Two weeks since the sham parliamentary elections in Iran, we are witnessing an escalation of conflicts within the regime, both among the losers and the winners of this charade, as well as among the candidates for the Majlis (parliament). They accuse each other of fraud, stuffing ballot boxes with fake votes, buying and selling votes, and bribery. These disputes have become so intense that when Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei spoke for the first time after the election, he warned against the repercussions of “arguments and hostilities.”
Ironically for the regime, the outcome of “purifying” the candidates has resulted in bitterness and left an unpleasant taste in the mouth of the regime’s leader. This is while fraud has always been instrumental and the modus operandi of the regime in its policies.
It was through fraud that the regime did not allow even one PMOI member from reaching the first term of the Majlis in the first elections after the 1979 revolution.
Similarly, it was through fraud that the regime was able to consolidate its rule step by step.
In the first round of the presidential election in 2005, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the highest-ranking cleric in the mullahs’ regime, was ahead of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei’s favored candidate. But through fraud and vote rigging, Khamenei secured Ahmadinejad’s victory in the second round.
In 2009, once again, through fraud, Ahmadinejad secured his second mandate in the so-called presidential elections. The fraud in those elections was so extensive that even Rafsanjani lamented in disappointment, saying, “I seek refuge to God from all this fraud.”
Indeed, Khamenei has always achieved his desired results through fraud. However, this time it seems the situation is different. On the one hand, the regime’s leaders is admitting to the bitterness of the fraudulent elections. On the other hand, the voices of disenchanted insiders have become louder, and the scandals of fraud are being exposed more and more every day.
On March 8, the Telegram channel for Chand Sanieh news outlet quoted Journalist Ahmad Zeidadabi as saying, “There may come a day when individuals with 20 votes from their family members become representatives of Tehran.”
Chand Sanieh also quoted regime analyst Abbas Abdi as saying, “The participation rate is 30% and the figure of 40% [declared by the regime’s elections headquarters] is a joke.”
He pointed out that out of these votes, about 6-7 percent are invalid votes, which should be deducted from that number. Some of these votes are also those given with national identity cards. With a sarcastic tone, he added, “Right now, I myself don’t know whether I have voted or not.”
On March 9, the state-run Setareh Sobh newspaper, regarding the various methods of fraud employed in the recent sham elections, wrote, “Obtaining votes with national identity cards, driver’s licenses, and passports has had no precedent in any previous elections. Since individuals’ national identity cards are in the possession of regime’s institutions, schools, etc., there is a possibility of misuse, and there have been instances of such misuse. The question is, why is it allowed to collect votes with alternative identification documents when individuals have their national ID cards? The public is not convinced and has doubts about this.”
It is interesting to note that the use of the national identification code for voting has been deliberately and knowingly employed by the regime as a major method of fraud from the beginning. Evidence of this claim is a letter from the CEO of a mobile communications company (operating under the brand name Hamrah Aval), which was exposed by GhiamSarnegouni, a dissident group who took over the servers of the Majlis and released a trove of confidential internal communications of the regime.
On January 17, the company’s CEO sent a confidential memo to Minister of Interior Ahmad Vahidi and a copy to Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
The letter reads: “If instead of stamping the identity card, we rely solely on online identity verification, a voter with their national card can visit multiple ballot boxes and cast multiple votes. The voter can then publish the video online and question the integrity and health of the entire election process.
“Therefore, I kindly request that in addition to implementing the online identity verification method, the offline identity verification method and stamping of identification cards be used in all polling stations. Otherwise, it is evident that this operator cannot accept any responsibility for the potential consequences of this matter.”
In addition to the scandal of electoral fraud, which has caused turmoil in the yet-to-be-formed Majlis, the legitimacy of the Guardian Council and the mullahs’ regime has also been questioned by regime-affiliated clerics. One of the prominent clerics, Mohammad Soroush Mahallati, in his Telegram post, points out that according to the regime’s constitution, the legitimacy of the Supreme Leader relies on obtaining the votes of the majority of the people. He wrote, “It is only one election that has a direct connection with the legitimacy of the system, and a decrease in votes in that election disrupts the pillars of the system’s legitimacy, and that election is the election of the Assembly of Experts… A Supreme Leader who is elected by a 40% majority of the Experts cannot assume the position of leadership, taking charge of the country’s affairs and leadership responsibilities.”
These “ifs” and “buts” indicate that the regime has faced a stumbling block in engineering the Assembly of Experts as well, which is supposedly responsible for determining a successor for Khamenei. However, the important question is why, despite these massive frauds and engineering the turnout from 8.2% to 40%, which means multiplying it by five, this time the fraud has not only been ineffective but has also become a stumbling block for regime.
On March 1, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of resistance of Iran( NCRI (, described the widespread boycott of the elections as a referendum to overthrow the regime and wrote, “No doubt, Khamenei and the Velayat-e Faqih regime will come out of this theatrics, much weaker and more fragile than ever, which will expedite their overthrow. The Iranian people’s decisive ‘No’ is indicative of burgeoning uprisings, the echoes of which have already resonated across the nation, heralding the impending downfall of the clerical regime.”
