Iranian state-run media has admitted that the regime’s legitimacy will be challenged by the predicted low turnout in the presidential election, following the organization of a boycott by the Resistance.

The Etemad daily reported that if the low election turnout (as previously seen in February 2020) happens again, then the regime’s legitimacy will be in question, so they advised that all politicians, no matter their faction should seek to increase voter turnout above all.

They quoted Expediency Council member Mohammad Sadr as saying that the opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and its Resistance Units, are encouraging a boycott to undermine the legitimacy of the regime, so if the turnout is low, the regime would consider it a security threat.

While the Resalat daily wrote on May 20: “The current situation targets the system’s security and fuels calls for regime change.” 

There are many reasons for the boycott, but the general feeling can be best summed up in the following quote from one of the regime’s top clerics, Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, where he gives the game away.

He said: “Democracy only matters for Western countries. For us, it is just a tool. People’s votes do not bring legitimacy for us. In an Islamic government, people’s vote has no religious and legal validity.  Neither in choosing the type of political system, ratifying the constitution, nor the presidential election, the election of the assembly of experts, and choosing the Supreme Leader.” 

Is it any wonder that the MEK has been so forthright in calling for a boycott or that the people have embraced it so much; stating that their vote is for regime change.

A video is being shared widely on social media of a mother who lost a son who was not yet 20 to the regime’s cruelty, asking how voting has ever changed things under the regime.

She said: “I do not forgive the unjustly spilt blood of my Mehrdad. My vote is the overthrow of this regime. People, if you vote, you are putting your finger in the blood of your compatriots who were murdered innocently during the bloody November [2019 uprising], like Mehrdad and many others.”

Another mother said: “We will never forgive. Not just those who ordered, recorded, and carried out the order of murdering our children, but we will not forgive those who vote and participate in the elections. Their sin, and the one of those who stay silent in the face of oppression, is not less than those who killed and betrayed our children.”