The exposure of Iran’s sham elections and cabinet selection, as confessed by its regime president Masoud Pezeshkian during the open session of the parliament once again showed everyone that in the absolute autocracy of the regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the electoral show is hollow, meaningless, and merely a distortion of the word “election.”
This scandal is reminiscent of the disgrace of elections during the monarchical dictatorship. Reza Pahlavi, who referred to his handpicked parliament as a “stable,” never believed in voting or elections. In 1926, the British ambassador wrote in his annual report on the state of the Iranian parliament that the parliament cannot be taken seriously; its representatives are neither free nor independent, and parliamentary elections are not held freely. When the Shah favors a bill, it is passed; when he opposes it, it is rejected; and when he is indifferent, extensive debates occur on the bill.
After the end of the reign of Reza Pahlavi, his son Mohammad Reza adopted the same approach to elections when he took control, especially after the August 1953 coup against the democratic government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh. Hossein Fardoust (Head of the Imperial Inspectorate) writes in his book: “Mohammad Reza ordered me to form a three-member commission with [Asadollah] Alam and [Hassan Ali] Mansur for the parliamentary elections. Every day, Mansur would come with a briefcase full of names. Mansur would read the names of the desired individuals, and Alam would approve those he wanted and order the removal of those he did not. Mansur would respectfully remove them with the phrase ‘It shall be done.'”
Now, in the mullahs’ regime, everything is coordinated from start to finish with the supreme leader and the Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC) and intelligence services. Pezeshkian, under the pressure of deadly social crises and the regime’s internal crisis, was compelled to admit: “Our brother Dr. [Abbas] Araghchi, Brigadier General [Aziz] Nasirzadeh, our brother Mr. [Alireza] Kazemi, Seyed Esmaeil Khatib, Eskandar Momeni, Mr. [Hossein Simaee] Sarraf —you know that we did nothing without coordination, whether with the lower committees or with the higher-ups we needed to coordinate with.”
At this moment, someone from the middle of the parliament, apparently without a microphone and without permission, protests the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, to which Pezeshkian responds: “The Minister of Culture? He wasn’t even going to come; the Leader ordered him to come. Now, I don’t want to say these things, why are you forcing me? I went to the Leader and said, ‘Sir, here is the list, these are the people,’ and when he didn’t come, the Leader picked up the phone right there and told him to get up and come.” Then, in frustration, he added: “We coordinated and came here. Mrs. [Farzaneh] Sadeq was appointed by the Leader himself. Why are you forcing me to say things I shouldn’t… Don’t force me to go into details! Vote so we can form the government.”
Khamenei’s mouthpiece Kayhan newspaper, expressed concern that Pezeshkian’s speech had undermined all the regime’s hollow claims of “democracy and the status of the parliament.” In the September 22nd edition, it wrote: “Mr. Pezeshkian said in yesterday’s open session of the parliament, and before that indirectly and sometimes explicitly, that the selection of all ministers was ‘coordinated’ with the Supreme Leader! This claim immediately became a pretext for the state’s well-known enemies to use Mr. Pezeshkian’s statements to undermine democracy, the status of the parliament, and even the president’s authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran!”
Indeed, one could not have more thoroughly discredited the entire regime, from Khamenei to his president and the parliament. One could not have better acknowledged the sham nature of the parliament, president, and elections in this regime, which for over forty years has been a trick and a deception.