While Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran’s regime, tries to claim victory for the ongoing war in Gaza, he is extremely worried about the internal conditions of Iran and his own regime’s hold on power.
These worries are growing as the regime nears its sham parliamentary elections, scheduled to be held in 2024.
In a recent speech Khamenei emphasized the significance of the election process as a vital and security matter and said, “Some people criticize the necessity of elections without realizing that if there are no elections in the country, it will either turn into a dictatorship or chaos and turmoil. Elections prevent the emergence of dictatorship in the country, and they also prevent chaos, disturbance, and insecurity.”
Khamenei is clearly afraid that like the previous elections, turnout will be record low, delivering another blow to the veneer of democracy that his regime has tried to maintain through its elections farce.
One of these critics, Mohammad Javad Kermani, in an interview with the Jamaran website on December 19, expressed his disappointment with the Guardian Council, a body of clerics appointed directly and indirectly by the supreme leader to oversee political matters such as election candidates and legislations.
Kermani said, “The Guardian Council accepts no one. The only person who can correct the wrong approach of the Guardian Council is Khamenei himself. Only he can give orders to the chairman of Assembly of Experts Ahmad Jannati, to set aside this wrong approach… It is not right to reject individuals like Kermani and others like Hassan Khomeini, Seyyed Mohammad Bijanouri, Ali Motahari, Larijani who have some influence or a different perspective.”
Kermani either doesn’t know or pretends to not know that Khamenei himself is the problem.
In response, Khamenei circumvents the problem and says, “The solution is to bring those who share their political, economic, or cultural ideologies to power through elections, whether it is parliamentary elections, Assembly of Experts elections, presidential elections, or council elections. This will bring about a transformation; therefore, elections are the basis of transformation.”
Worried about the results of the sham elections, Khamenei says, “Some people deliberately highlight the country’s problems in order to disillusion the public from participating in the elections. Well, if there are problems, what is the solution to those problems? The solution to the problems is, in fact, participating in the elections. In order to resolve the problems, one must participate in the elections.”
Most ridiculously, Khamenei claims that his goal is to prevent “the emergence of dictatorship in the country.”
While the slogans of “death to dictatorship” echo throughout the country, it is no surprise that Khamenei sheds crocodile tears for his elections, whose first condition for participation is loyalty to Khamenei himself.