Iran’s voters go cold on regime

After days blatantly lying about last month’s shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger airliner over Tehran, Iran’s ayatollahs want the world to believe coronavirus was to blame for the lowest voter turnout in an election since the 1979 revolution overthrew the Shah. They’re kidding no one, even though their anxiety to finagle the truth is no surprise. In the weekend vote for a new, 290-member Majlis (parliament), according to government figures (viewed with considerable suspicion for gilding the lily), there was a turnout of 42 per cent of the 58 million eligible voters under a non-compulsory system. That compares with 64 per cent in 2014 and 62 per cent in 2016. The previous lowest turnout was 51 per cent in 2004.

The outcome in Tehran, a hotbed of anti-regime sentiment, was even worse with an abysmal 25 per cent casting ballots despite repeated exhortations from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for voters to exercise their “religious and patriotic duty”, and polling stations staying open late. Ayatollah Khamenei and other officials issued defensive statements blaming everything from alleged Western propaganda about coronavirus which, they claimed, scared voters away, to bad weather. The truth is that after months of seriously deepening economic hardship due to Donald Trump’s reimposition of crippling sanctions, and undiminished anger over the regime’s lies about the “own goal” shooting down of the Ukrainian aircraft, in which 82 mostly young Iranians died, voters set out to embarrass the regime by staying away. Their rage is understandable: the World Bank estimates sanctions shrunk the Iranian economy by 9 per cent last year. Inflation and unemployment have soared. Iranians are hurting. Hundreds of street protesters were killed by regime forces last November when nationwide demonstrations about their plight were ruthlessly suppressed.

Yet the regime remains defiant. It has refused Mr Trump’s repeated offers of dialogue about a revised nuclear deal that could lead to sanctions relief. Instead, it has continued its brazen terrorist activities across the Middle East aimed at the ultimate destruction of Israel. Protesters’ demands that the regime use billions of dollars Barack Obama made available to Tehran when the nuclear deal was signed (Mr Trump claims it was $US150bn) to help the economy have been ignored. To the fury of the embattled protesters, it has gone into Iranian military involvement in Syria and Yemen and supporting terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

After 6850 of almost 14,000 would-be candidates (many reform-minded) were arbitrarily debarred by the unelected Ayatollah Khamenei’s Guardian Council, it is no surprise hand-picked, hardline regime loyalists won the election in a landslide. Many are said to be extremists in the mould of fanatical former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was hellbent on the destruction of Israel. “Reformists” ended up with a paltry 17 seats. They got not one of the 30 in Tehran, a centre of dissent. In Iran’s authoritarian system, parliament’s powers are limited. But as an indication of the deepening disaffection of Iranians for their oppressive rulers, the election could hardly have been more significant. The message writ large is that Iranians are increasingly fed up with the profound economic hardship being caused by sanctions and the obdurate regime’s refusal to change. The ayatollahs would be unwise to ignore the anger of the millions who stayed away.