Iran’s supreme leader is the ‘only one important voter’ in the elections: Expert
The Iranian people will be the losers in Friday’s election no matter which candidate wins because their votes are not important, according to a senior fellow at a U.S.-based research institute.
In many ways, the outcome of the presidential race is a foregone conclusion, said Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Iran really has only one important voter … and that’s the supreme leader,” he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“So you could say whoever wins, of the candidates that you mentioned … the Iranian people will certainly lose,” he told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Friday.
A spokesperson for the Iran Foreign Ministry wasn’t immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Ben Taleblu pointed to anti-government protests in recent years, where demonstrators called for their leaders to resign. They were “not seeking reform, as in years past — but seeking, really, revolution,” he said.
‘Agent of stasis’
The frontrunner in the presidential race, Ebrahim Raisi, is “definitely an agent of stasis, not change,” Ben Taleblu said.
Political analysts have been floating hardline judge Raisi’s name as a potential replacement for Khamenei in the future, he said. Raisi, if elected, would be the first serving Iranian president in recent memory to be sanctioned by Washington before entering office — the penalties being placed on him due to his involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988.
“It’s likely that you’re going to see the Islamic Republic retain its aggression abroad,and repression at home with Raisi at the helm,” Ben Taleblu said.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. local time on Friday for the Iranian elections, with political pundits noting widespread apathy across the country.
