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Some facts on the Iranian regime’s elections

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This fact sheet aims to provide details of the factional feuding at the heart of Friday’s elections for the Iranian regime’s Parliament and Assembly of Experts.

Comparison of lists of candidates for various political factions

The following individuals are among the candidates for the Assembly of Experts on the candidate-list generated by the faction affiliated with the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei:

Ahmad Janati (Secretary of the Guardians Council)
Mohammad Yazdi (former head of the Judiciary)
Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi (ideologue of the regime’s most fascist factions)
Mahmoud Shahroudi (former head of the Judiciary)

The above have been among the most important figures of suppression and corruption in Iran during 37 years of clerical rule.

Some of the most well-known candidates on the list generated by the faction affiliated with former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and current President Hassan Rouhani are:

Qorbanali Dori-Najafabadi: Minister of Intelligence and Security in Mohammad Khatami’s cabinet during a period in the late 1990s when many thinkers and authors were killed as a result of fatwas he had issued. After this was revealed, he was forced to resign.
Mohamamd Mohammadi Reyshahri: The first Minister of Intelligence and Security in Rafsanjani’s cabinet. He executed many dissident clerics. He placed Ayatollah Montazeri, Khomeini’s heir- apparent who was sacked after protesting to massacre of political prisoners, under house arrest, where he remained until his death. Reyshahri has also been implicated in assassinations outside of Iran.
Mahmoud Alavi: the current Minister of Intelligence and Security.
Ali Falahian: The Minister of Intelligence and Security in Rafsanjani’s cabinet. He was in charge of most of the assassinations of Iranian dissidents abroad in the 1990s and there are international arrest warrants for him issued by Germany, Switzerland, and Argentina.
Ali Razini: A religious judge in the 1980s who executed hundreds of dissidents including activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK). He was the religious judge personally involved in stoning three individuals to death. The revelation of the footage of that stoning shocked the world.

An eyewitness account on the regime’s stage-managing of Election Day

Farzad Madadzadeh, a former political prisoner who was incarcerated from 2009-2014, personally monitored elections in Tehran and some small cities on several occasions. He reports:
“The officials in Tehran identify major polling stations and ordered their agents to pour into each station at a specific time of the day. This contributed to the regime’s propaganda not only through statistics but also through images and video.”
“State TV airs images of inflated crowds at those polling places and conducts interviews with people who claim to be waiting in line for hours to cast their ballots. But throughout the day official TV reports from Tehran only cover a few polling stations – the same one to which foreign journalists were directed by the Ministry of Guidance. In Tehran, Hoseynieh Ershad, Imam Hassan Mosque and a handful of other voting stations are designated for this purpose. In other major cities the same pattern of state TV broadcasts exists, but in a more limited number of stations.”

Unprecedented heightening of crisis at the regime’s highest levels

Fars News Agency, February 21, 2016- Ahmad Khatami, Tehran’s Friday Prayer Leader:
“You will be exposed after the elections and we will tell the people about your evil conduct behind the scenes. We will say how you obeyed the U.S. and the U.K… You think we will let you go? Lets’ fight to the end. You are exposed. And upon God’s grace, regardless of whether I would get the votes or would not get them, you will be further exposed… Our people know full well. The issue is not Janati, Mesbah, and Khatami. The issue is the leader and leadership. They want to destroy the leadership. But they will take this wish to their graves… Some of the seditionists and those today who have lost love with the West, they will hoist gallows in any city where they gain power. “

State-run Ilna News Agency, February 23, 2016, Rasoul Montajebnia, vice head of Etemad Meli (National Trust) Party:
”A few months ago we were informed that in secret meetings the hardliners decided to bus in more than 1 million residents of rural areas to Tehran and allocated a budget for this. This was planned so these residents of rural areas would vote in Tehran and as such inflate the vote for the hardliners.”

February 16, 2016, Mohammad Hossein Safar Harandi, former Minister of Islamic Guidance:
“One day all of a sudden we opened our eyes and we saw that an individual is functioning in the Exigency Council who has nothing in common with the regime. He was able to get to that position because he was a relative of someone important. He wrote a letter to one of the leaders of the 2009 sedition and described the Imam [Khomeini] as a murderer and killer and complained to the fellow involved in sedition. How do you respect that murder and killer? We said to Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani] if this is a lie, deny it. If it is true, this is miserable and very telling.”

State-run Fars News Agency, February 24, 2016, Ahmad Janati, Secretary of the Guardian Council:
“In reviewing the qualifications, if we found the least connection to sedition [2009 uprising] we rejected the candidate. We take pride in this. “

The official state news agency IRNA, February 23, 2016:
“Hashemi called driving the candidates into elements of Daesh (ISIS) and agents of penetration very deplorable… Rafsanjani described dogmatic views that are backed by bayonet as inappropriate… and said that some by claiming to be pious and revolutionary are trying to deceive the public.”

IRNA, Mohammad Vakili, candidate of the coalition of “reformers”:
“Our domestic conduct is similar to a mine that is on the verge of explosion. Mines of unemployment, addiction, depression, lack of trust has among people who have been pushed aside due to mismanagement, all riddle Iranian society. There is a serious concern that any moment we might hit one of these mines.”

Deutsche Welle, February 22, 2016:
In a letter to Rafsanjani, Ahmad Tavakol warned about obvious intervention of the UK in support of an election list and wrote: “The path that they intend to drag you and us into has no better fate than the 2009 uprising. You block this path”

IRGC Brigadier General Hossein-Ali Yousefzadeh, Inspector General of the Bassij:
“The individuals who have been supported by the world arrogance [the West], should recant and exonerate themselves as soon as possible. Otherwise they should be put on trial as a guilty person.”

Fars News Agency, February 20, 2016: Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, Chief of Staff of the Iranian regime’s Armed Forces:
“The individuals who have been supported by the U.S. and U.K., should separate themselves from the U.S. and UK. Otherwise they are guilty and are accomplices in the insult that has made to Iran. .. This is like military intervention. If the U.S and the UK cross the borders, the Foreign Ministry will protest and will seek explanation and will repel them. If that does not work, the military should repel them. This is also an aggression.”