Elections Disqualified Vote-Rigging Claims: Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks in meeting with top clerics

(From right: Ahmad Jannati, Mohammad-Ali Movahhedi Kermani, Mahmoud Shahroudi, Mohammad Yazdi and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: Khamenei.ir)

Nearly a fortnight after the elections held on February 27, Iran’s Supreme Leader commented on the Assembly of Experts’ election in a meeting with members, who had just attended their last summit before the new assembly takes over, on Tuesday in Tehran.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the election a significant meaningful poll in which the people shone brightly. “The people showed their trust in the Islamic establishment in the true meaning of the word and practically proved it,” he stated. He said the election was competitive despite all propaganda and went on to draw a comparison between the recent elections and a presidential poll in 2009, which prompted street protests on grounds of a fraud. “If those who failed to be elected in the recent election, wanted to protest and complain and talk via loudspeakers, the atmosphere would not remain peaceful and unrest would turn up,” he said, in a rather explicit reference to presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, who led the protests in 2009 and continue to be under house arrest since 2011. He contrasted the losers of the recent election with the conduct of those who “behaved indecently in 2009 because they failed to be elected, waged conflict and drew people to the streets, imposing costs on the country and tantalizing the enemy”. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei told the Assembly of Experts members that the election has once again proved the falseness and unreliability of remarks made by those who claimed the election in 2009 was invalid, creating that harmful ‘sedition’ for the country.

When the leaders of what is now labeled as the ‘2009 sedition’ expressed their willingness to vote in the recent election and some were reportedly able to cast their vote into the ballot box, a move to encourage their supporters to participate in the elections, hopes were renewed for a national reconciliation, possibly including their release from house arrest. Rouhani’s advocacy of freedom also took a more aggressive tone after the results showed a breakthrough victory on the part of a coalition between the country’s reformists and moderates.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ayatollah Khamenei firmly defended the Guardian Council, which, he said, seriously undertook its job. However, he left open the possibility of reform in the constitution regarding the candidate vetting process inside the Guardian Council. “If there is a problem, it lies in the law, which should be modified,” he noted. When the Council cannot authenticate an individual’s qualification, it will not endorse his or her qualifications, he was quoted as saying on Khamenei.ir. He went on to call any dishonoring of the Guardian Council against the sharia and revolutionary values. Many commentators believe these remarks were directly aimed at two frontrunners of the Assembly of Experts’ election in Tehran, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, both present at the meeting. What supports such hypotheses is the Supreme Leader’s further praise of two candidates who were blocked from the Assembly of Experts in the recent election as part of an initiative masterminded by Rafsanjani and Rouhani to block the so-called hardliner JYM trio, namely Ayatollahs Jannati, Yazdi and Mesbah. Jannati’s Pyrrhic victory came at the cost of elimination of two like-minded figures and his standing on the bottom of the 16-man ladder for Tehran representatives. “There are some great individuals whose personality is not affected by winning or losing polls, including Messrs Yazdi and Mesbah. Their presence in the assembly gives it weight while their absence is a loss,” Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated.

The leader also hailed the position of the Assembly of Experts, saying it is the most important arm in the establishment that should carefully attend to its duties, remain revolutionary, and act accordingly. He also advised the Assembly of Experts to put aside ‘standing on ceremony’ and ‘expediencies’ and only consider God when choosing the next Supreme Leader.

Later on in his remarks, Ayatollah Khamenei directly criticized the administration’s policies from an economic point of view. He urged the officials to take into account the country’s three main priorities, namely the economy, speedy scientific progress, and cultural immunization. “The administration was supposed to launch a resistance economy headquarters and appoint a commander for it,” he complained. Regarding constant visits by foreign delegations after finalization of the nuclear agreement, he said there have been no particularly tangible results. The outcome for the country should become tangible in practice, not solely on paper, he said. “We have been hurt by the West and should not forget what they did to us,” he was quoted as saying, in reference to what has been considered as Rouhani administration’s westward economic policies. “I do not support cessation of ties with the West but we should beware whom we are interacting with. We should have relations with the whole world except for the Zionist regime [of Israel] and the United States but the world is not limited to the West and Europe,” he elaborated.

Ayatollah Khamenei repeated his warnings on ‘foreign infiltration’, saying the enemies were pursuing at least 10 methods of infiltrating Iran. “The infiltration project is aimed at disrupting the officials’ calculations to force them into decisions favored by the enemies,” he reiterated. He warned of the enemies’ scheme to manipulate people’s beliefs in order to make them forget the West’s treasons. “Apparently scientific, artistic and cultural contact and cooperation is among the ways used by the enemy to infiltrate,” he added.