With the Iranian regime’s sham presidential elections scheduled for Friday, regime officials are going the extra mile to convince the people to participate in the elections and cast their ballots for one of the six candidates, all of whom are known criminals. The regime is resorting to deceitful tactics such as television shows, debates, and other publicity stunts to create the impression that the country’s problems will be solved if people vote in the elections.
But none of the regime’s theatrics and propaganda effort are fooling the people of Iran. Iran’s rebellious youths are casting their votes early by setting fire to the regime’s propaganda posters and targeting the regime’s centers of corruption and suppression, making it clear that their choice is regime change.
On June 24, rebellious youths engaged in numerous anti-regime activities across several cities. In Qazvin, they set fire to the office of the Khomeini Relief Committee.
The headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards were targeted with an arson attack in Kamyaran. In Rigan, Kerman province, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the offices of the regime’s oppressive district office in Rahmat Abad.
In Tehran, banners of now-dead regime president Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were set ablaze on a bridge. Other acts in Tehran included burning and tearing down Khamenei’s election banners and other regime propaganda posters across multiple locations.
Similarly, in cities like Karaj, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Kerman, Hamedan, Arak, Zanjan, Zahedan, Bushehr, Khorramabad, Ilam, Semnan, Bandar Anzali, Neyshabur, Sabzevar, Ghaemshahr, Bam, Izeh, Ardakan, and Sowme’eh Sara, posters and banners promoting election candidates were either torn or set on fire, symbolizing widespread dissent.
On June 21, the repressive Motahari Judicial Complex was targeted. This center is tasked with handing out harsh sentences to dissidents and ordinary Iranians. At the same time, rebellious youths in other parts of the capital continued to tear apart and torch banners, billboards, and posters that promote the regime’s fake elections. “Our vote is regime change,” one rebellious youth chanted as he tore down a poster of election candidate Saeed Jalili.
On the same day, in Karaj, rebellious youths targeted another branch of the Khomeini Committee in a sign of defiance to the regime’s corruption. In Mashhad, the youths tore and torched posters of Ebrahim Raisi, known to Iranians as the Butcher of Tehran for his role in the mass execution of dissidents.
This premature presidential election comes on the heels of a parliamentary election in February, in which the people made their sentiments toward the regime crystal clear through a mass boycott of the ballot boxes. According to reports by the PMOI’s network inside Iran, the parliamentary elections had a record-low turnout of 8 percent. The people of Iran have made it clear that they will settle for nothing less than regime change.
The truth is that this regime has shown time and again that elections have no meaning under the brutal rule of the mullahs. The country is run by the unelected supreme leader and the criminal Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). The presidential candidates are strictly vetted for their loyalty to the supreme leader, and they are all complicit in the regime’s crimes in one way or another.
Millions of Iranians continue to suffer from poverty, unemployment, rising costs of living, and a crackdown on the most basic freedoms, conditions that worsen under each new president. This is why the activities of Iran’s rebellious youths reflect the will of millions of Iranians, who are constantly chanting, “There is no room for elections in this regime—it’s time for a revolution.”