Iran is holding parliamentary elections on March 1, the first since the 2022 uprising that swept the country following her assassination Mahsa Amini and demanding the end of the rule of the Islamic Republic. The regime has violently quelled these protests, but calls for reform remain, with many Iranians seeing the election boycott as a form of protest.
After all, the elections in Iran are considered neither free nor fair, according to observers, human rights organizations, and the State Department, due to the murky process of vetting candidates by the Revolutionary Guards Council.
Specifically, the regime is essentially accused of removing the element of choice from the citizens, as it limits their choices to candidates that it has pre-approved as suitable for the Majlis, the Iranian parliament.
Once the candidates are approved by the regime, from then on the elections are free – but those who are not liked are “cut off” much earlier.
Moreover, in the upcoming parliamentary elections, the names of the final candidates were announced less than two weeks before the March 1 vote, and the election campaign began 10 days before it. So for Iranians who intend to vote, there is little time to learn about the candidates and understand the issues they will face if elected. For those who boycott the vote, the announcement of the candidates at the last minute and the hasty election campaign are yet another reason to criticize the functioning of democracy in Iran.
Abstention as an act of protest
Under these circumstances, election turnout is expected to be low, especially in the capital, Tehran, and other major cities, according to the government’s own polls, as shown in Iranian media. This year’s parliamentary elections are “expected to have the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s 45-year history,” Holly Dagres of the Atlantic Council told CNN.
Yet this is precisely why elections are important: voter turnout is seen by both supporters and critics of the regime as a barometer of the legitimacy of the government’s policies.
So with a possible large abstention taking away from that legalization, Iran is trying to boost turnout ahead of parliamentary elections on March 1. To do this, he is trying, among other things, to instill a sense of duty in Iranians amid Israel’s war on Gaza.
In fact, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this month called on Iranians to go to the polls, writing in X that “elections are the main pillar of the Islamic Republic.” He warned Iranians that their enemy would seek to discourage them from voting, and presented voting as a responsibility and a form of resistance.
“Everyone should realize that fulfilling (electoral) duties is an act of jihad against the enemy, because (the enemy) does not want these duties to be fulfilled,” Khamenei further quoted the Tehran Times as saying.
But any appeals to voters to go to the polls are likely to fall on deaf ears as, in addition to the suppression of the protest movement and distrust of the regime, Iranians are also struggling with a troubled economy.
The Council of Experts and Khamenei’s Succession
Of course, of greater importance, at least in terms of their outcome, are the elections that are organized in parallel with the elections for the Parliament and are those for the council of experts, a body of 88 seats.
Iran’s Constitution states that this council selects the Supreme Leader, Iran’s highest clerical and political authority, who has the final say on all major state matters and serves as the supreme commander of the armed forces. The council of experts also acts as an advisory body to the supreme leader and can supervise or even depose him, although this has never happened.
The current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 84 and has been in his role for more than three decades. It is therefore very likely that the next council of experts to be elected on Friday will appoint his successor, in case Khamenei dies or is no longer able to carry out his duties.
So the focus is largely there, as policy in areas such as foreign affairs and the nuclear agenda are not determined by the Iranian parliament but by the supreme leader.
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