US Sanctions Members of Iran’s Guardian Council

The US Treasury Department on Thursday, March 21st, one day before the Islamic Republic’s parliamentary elections, sanctioned several members of Iran’s Guardian Council.

According to the department’s announcement, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Guardian Council, heads the list of sanctions, alongside Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a jurist member of the Guardian Council.

Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the council’s spokesperson, Siamak Rahpeyma, and Mohammad Hassan Sadeghi Moghaddam, who are lawyer members of the Guardian Council, are also included in this new sanctions list.

Brian Hook, the US State Department’s Iran policy coordinator, said in an interview with Radio Farda, referring to Ahmad Jannati’s role and that of other Guardian Council members in preventing government critics from running in Iran’s elections: “If the Islamic Republic were truly a republic, it should not fear the voices and opinions of its own people.”

According to him, “Although Ahmad Jannati is not a well-known figure outside of Iran and is largely unknown internationally, he is very well known to the Iranian people and over the past forty years has determined the qualifications of election candidates.”

The US State Department official added: “We will continue to expose the faces of those who wish to hide in the shadow of the regime for the world to see, and we will not allow the Islamic Republic to continue operating by presenting Mohammad Javad Zarif as its only face.”

In the upcoming elections, according to official reports, 14,000 people registered to compete for 290 parliamentary seats, with the Guardian Council approving only 6,850 candidates as qualified.

Some reports indicate that the number of registered candidates was 16,145, meaning 56 percent were disqualified.

Many prominent reformist and even conservative figures, including one-third of current parliamentarians, have been disqualified by the Guardian Council. The elections are scheduled for Friday, March 2nd.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday in a statement: “The United States will not tolerate the Islamic government’s exclusionary control over elections in favor of a hostile faction, and the new sanctions target senior Guardian Council officials who have deprived people of their right to free elections.”

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

Brian Hook further emphasized in his continued interview with Radio Farda that the sanctions against Ahmad Jannati and other Guardian Council members are in no way symbolic and will cause them difficulties, including the blocking of their assets and funds and restrictions on visa issuance and foreign travel.

The American official added that sanctioning Guardian Council members will expose them to the scrutiny of the entire world.

Hook also said in remarks broadcast by the Voice of America’s Persian service, referring to Iran’s parliamentary elections: “Tomorrow, the Iranian regime will, so to speak, hold elections, but the Iranian people have never experienced real elections over the past 40 years. In fact, the election results have been secretly predetermined by the Iranian regime.”

In Iran’s upcoming elections, 57 million Iranians are eligible to vote, but reports suggest that public participation in the elections will not be widespread. Ahmad Naderi, head of the Social Research Institute at the University of Tehran, said on February 14th that based on a poll, 24 percent of Tehran residents will participate in the elections.

The Reformists’ Supreme Policy Council previously reported that 90 percent of its candidates were disqualified in the parliamentary elections and said it would not submit a list for the eleventh parliamentary elections in Tehran’s electoral district.

Nevertheless, senior government officials, the Guardian Council, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s leader Khamenei, and judicial officials have repeatedly called on the people to show “widespread participation” in the elections over recent days.

Source: Radio Farda