Two of the “hard-line” candidates in Iran’s fake presidential “elections” withdrew on Thursday, calling on their supporters to unite against Massoud Pezeshkian, the only “moderate” among the four remaining candidates.
Two former “moderate” Iranian presidents similarly called on voters to show their support “against blatant tyranny” by supporting Pezechkian against hardline theocracies.
A supporter of June 28 presidential election candidate Saeed Jalili holds a poster during a rally in Tehran, Iran, June 26, 2024. “We should make our enemies regret imposing sanctions on Iran through economic means,” Jalili, a hardline candidate and former nuclear negotiator, said during a debate on Monday. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iran’s corrupt election season kicks off with Guardian Council of hardline theocracists Disqualification The Guardian Council disqualified approximately 95 percent of the candidates for what it deemed insufficient loyalty to the regime and its concept of Islamic law. The Guardian Council has disqualified every female candidate in the Islamic Republic’s 45-year history.
The remaining few candidates are often politically difficult to distinguish, but one of them is usually a more “moderate” candidate than the others. All are seen as remaining subservient to Iran’s actual dictator, the now elderly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Many Iranians have given up on participating in this poorly simulated election, and voter turnout has fallen to record lows in the past few elections. The latest polls suggest that more than half of Iranian voters will boycott the 2024 special election. The regime is embarrassed by such low voter turnout and is doing everything it can to increase the vote total.
This includes opening “polling stations” in the United States to collect Iranian absentee ballots this year, which the Biden administration has bizarrely Was chosen To give permission This comes despite Biden’s State Department saying it has “no expectation” that Friday’s election will be “free and fair.”
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The moderate candidate in this general election to decide the successor to the late President Ebrahim Raisi is former health minister and heart surgeon Massoud Pezechkian (69), who has spoken out against the government’s brutal crackdown on dissidents for many years. Pezechkian ran for president twice, in 2013 and 2021, but did not perform well, so he is running in the 2024 by-election as a dark horse candidate.
Pezeshkian quickly won the support of Mohammed Javad Zarif, the former Iranian foreign minister and architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with President Barack Obama, and has signaled he would consider bringing Zarif back as foreign minister if elected.
Zarif served in the position during a brief period when the “moderates” Mohammed Khatami and Hassan Rouhani controlled the presidency. approved Pezeshkian on Wednesday adopted Khatami’s campaign slogan, “For Iran,” as his own, a deliberate attempt to signal a preference for the best interests of the Iranian people and disdain for theocracy.
Pezeshkian’s campaign also garnered support from several prominent opposition figures, including activist Hossein Ronagi and Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, daughter of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Ronagi and Rafsanjani are the latest in a string of protests over the 2022 “Women, Life and Freedom” protests, also known as Amini UprisingThe incident began with the murder of a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini by the Iranian theocracy’s “morality police” for incorrectly wearing a head covering, which is mandatory for women.
Ronaghi was released from prison Detained She was arrested again this month for displaying the banned emblem of the Women, Life and Freedom Movement. Wall Street Journal, Have Said The regime intends to torture him until he flees the country, but he has steadfastly refused to seek asylum.
“The most peaceful way to oppose this blatant repression and send the message ‘no to the Islamic Republic’ is to boycott the upcoming farce of elections,” he said in a video message on Wednesday.
Hashemi is Sentenced He was sentenced to five years in prison for “propaganda against the regime” and “disturbing public order and peace” during the Amini Uprising, and is serving his second long prison term. Fired He called on voters to boycott the Iranian elections, calling them a farce and making them accomplices to the regime’s “corrupt policies.”
Another dissident, imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, Announced “We will not take part in illegal elections held by an oppressive and illegitimate government,” he declared from his cell in Evin Prison on Friday.
“How can you hold the sword, the gallows, weapons and prisons against your people with one hand and with the other hand place the ballot box before those same people and issue a deceptively false call to the polls,” she said.
“The only purpose of holding elections by a regime that believes in repression, fear and violence as its only means of maintaining power is to consolidate its power and tyranny, not to protect democracy and the rights of its people. Such elections do not bring legitimacy to the Islamic Republic,” she asserted.
Other prominent opposition and human rights groups have also called for a boycott of the election, including a group of more than 500 activists. Joint statement Last week, they announced they would not vote, even though Pezeshkian seemed to have a good chance of winning.
“Participating in elections with the assumption that reformist candidates will win is futile and will not lead to the resolution of ongoing problems. Moreover, [government’s] “Legitimateness is being lost and repression of dissent and protest is intensifying,” the 500-person group argued.
Iran’s hardline Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf sits to register his name as a candidate for the June 28 presidential election at the Ministry of Interior in Tehran, Iran, Monday, June 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Hardline candidates Alireza Zakhani, Mayor of Tehran, and Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi Dropped out As of Wednesday’s election results, their approval ratings were 1.7% and 2%, respectively.
Both hard-line factions urged the other selected theocratic candidates to unite to prevent Pezechkian from winning.
“We call on Said Jalili and Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf to unite and not ignore the demands of the revolutionary forces,” Zakhani said of the two remaining hardline candidates.
Ghazizadeh Hashemi Said His purpose in entering the race was to “protect the legacy” of ousted hardline leader Raisi, and he now believes withdrawing is the best way to achieve that. During the campaign, he boasted that he would “spare no effort” to protect Raisi’s record, and vowed to continue to support what he called the “martyr” Raisi’s foreign policy achievements. terrorism.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei publicly Threatened Using theocratic allegory laced with political bombast, Pezechkian on Tuesday suggested that a “moderate” candidate would not be allowed to serve if he was friendly to the United States and its allies.
“Some of our politicians believe that they have to bow down to this country or that country. Progress is impossible without sticking to a famous country or country. Some think like that. Or they think that all roads to progress go through America,” Khamenei mused, concluding that “such people” could never run Iran successfully.
The ayatollah’s audience responded by chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
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It’s hard to predict how the election will play out, and of course the administration could choose a different winner regardless of the vote. Pezechkian appears to be garnering more support than the administration had expected, which is one reason why hardline candidates at the bottom of the ladder have withdrawn and called for unity against the threat of moderates.
Iran’s election rules mean a second round of voting will be held if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote in the first round, so consolidating the hard-line vote may be the best way to avoid a second-round showdown.
Analyst Abbas Abdi Said Voice of America News reported Tuesday that Pezechkian has outdone himself from his natural role as a dark horse punching bag and has a good chance of winning — in fact, if the polls are fair, he might even be the front-runner.
“Pezezhkian is in the lead and the gap to the others will definitely widen over the next three days. Withdrawing will not help them at all,” said Abdi, before Akani and Ghazizadeh Hashemi did just that.
Al Jazeera analyst Zeina Khodr said: pessimistic Speaking about Pezeshkian’s chances on Thursday, Khodl said hard-liners would probably not rally behind one candidate to defeat Pezeshkian, but that many reform-minded voters would likely boycott the sham election altogether.
“It all depends on voter turnout, but previous elections have seen record low numbers of people heading to the polls,” she predicted.
Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament and a staunch supporter of Khamenei, I input it A former member of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which led two brutal crackdowns on protesters in 1999 and 2003, his candidacy and almost certain “victory” in the rigged elections was seen as a warning from the regime to human rights activists.
Unlike Ghazizadeh Hashemi, Qalibaf has been somewhat critical of Raisi’s poor economic policies. running On the promise of improving living standards in Iran. Said During the final Iranian presidential debate on Tuesday, he said that if the economy does not improve, the next president could be “forced to either sell Iran to Trump or provoke dangerous tensions at home.”
Ghazizadeh Hashemi also assumed that Donald Trump would return to the White House and urged people to vote for a hard-line president so they could “negotiate with him and impose our demands.”
One of the remaining candidates is Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a cleric and former prosecutor. I chose to run He is known as a more theocracy-friendly reformer than Pezechkian, but has been particularly critical of the “morality police” who murdered Mahsa Amini. Pourmohammadi’s campaign saw him defiantly confront the 45th and possibly 47th President of the United States, producing posters declaring “I am the man to take on Trump!”
