US sanctions Guardian Council members

On Thursday, March 1, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on several members of the Guardian Council, one day before the parliamentary elections.

According to the ministry's announcement, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Guardian Council, is at the forefront of the sanctions, and next to him is the name of Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a member of the Guardian Council's jurisprudents.

Abbasali Kadkhodaei, the council's spokesman, Siamak Rahpeek, and Mohammad Hassan Sadeghi Moghadam, legal members of the Guardian Council, are also on the list of these new sanctions.

Brian Hook, the US State Department's Iran Policy Officer, said in an interview with Radio Farda, referring to the role of Ahmad Jannati and other members of the Guardian Council in preventing critics of the Iranian government from entering the country's elections: "If the Islamic Republic is truly a republic, it should not be afraid of the voices and opinions of its people."

According to him, "Although Ahmad Jannati is not a famous person outside Iran and is very unknown, he is very well known to the Iranian people and has determined the qualifications of election candidates for the past forty years."

The US State Department official added: "We will continue to expose to the world the faces of those who like to hide under the regime's shadow, and we will not allow the Islamic Republic to continue to operate with Mohammad Javad Zarif as its only face."

In the upcoming elections, according to official reports, 14,000 people registered to win 290 parliamentary seats, but only 6,850 have been approved by the Guardian Council.

Some reports indicate that the number of registrants was 16,145, which means that 56% of them were disqualified.

Many reformist and even traditional figures, including a third of the current members of parliament, have been disqualified by the Guardian Council. Elections are scheduled to be held on Friday, March 18.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement on Thursday: "The United States will not tolerate the Islamic State's monopoly on elections in favor of a malicious faction, and the new sanctions target senior Guardian Council officials who have denied the people the right to free elections."

He then emphasized that the United States would support the democratic spirit of the Iranian people.

Brian Hook, in his interview with Radio Farda, emphasized that the sanctions against Ahmad Jannati and other members of the Guardian Council are not symbolic in any way and will cause problems for them, including the freezing of their assets and funds and restrictions on visa issuance and foreign travel.

The American official added that sanctioning members of the Guardian Council would expose them to the world's scrutiny.

Mr. Hook also said in a speech broadcast on the Persian service of the Voice of America television network, referring to the parliamentary elections in Iran: "Tomorrow the Iranian regime will hold so-called elections, but the Iranian people have never experienced real elections in the past 40 years. In fact, the results of the elections have been secretly determined in advance by the Iranian regime."

In the upcoming elections in Iran, 57 million Iranians are eligible to vote, but reports indicate that public participation in the elections will not be widespread. For example, Ahmad Naderi, head of the Institute of Social Studies at the University of Tehran, announced on February 16 that, based on the results of a survey, 24 percent of Tehran residents will participate in the elections.

The Reformists' Supreme Policy Council had previously announced the disqualification of 90% of its candidates in the parliamentary elections and had said that it would not submit a list for the 11th parliamentary elections in the Tehran constituency.

However, senior government officials, the Guardian Council, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and judicial officials have repeatedly called on the public to "massively participate" in the elections in recent days.

Source: Radio Farda