The Biden administration recently allowed Iranian citizens to vote in Iran’s presidential election from makeshift booths in several U.S. hotels, which angered critics of the Iranian regime. This resulted in the election of Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, who defeated former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Pezeshkian won 53.3% of the vote, while Jalili received 44.3%.
The Iranian president’s role is primarily symbolic. The unelected Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, holds absolute power and decides who can run for president.
The election saw the lowest participation since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. The Interior Ministry reported over 30 million votes and a turnout of 50% in the run-off election, a near-historic low turnout for the country. Eyewitness reports describe empty polling stations in Iran.
Many Iranian observers criticized the mainstream media on social media for inaccurately portraying the election as a contest between “reformer” Masoud Pezeshkian and “hardliner” Saeed Jalil, Kaveh Shahrooz, an Iranian-Canadian expert, urged for actions to dispel the belief that Pezeshkian is a reformer and to bring together the Iranian opposition against the government in Tehran. He warned that selecting a so-called “reformist” president could lead to renewed false claims about the regime’s potential for change.
Lisa Daftari, a prominent Iranian-American expert, criticized the U.S. for facilitating voting for the Iranian election. She told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration’s decision to allow the Iranian regime to operate on U.S. soil is concerning, given the regime’s history of violence against Americans and its ongoing detention of American citizens. She questioned why any administration would grant access to such a dangerous regime.
When questioned about criticism regarding Iranian elections being held on American soil, a U.S. State Department spokesperson referred Fox News Digital to remarks made by Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel. Patel emphasized that foreign governments conducting election-related activities in the U.S. must comply with U.S. laws and regulations. He noted that the U.S. respects the rights of Iranian citizens and the diaspora to protest or participate in Iran’s elections. Patel also mentioned that such activities by Iran and other governments have occurred in the past and are not unprecedented.
On June 28, at a polling site in a Lynnwood, Washington hotel, there was an incident where a security guard allegedly assaulted an Iranian-American who had raised objections about the election process. According to a police report from Fox News Digital, the security guard grabbed her arm and tried to take her phone. The police officer, after reviewing video footage of the incident, did not see any warning issued by the security guard to the Iranian-American before attempting to seize her phone.
Following the incident, the unnamed woman told Fox News Digital that she was deeply shocked to discover that the Iranian regime was gathering votes just a short distance from her home. She explained that she left Iran nearly twenty years ago, leaving behind her family, friends, hometown, and the neighborhood where she grew up.
Her decision to leave Iran was driven by her inability to live under a regime that dictated everything from clothing to speech and actions and that resorted to violence against its people to silence dissent. Learning about the voting station for a regime that she believes perpetrates violence against her fellow Iranians in her state left her stunned.
Iran’s government released information about polling locations in over 30 U.S. cities through its representative at the Pakistani embassy in Washington, D.C. Each Friday, they published a link listing these locations on the same day voting was held to discourage organized protests against the Iranian election.
The run-off vote initially scheduled at the Lynwood Hotel was moved to another hotel in the Seattle area after protestors arrived to disrupt voting. Following protests by Iranian-Americans and Iranian-Canadians at the second location, the manager decided to cancel the vote. According to a Voice of America report, voting for the first round occurred at hotels and other properties in Texas, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Kansas, California, Chicago, Arizona, New Jersey, and Nebraska.
The Biden administration’s complicity in Iran’s elections couldn’t have come at a worse time for players on the global stage. The Institute for Science and International Security has reported that Iran’s capability to assemble a nuclear weapon quickly has reached a critical point, with the potential to produce a bomb within days. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has significant concerns about its lack of detailed knowledge regarding Iran’s nuclear activities, including centrifuge production and uranium inventory.
But by all means, Joe – let Iran dictate a presidential vote in the United States. What’s the worst that can happen?
