Iran has strongest democracy in West Asia: Analyst

The Islamic Republic of Iran has the strongest democracy in the West Asia region and Iranians determine the destiny of their country solely by participating in various elections, a political analyst says.

Sam Mahdi Torabi, the director of the Resalat Strategic Studies Institute of Qom, made the comments during Press TV’s The Debate program, which was aired on Friday night.

Iran is “the only country in the region where people matter at every level of governance, beginning from the supreme leadership all the way down to the local level. It is people who decide who runs the country and what policies are made for the future,” Torabi said.

“The whole Islamic republic is based on the participation of the people. … On all levels, the destiny of the country is determined by the vote of the people,” he said.

In his Friday interview with Press TV, Torabi also said that enemies of Iran do not care who comes to power in the Islamic Republic as the president of the country. “The important thing to them is that whoever comes to power [in Iran] is put under pressure.”

Ayatollah Khamenei hails Iranian nation as ‘great winner’ of 2021 election

Ayatollah Khamenei praises the “epic” turnout in the 2021 presidential election and says the Iranian nation is the “great winner” of the key vote.

Foad Izadi, a political analyst and university professor, also from Iran, said at Press TV’s The Debate program that Iran’s enemies wanted to delegitimize Iran’s elections and the reason behind such policy is that “they want to pressure Iranian people.”

“By questioning the legitimacy of Iran’s elections, they can follow that policy,” he noted.

People around the world “realize that majority of Iranians trust the system of government in Iran that they go and stand in polls, sometimes for hours, to cast their ballots. This shows that the government has the legitimacy,” Izadi added.

Iran held its 13th presidential election on Friday. In parallel, the participants also voted in City and Village Councils mid-term Assembly of Experts and parliamentary elections.

Ebrahim Raeisi wins presidential race by landslide, preliminary results show

Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi has won Iran’s 2021 presidential election by a landslide, according to preliminary results by the Interior Ministry.

At a presser on Saturday, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli said out of a total of 28,933,004 votes cast in the presidential election, Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi garnered over 17.9 million votes, followed by Mohsen Rezaei, who secured 3.4 million.

Nasser Hemmati garnered 2.4 million votes, and Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi won almost one million votes.

Rahmani-Fazli added that he was not offering precise figures because vote counting was still ongoing and said he was merely providing preliminary updates. 

The results of the other elections are yet to be released.

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