better plans and explore and exploit the opportunities from which they could benefit.

… and finally the Sun Tzu’s saying: