On February 20, 2024, Iranian authorities imprisoned three activists who called for an election boycott and criticized the Islamic Republic in the run-up to Iran's parliamentary elections, set for March 1.
Khamenei, who holds the final authority on all matters in Iran, has impeded "essential structural reform" and held back "the contributions of capable individuals."
Forty-five years ago, in 1979, Islamist revolutionaries overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and established an Islamic republic.
Since then, Iran has held presidential elections every four years, with a new president elected each time.
Sayyid Ali Khamenei, who served as the country's third president from 1981 to 1989, is also supreme leader, Iran's most powerful political authority.
On February 5, Meta removed Khamenei's accounts on Facebook and Instagram, citing "repeated violations of our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy."
On X, formerly Twitter, users also advocated for removing Khamenei's account, sharing the hashtag #banKhameneiAccounts. There was no reaction from X administrators by the time of this writing.
Meanwhile, Khamenei keeps utilizing the Western platform he could still use to spread anti-U.S. disinformation. In a post on X, he claimed the U.S. was trying to disrupt the elections in Iran:
"A US president once called on the Iranian nation to boycott elections. In opposition to him, people participated with even more enthusiasm. After that they stopped saying this directly, but they still try to distance people from the elections using various methods."
That is false.
There is no evidence that the U.S. is trying "to distance people from the elections" in Iran or that a "US president once called on the Iranian nation to boycott elections." Polygraph.info and other publications found that Khamenei's claims are "conspiracy theories" and pre-election disinformation.
Commenting on Khamenei's allegation that the U.S. is trying "to distance people from the elections," Arash Azizi, a historian and senior lecturer at Clemson University, told Polygraph.info:
"The main thing that has helped 'distance people from elections' in Iran is the fact that thousands of candidates, even sitting and former MPs and the Islamic Republic's own political factions, have been disqualified from running."
As for Khamenei's claim that a U.S. president "once called on the Iranian nation to boycott elections," Azizi said:
"I am not sure what particular president he has in mind. I can't think of such a call. Khamenei has long tried to create a narrative according to which the U.S. and other Western powers are enemies of Iran and its progress. It's a hackneyed narrative that few take seriously anymore."
Even without calls from outside Iran to boycott its March 1 election, a recent survey suggests a majority of Iranians will do just that.
Iran International, a London-based Persian-language television news channel, reported that the survey, conducted by the Netherlands-based Gamaan Institute among 58,015 Iranian residents between January 31 and February 7, found that 77% of those polled said they would not vote in the March 1 election.
In the same survey, 74.6% of the respondents said they would vote "no" in a hypothetical referendum on whether Iran should remain an Islamic republic.
On January 4, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-FAC), a Paris-based opposition umbrella group, posted a video with the caption: "Watch and judge how #Khamenei now resorts to direct threatening those who boycott the regime's sham #iranelection."
The NCRI-FAC video featured footage of Khamenei saying:
"Anyone who opposes the elections is opposing the Islamic Republic and Islam. Voting in the election is a duty."
While Iranian authorities have accused other countries of interfering in Iran's elections, the reality seems to be the other way around.
In November 2021, U.S. authorities charged two Iranians with launching a cyber disinformation campaign to meddle in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Last November, Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center warned that Iran, Russia and China were likely to interfere in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, which it said could mark the first time "multiple authoritarian actors simultaneously attempt to interfere with and influence an election outcome."
