Following the death of Ebrahim Raisi last month in a helicopter crash, Iran is now preparing to hold another sham presidential election on 28^th June. Raisi’s death has caused uproar amongst the ruling elite in the Islamic Republic. As a tried and tested executioner, known as ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ for his key role as a hanging judge during the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners, mostly supporters or members of the main democratic opposition movement the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Raisi was in line to be the successor to the ailing 85-year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi’s sudden demise has spread confusion and alarm. While the ultimate head of the Iranian state is the unelected Supreme Leader, the president is the second-most powerful position.

The theocratic dictatorship that rules Iran faced a dilemma. 80 people registered as potential candidates for the presidency. The Supreme Leader has to choose one whom he would ensure would be backed by the powerful Guardian Council, which has the job of vetting candidates, and would then be certain to win the election based on intimidation, buying votes, stuffed ballot boxes and outright fakery. The Guardian Council, which has the final say in who the candidates shall be, is an unelected body comprised of 6 clerics, who are ardently loyal to the Supreme Leader and are handpicked by him, and 6 jurists, who are appointed by the Head of the Judiciary, who is himself appointed by Khamenei. So, the Guardian Council is simply a mouthpiece for the Supreme Leader. His candidates are the only ones accepted, amongst whom he will have already nominated a favourite who will be sure to win the election. Ballot boxes and votes are an irrelevance, there only to provide a thin semblance of democracy to the gullible outside world.

The rules are clear. Accepted candidates must be male. No women are allowed to stand for election. They must be Shi’ia Moslem and faithful believers in the system of Velayat-e Faqih, or the absolute rule of the clerics. This thin veneer of righteousness has been used from the early days of the revolution to maintain the pretence of legitimacy embedded in its constitutional religious mandate, its sole excuse for denying political rights to the population and for fooling the West into believing they are dealing with people of high moral and religious principles. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Iranian people recognise that Tehran’s clerical leadership has had to rely heavily on coercion, repression, and lethal force in managing its domestic and international affairs.  Its external aggression and internal brutality underline its determination to stave off threats to the regime.

As in the case of previous sham presidential elections, the Guardian Council has rejected 74 of the candidates, including some infamous names such as former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the so-called ‘moderate’ former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, neither of whom were deemed sufficiently ruthless by Khamenei. Larijani was the parliament speaker for 12 years, secretary of the supreme national security council, head of the state-run radio and TV, minister of culture and an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general. But even these radical qualifications were insufficient for Khamenei. He instructed the Guardian Council, which has the final say in who the candidates shall be, to boot out Ahmadinejad and Larijani, leaving a shortlist of his six favoured candidates.

Out of this list Khamenei will have already decided upon the ultimate victor. The next president is sure to be one of the three most notorious gangsters and murderers on the shortlist. Iran-watchers reckon the short money is on either Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the current parliamentary speaker, former mayor of Tehran and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) air force commander; Saeed Jalili, a member of the powerful Expediency Discernment Council and a former chief nuclear negotiator; or Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former interior and justice minister.

As a former senior IRGC military commander and Chief of Police, Ghalibaf has run for the presidency twice before. He ticks the boxes as a bloodstained bully and oppressor. The IRGC is the regime’s equivalent of the Gestapo and is on the US terrorist blacklist. A controversial tape recording has been publicised in which Ghalibaf can be heard bragging to the Basij paramilitary about how he ordered the police to fire at student demonstrators in 2003. He has also been implicated in several corruption scandals. Saeed Jalili is regarded as an authoritarian hardliner. He enjoys strong ties with Khamenei and the IRGC. As the former head of the mullahs’ nuclear negotiating team, he successfully stonewalled talks in Vienna while the regime accelerated its clandestine project to develop a nuclear bomb. The former justice and interior minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was, like the late president Ebrahim Raisi, a key executioner during the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners. Indeed, he has openly boasted of his role in that crime against humanity.

The candidate ultimately selected by Khamenei will then take office following a derisory and bogus vote. Recent elections to the Majlis (parliament) saw voter participation fall below 7%, according to the mullahs’ own admission. Iran is now a powder keg ready to explode, with a mass of predominantly young, hungry and enraged people eager to light the touchpaper. Repression, restrictions on social media, arrests, torture and executions have all failed to prevent the nationwide spread of an organized opposition in the form of MEK resistance units. 864 people were executed last year alone – a 48% increase on 2022. Khamenei is battling for his survival. He needs a president who can crush all further dissent and spread his doctrine of fomenting conflict across the Middle East and sponsoring terrorism worldwide.

The time has come for the West to end its policy of appeasement and adopt a tough approach, condemning the sham elections. We must stand beside the Iranian people in their demand for regime change and for the indictment in the international courts of Khamenei and the other leaders of the theocratic dictatorship, for murder, human rights abuse and crimes against humanity.

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Struan Stevenson

Struan Stevenson is the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.