Iran’s political legitimacy comes from ballots and popular will, not foreign powers

By Iqbal Suleiman

Those who source information only from the mainstream media have been made to believe that there are no elections in Iran and the people do not chose their leaders.

References are made to a country governed by an “authoritarian regime”, “dictatorship” and “mullahs”.  Who can blame you if you believe that the Iranian government has no support from its people if your only point of reference is the mainstream western media. 

A referendum on creating an Islamic Republic was held in Iran on the 30^th and 31 March 1979 and 98.2% of eligible citizens voted in the referendum with 99.3 percent voting in favour of an Islamic government. This demonstrates that the Islamic government at its very inception received overwhelming support from its citizens.

Iran holds presidential elections every four years. The president of Iran is elected by popular elections. Iran has universal suffrage where all adult citizens are eligible to vote and they can do so freely.  The fact is that since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has held regular elections with a voter turnout averaging more than 55% of the electoral vote.

The first presidential election was held in 1980 with a voter turnout of 63.6%.

In 1985 it was 66.4%. In 1989 it was 72.7%. The high turnout in this election was after the passing of Imam Khomeini and the majority of Iranians again overwhelming expressing their support for the Islamic Government after leader of the Revolution had passed.

In 1993 the turnout was 49.5%. In 1997 it was 79.5%. In 2001 it was 63.4%. In 2009 it was 49.5%. In 2009, it was 85%. In 2013 it was 72.7%. In 2017 it was 73%. In 2021 it was 48.8%.

The last presidential election was in 2024 after the tragic death of President Ebrahim Raeisi. The voter turnout in this election was 49.6%. Senior lawmaker Masood Pezeshkian ascended to the presidency with 16.3 million votes whereas his rival Saeed Jalili obtained 13.5 million votes. Close to 30 million Iranians voted in the last elections.

The Iranian political system is a highly intriguing space. Pezeshkian is a “reformist” who seeks more engagement with the West, unlike principalists.

A glance at the presidential electoral results tells us that the Islamic government has had overwhelming popular support. When you have voter turnouts of 72%, 73%, 79% and 85%, the figures speak for themselves. Interestingly the voter turnout in Iran surpasses that of most Western liberal democracies. 

It is true that in the last two presidential elections, the voter turnout was low but even at 48%, the turnout is considered acceptable in Western democracies.

The Iranian government is far from perfect though, but it is for the people of Iran alone to decide the form of government they want and who they want to elect to govern them.

The allegation that the government lacks legitimacy is not rooted in facts because close to 50% of the eligible voters participated in the elections. Here we are talking about the last elections in 2024 with the lowest voter turnout of approximately 30 million people.

Make no mistake, any war on Iran designed to achieve the so-called “regime change” translates into American and Israeli bombs on the 30 million Iranian ballots. 

Instead of probing why the West and the Trump administration in particular failed so dismally in political engagement with the Pezeshkian administration, which was open to political dialogue, the mainstream media instead peddles the fictitious narrative that the Iranian government lacks legitimacy because it has no support from the Iranian people.

Pezeshkian ran on an electoral ticket that promoted dialogue with the West, particularly on the nuclear issue. His administration was engaging in dialogue in good faith with the Trump administration.

Just a few days before the fifth round of indirect talks in Muscat in June last year, Trump gave the green light to Israel to illegally attack Iran and thereafter the Trump administration also joined the war by bombing Iran.

Trump walked away from peace and chose war because Israel wanted war with Iran.

By presenting a false narrative that the Islamic government is a “regime,” “unelected” and “illegitimate,” the mainstream media is deliberately seeking to delegitimize Iran and “other” the Iranian people in order to manufacture consent for war against Iran.

Have you ever heard Western media make any reference to the legitimacy and electoral support for governments in the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria or Egypt?

Why not? Why will they not even compare the electoral support from these states with that of the Islamic Republic of Iran? The answer is quite evident.

Iqbal Suleiman is a South Africa-based human right attorney and member of Media Review Network’s Research Team. 

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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