‘IRGC meddled in parliamentary elections’ says conservative MP

This article was last updated on May 21, 2022

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Ali Motahari slams Revolutionary Guards Corps

Conservative lawmaker Ali Motahari has accused the Revolutionary Guards Corps of “meddling” in the country’s 2012 parliamentary elections.

Addressing fellow parliamentarians on Sunday, Motahari said the IRGC’s role in the 2 March elections was a “point of weakness” for the elite fighting force. He argued that the IRGC’s involvement in the vote had had a “damaging” impact on the military organisation, as well as the Islamic Republic itself.

“The IRGC’s interference in many of the polling stations was evident and many of the candidates—both those who were elected and those who weren’t—confirm this reality.”

The MP stated that during the election process, the IRGC “seriously backed” candidates it wished to see in parliament. “The IRGC’s interference in the elections was damaging to itself, and a danger to the revolution and the Islamic system.”

While serving as MP in the eighth Majlis, Ali Motahari, the son of the late Ayatollah Motahari, one of the Islamic Republic’s principal theoreticians and founders, also led the initiative to question Ahmadinejad, albeit unsuccessfully.

Following opposition protests in February 2011, he said that the Green Movement’s leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi should be allowed to speak their mind on national television.

Motahari won his way into the Majlis during the second round of elections held on 4 May.

Prior to the March elections, Iran’s major reformist groups boycotted the vote and the Coordination Council of the Green Path of Hope, an important decision-making body within the opposition Green Movement, called on Iranians to “stay in their homes” on Election Day.

IRGC’s election track record

This is not the first time that prominent Iranian politicians accuse the IRGC of election fraud.

Following the 2005 presidential race, which resulted in an Ahmadinejad victory, opposition candidate Mahdi Karroubi said that the IRGC had “meddled” with the electoral process.

In August 2009, seven senior reformists filed a lawsuit against several commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps for their interference in Iran’s rigged presidential election of in June 2009. The seven plaintiffs included four members of the Organisation of Islamic Revolution Mujahidin (Behzad Nabavi, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Mohsen Aminzadeh, and Faizollah Arabsorkhi) and three members of the Islamic Iran Participation Front (Chairman Mohsen Mirdamadi, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, and Mohsen Safaei Farahani). The parties are two Iran’s most important reformist groups that have also been outlawed by the judiciary.

The seven reformers say that the speech made by IRGC commander Moshfegh, demonstrates how the IRGC commanders had engineered the June 2009 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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