Iran's Fake Presidential Election
by Lawrence A. Franklin • June 18, 2021 at 4:00 am
The genuine power in Iran is made up of unelected, authoritarian, religious and fascist military elites who, for decades, have, frozen in place the revolutionary, theocratic ideology of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The nomination mechanism for presidential candidates is itself part of the fraudulent process.
Past elections have either been rigged in favor the hardliners, as in today's election, or so overshadowed by the power of the regime's deep state, that no president is been able to effect any substantive reforms to loosen the chokehold that the mullahs maintain on Iranian citizens.
The most likely dark horse is former Central Bank of Iran President Abdolnasser Hemmati, a (relative) moderate.... Hemmati's biggest obstacle is the lack of interest by the majority of Iran's electorate. They seem to have despaired of any real change in the Islamic Republic, at least in the near future. The US negotiating team, seemingly desperate for a deal -- any deal -- with the mullahs, could cause far less global damage if they despaired of it, as well.
Iran's so-called presidential election today, June 18, is a fraud, a ruse for the world to observe and seemingly domestically designed to release some pent-up popular pressure.
Iran's presidency itself is a weak institution of weak political superstructure which also includes the legislative branch (the majles, the sort-of equivalent of a parliament). This highly visible but insubstantial governmental apparatus masks the real power in Iran: the "deep state" of the Islamic Republic.
