AMAC Exclusive by Daniel Roman
Iranian voters will go to the polls this Friday, June 18, 2021 to “elect” a new President, and in a stunning sign of the dictatorship’s weakness and internal fissures, the regime’s own insiders and staunchest defenders are already criticizing the electoral process as illegitimate before the voting begins. The truth is that Iran’s people won’t have much of a choice at all on Friday, in a process that has become so corrupt that even the former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has condemned it and appealed to the United States to expose the moral bankruptcy of the country’s leaders.
Iran’s Council of Guardians must approve of all candidates for President before Iranians vote on them. And this time, the Council has approved just 7, only one of whom is considered viable. The Council-approved candidate Ebrahim Raisi is the head of Iran’s powerful judiciary and is known for his extremist views. Raisi was defeated 57%-38% in a 2017 run for President, yet this time around, he is the only real candidate in the race.
The Council of Guardians has long prevented any opponents of the Iranian regime from running for office. But the Council’s behavior this year stands out due to its decision to block anyone other than Raisi who might win, even if they fully agree with the ideology of the regime. Ali Larijani, the former hardline speaker of Parliament, was rejected, to the confusion of his brother, Sadeq Larijani, Raisi’s predecessor as head of the judiciary and a member of the Guardians himself. Sadeq tweeted about the exclusion of his brother from the race: “I have never found the decisions of the council so indefensible,” going on to blame the security services for fabricating false reports.
Ahmadinejad was also blocked from running again for President. As a result, he called for a boycott of the vote, denouncing the dictatorial regime that he once presided over. One of Ahmadinejad’s supporters alleged during a speech in Parliament that a “network of infiltrators” wanted “to engineer the elections.” Once at the vanguard of hostility to the United States, Ahmadinejad has taken to echoing criticisms American conservatives make of Tehran, going as far as to take to twitter in 2017 to ask Donald Trump to intervene to expose the truth about Iran’s current leaders. “Mr @realDonaldTrump release the list of relatives of #Iranian Government officials that have #GreenCards and #BankAccounts in the #UnitedStates if you have such a list,” the former Iranian leader tweeted on August 1, 2018. In another 2018 Tweet that was apparently a veiled criticism of his own regime, Ahmadinejad again echoed the talking points of American conservatives, declaring, “Freedom has no limits; ideas and thoughts should never ever be limited … Any type of restrictions on ideas and beliefs especially on Social Media will lead to chaos and dictatorship.”
Larijiani and Ahmadinejad have built their entire careers working their way up to the highest levels of the Iranian regime, and now even they will not defend it. As Larijiani noted: “It has been almost twenty years since my first appearance in the Guardian Council in 2001. Throughout this time, I have defended the Guardian Council, even during my years in the judiciary.” Larijiani will not defend the legitimacy of the Iranian regime now. But the Biden administration will.
Indeed, even as signs of internal dissent within Iran’s ruling class reach unprecedented levels, the Biden administration is pushing ahead with John Kerry’s monomaniacal crusade to strike a nuclear deal that will be bad for the United States, bad for Israel, and that even the Iranians do not want.
Sadly, this charade of an election is almost certain to be taken by the Biden Administration as an invitation to lift sanctions and re-engage with Iran. It would be wonderful if such optimism were justified by reality.
John Kerry’s team in Vienna are quite possibly the only people left on the planet who insist on treating the Iranian regime as if it were the legitimate representative of the Iranian people. The regime itself no longer cares about preserving the veneer of legitimacy—its own chosen candidate for President, Raisi, has even complained about the farcical nature of his own coronation, and senior insiders, including the Foreign Minister Kerry is negotiating with tells the media he has no power or control over the military or security services, much less to deliver on any nuclear deal he may sign. Yet Kerry persists, in what may be the only time in world history where the stronger side in a negotiation is insisting on capitulating and surrendering to the weaker side in exchange for a deal that the weaker side has already informed the media it will not keep.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif has gone even further than just acknowledging Iran will not abide by a new nuclear deal with America. In what was likely a purposefully leaked tape, Zarif implied that Iran manipulated the Obama administration in 2015 to lift sanctions so it could purchase Boeing and Airbus planes to increase flights to Syria sixfold, thereby aiding the Syrian dictator Assad and the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah. This is not news to most serious Iran watchers. The Trump administration knew this very well, as did well-informed members of Congress. But that Iranian politicians across the spectrum are echoing the charges is stunning.
Zarif is all but begging Kerry and Biden not to pursue a deal with him which will strengthen the hardliners in Iran, going so far as to risk charges of treason to leak that tape, which all but promised that future sanctions relief will serve to strengthen the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.
Instead, the Biden Administration seems determined to join the Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei in being the only participants in the farce that Iran’s elections are meaningful or that Tehran is negotiating in good faith. Both Iranians and the American people know better and deserve better.
Daniel Roman is the pen name of a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
1) The Iranian regime under the control of Islamic extremists since 1979 has always been what you call corrupt. I call it political infighting between different political factions within the fundamentalist Islamic movement for power. Much like the Trotsky and Stalinist factions, both hard core communists, battled for supremacy after Lenin’s death in Russia. All authoritarian regimes, no matter the ideology driving them, have these splits within the movement as different factions struggle for power.
2) John Kerry is simply trying to salvage the lone so-called foreign policy “win” of the Obama era by getting the United States back into the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal. It’s NOT about doing what is right for the United States or even the world at large, since the deal does nothing to prevent the Iranians from eventually getting the bomb and using it to blackmail the world. It’s about putting a “win”, the sole so-called foreign policy win of Obama (his current boss’ boss), back in the plus column. It’s a personal ego thing for Obama. Otherwise, the Obama legacy boils down to the passage of the terrible Obamacare and Dodd-Frank legislation, that de-stabilized both healthcare and financial industries in this country and heaped higher costs on the public as a whole.
3) The so-called Biden administration will do anything, and I do mean anything, to get the Iranians to allow the United States to recommit itself to terrible Iran Nuclear Deal. If that means Kerry has to openly support one political faction over another in Iran to garner favor with the regime, then that is what he will do. Refer back to point 2 for the reasons why.
Stop thinking the Biden administrations and its members are working for the betterment of the American people or that they are going to listen to your advice and change course. They are not on both points. That the American people have allowed this situation to occur is a disgrace and made the United States a laughing stock to the rest of the world. Watch or listen to how various news organizations around the world now openly refer to this administration and the United States. You might learn something.
The hero rides in ( floats ) on his Swift boat to save the day in Iranian politics…Look at that mug shot, I feel so much safer now…I can’t help but wonder how many shrink wrapped pallet loads of cash the Ayatollah gets this time around…John Kerry, go back to the ketchup factory please, you bore me…
Bill on the Hill… :~)
Really legitimize Iran regime,??
One has to consider the source….ie. Kelly. Here is a man who “served” in Vietnam. Got a medal. And turned his back on fellow vets when he openly protested the war. His “brother’s in arms” rejected him as a phony who used his “war record” to get political position. He is a sham and a scammer. The man is of no value to this nation, only to our enemies, foreign and domestic. As a Nam vet, I am ashamed of the guy…..as a citizen, I am embarassed at his continued pandering and lying. He claims “greenness” and climate change as an agenda, but his record is a complete reversal. I put him in the same category as Hanoi Jane…..a traitor at best, a criminal at worst. Have no use for him, never will.
I wonder if he realizes the day is going to come when he has to answer and will end up burning with no end to the intense heat in sight.
Imagine if Saudi Arabia was being flooded with a plethora of foreigners.
Chinese, Mexicans, Africans, Europeans etc, all flooding into Saudi Arabia.
Imagine if those foreigners started making babies with the Saudi women.
Imagine how much brainwashing it would take to convince the Saudi men to call each other “racist” if they objected to this.
Hard to imagine the Saudi men being so stupid isn’t it?
Welcome to the world of White anti-Whites.
White self-hatred is SICK!!!
Sure Kerry is – it is what he does and who he is…maybe another 100billion or two in unmarked cargo planes, laundered and stacked neatly, delivered in the dead of night will do the trick…or telling them all of the plans and operations of Israel.
Kerry should be tried for treason, not glorified. But he does the bidding of the communists that now control the USA (government, media, higher education) so he gets away with everything he does..
John Kerry is another socialist, communist ass—e. Take him out too with the others.
I admire Mr Roman’s writing, but this time he buried the lead. He should have started off with the paragraph that begins “John Kerry’s team in Vienna…”, and then continued with the elections issues.
John Kerry is an embarrassment to other veterans. He has shown his hatred for America in every issue he has been involved in since joining the Obama Administration.
So he’s a traitor to America and now to the whole world.Where’s his buddy Jane?
Once a radical always a radical.
Not only is he a gutless Traitorous SOB, a lair, stolen Valor POS and is married to the woman that owns the Heinz Corp. So every time you purchase anything made by Heinz your just putting more of your hard earned MONEY INTO HIS THIEVING POCKET. FYI.
A traitor & a coward, how you can publish trash like this just makes me realize that you’re just as corrupt as all the others.
Who is worse Kerry or John Brennen both are muslim lovers who the muslims call useful idiots!!!
Kerry is a traitor and needs to be held accountable – its time to put him and the rest of the politician traitors behind bars, period.
This guy is a joke he has no shame.If he was half as smart as he thinks he is he would quietly go away It must be a happy little place he lives in in his mind.Who knows maybe he will see Biden there.They could lie to each other.
The man is a Coward, Coward, Coward, Coward and I would tell him to his face if I had the chance.
He deserted his men in combat for the very short time he was there. He purposely wounded himself to get a early out. He is a worthless bag of crap in any ones eyes.
Everything the Biden administration does is a farce and intended to undermine the United States and our interests. We’re back to the policy of ‘leading from behind’ and the U S ‘is the problem in the world’ not the solution. I don’t know how our Republic will survive this subterfuge.