Hardliner Raisi wins Iran presidency in landslide, amid record-low voter turnout

…from the Times of Israel

[ Editor’s Note: Elections in Iran are over, with a pre-determined winner. A large number of candiates participated, many running vanity campaigns hoping to win the some of recognition lottery.

Then the religious autocracy put its thumb on the scale, disqualifying anyone it wanted for whatever reason. I am in no place to judge if their reasons were good or not on the individual cases.



But the end result is what the vast majority of the world’s democracies would view as a rigged election, with the hard liner favorite ‘assisted’ over the finish line. Iranians displayed their displeasure with a low turnout.

What next? Well, the result of having a hardliner in now, with all competition being swept away with, may put wind in the sails of the perennial ‘Iranian threat’ geopolitical rhetoric.  If that is the case the flip side of this scenario is somewhat of a joke.

A number of Western nations have their ‘threat history’ burned into the historical landscape via colonialism, something that the US got into with the Philippines and then running Central America as a vast plantation.

Mind you that this was done by the ‘land of the free’, so any criticism of Iran’s voting system must fairly be compared to the others.

Former pretend-a-president Trump just gave us a full dose of this with his mob family and grifter entourage, and is still attempting to do so. There will be a constituency who say that prosecuting Trump will be a humiliation to the country and thus it should not be allowed.

Those who would propose this are fully onboard taking a second mob rule shot with someone more competent than Trump, and not carrying all of his negative baggage, which VT has laid out over the last four years.

But as the Trumpers may say, “He may be a crime boss, but he is OUR crime boss, so that is good for the country because it is good for us,” hence we must take that into judging Iran’s system. I won’t even get into the Israeli system with its open air ethnic prison camps, and yet is fawned over by most of the world as a model way to run a plantation … Jim W. Dean ]

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Iran has seen many changes in rulers over its few thousand year history, a bit longer than the US

First Published … June 19, 2021

Iran’s hardline judiciary chief won the country’s presidential election in a landslide victory Saturday, propelling the supreme leader’s protégé into Tehran’s highest civilian position in a vote that appeared to see the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Ebrahim Raisi was elected president with 61.95 percent of the vote, according to figures released by Interior Minister Aboldreza Rahmani Fazli.

Voter turnout was 48.8 percent of the more than 59 million eligible voters in Friday’s election, he said, a record low for a presidential election in the Islamic republic.

In second place by a wide margin was the ultraconservative Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who won 11.8%. He was followed in third place by the only reformist left in the race, former central bank chief Abdolnasser Hemmati, who scored 8.4%. Last placed out of the four candidates was another ultraconservative, Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, who won 3.5%.

Over 3.7 million ballots were declared void — more votes than were won by second-placed Rezai. Three of the original seven candidates had dropped out two days before the election — reformist Mohsen Mehralizadeh and ultraconservatives Saeed Jalili and Alireza Zakani.

Raisi dominated the election only after a panel under the watch of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disqualified his strongest competition. He was far ahead of former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaei, moderate Abdolnasser Hemmati and Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi.

…For his part, Khamenei warned of “foreign plots” seeking to depress turnout in a speech Wednesday. A flyer handed out Wednesday on the streets of Tehran by hard-liners echoed that and bore the image of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in 2020. A polling station was set up by Soleimani’s grave on Friday.

“If we do not vote: Sanctions will be heavier, the US and Israel will be encouraged to attack Iran,” the leaflet warned. “Iran will be under the shadow of a Syrian-style civil war and the ground will be ready for the assassination of scientists and important figures.”

…You can read the whole article at Times of Israel here.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. He may be a hardliner, how he steers his country will show his worth. The fact is simply this; A leader, provided he is a good and capable leader, cannot do much for his country and his people if the people are not with him.
    This is a universal fact, isn’t it?

  2. Elections are not suppose to be between evil and less evil, but rather between good and better candidates. This is what Iran has done with eliminating the westernized puppets who were counting on the western media support to win the election, as the previous president of Iran had done. However, by eliminating those corrupt, sellouts, Iran now has a chance to prosper.
    Maybe the west can learn a bit from Iran, and have better options than a senile pervert (Biden) vs psychopath zionist sock puppet (Trump) as presidential candidates. This is the great failure of democracy, as it has removed moral filters from candidate selection. Might as well go back to monarchy, as it doesn’t lead to a polarized society, ready to devour the other side.

    • Every society is polarized nowadays. Rich vs. poor. It doesn’t matter what color, religion or race it’s strictly rich versus poor. It manifests itself differently in every society based on its internal politics and how they each want to conceal this gap between rich and poor and how they each allow tax dodging.

      Now that we’re talking about Iran this old song is very telling:
      https://youtu.be/sqemXVtZg4w

      As I said before the problem of JCPOA was that bankers on both sides were not ready to work with each other (mostly transparency problem). Hemmati had/has the tools to bridge that gap which will be needed even dealing with bankers of China and Russia. But Raisi’s approach as noble as it is is old fashion which reminds me Gore’s “lockbox”. And don’t forget that Raisi in a traditional way was in charge of the big lockbox.

  3. It could be possible, look at the US. There’s had been rigged for decades with the Swamp picking who they want in office. Me I don’t think Iran’s was rigged because the moderates wasn’t able to get much done so it’s just normal for people to feel betrayed so they go the other way!

    • Lol. Hagee and Haley are going to Hell ans up there on their way to Israel’s hell (because every country has its own) to be put over hot burning coal for their entire afterlives, they peak through the door of Iran’s hell and they are surprised to see people lounging, smoking, playing volleyball laughing etc over a big grassy knoll.

      They turn and ask St Peter … hey wtf ??

      St Peter says, oh how fast you forget. They’ve been under your sanctions forever and they are still waiting for them to be lifted so they can import coal.

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