Chris Coons: “tomorrow the people of Iran will go to the polls to elect 285 members of the Iranian Parliament, or the Majlis, and 88…”

“tomorrow the people of Iran will go to the polls to elect 285 members of the Iranian Parliament, or the Majlis, and 88 members of the so-called Assembly of Experts, which is the body that will eventually choose the successor to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Last December, Secretary of State John Kerry cautioned that having an election does not of itself make a democracy, and I think his words are equally fitting this week. Iran's elections, in truth, are neither free nor fair. Iran is not a democracy. Power brokers in Iran have already rigged these elections and even the results of a potential runoff in April will not tell us much we don't already know about the Iranian regime or its foreign policy objectives in the Middle East. Some observers do hope that moderate voices will make some progress in Iran, and I agree that is good to hope for, but I remain deeply skeptical. In many ways tomorrow's elections are nothing more than a rubberstamp because an unelected Guardian Council, which vets all candidates for office, has already prevented most moderates from even running. Let me explain. Aspiring candidates for Iran's national Parliament and the Assembly of Experts must be approved by the unelected Guardian Council before they appear on a ballot. Unless they make it through a multiweek vetting process and unless they are deemed sufficiently loyal and conservative, these aspiring candidates will not get a chance to be candidates at all.…”