Maryam Rajavi: Whatever the outcome of the sham elections in Iran

Maryam Rajavi, said that regardless of the outcome of the sham elections for the regime’s parliament and the Assembly of Experts, which have no legitimacy whatsoever in the eyes of the Iranian people, ultimately, the regime will be weakened in its entirety, its internal crises will intensify, and the resentment and anger of the population toward the mullahs’ corrupt and criminal factions will deepen even further.

Maryam Rajavi added that the clerical regime is based on absolute rejection of popular sovereignty and is alien to free elections.

The sham elections are merely an instrument for imposing a medieval caliphate on the 21st century, not to mention that they act as a lever for purging rival factions. Although all candidates are loyal to the velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule) and have taken part in committing the regime’s crimes for years, a large portion of them have been excluded as a result of displaying the slightest sign of disagreement with the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The reaction of the mullahs’ president Hassan Rouhani to this wholesale elimination has demonstrated once more that he does not have the will or the ability to institute change. Behind his deceptive rhetoric, Rouhani’s main goal is to preserve the regime in its entirety as well as his own position.

The crisis in the regime that had intensified after its unavoidable retreat from developing a nuclear weapon has now reached the apex of power. Khamenei’s hegemony and domination within the regime has been undermined and the taboo of challenging him and discussing his replacement has been broken. It has even been infused into part of the daily public discourse.

By forming a committee comprising of the most senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei personally supervised the merciless purge of rival factions, but fell short of overcoming the crisis. The daily warnings of the regime’s officials about a “sedition more dangerous than the one in 2009” has exposed their fears of another national uprising.

Maryam Rajavi stressed that this week’s sham elections will be met with renewed anger and hatred by the Iranian people toward the clerical regime and its factions. She added that as always the regime will try to resort to election fraud and fabrications to announce an astronomical participation rate. But this year, even the regime’s internal and marginalized circles are talking about the futility of elections. As such, Khamenei has fallen back on issuing ludicrous religious decrees (fatwas) to say that participating in elections is a religious obligation, blank ballots violate Sharia law, and that “the participation of women in elections does not require a husband’s consent.” His aim is to encourage those loyal to the regime and their families to participate in the elections.

Therefore, after the signing of the nuclear agreement, in contrast to some expectations in the West, Khamenei has intensified domestic suppression, dispatched more forces to Syria, and is trying to preserve his hegemony over the parliament and the Assembly of Experts in a futile attempt to prevent the downfall of the regime. However, the sham elections will not have a winner inside the regime because the regime in its entirety will lose. Both the hatred of the Iranian people toward the mullahs and the mullahs’ internal feuds will deepen and intensify.