Iran Goes from Bad to Worse Hardliners win elections, thanks in part to Trump's treaty withdrawal.
Trump and his ego have to go!
Foreign Correspondent: Iran Goes from Bad to Worse
Hardliners win elections, thanks in part to Trumps treaty withdrawal.
https://progressive.org/dispatches/iran-goes-from-bad-to-worse-erlich-200227/
by Reese Erlich February 27, 2020
TEHRANThe parliamentary candidates had rented a large hall for a campaign rally, but only a few hundred supporters showed up. They came to see Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a leading hardliner and possible presidential candidate next year.
As warm-up speakers droned on, the audience responded with ritualistic chants but little enthusiasm. Many stared at their smartphones. Then the event ended abruptly. Ghalibaf never showed up.
The hardliners, known here as principalists, won a landslide victory in Irans February 21 parliamentary elections but without the kind of enthusiasm that marked previous campaigns.
The principalists won all thirty seats in Tehran and 220 of the 290 total parliament seats. But the nationwide turnout was just 42.5 percent, compared to almost 62 percent for the 2016 parliamentary elections, and was the lowest since the 1979 Revolution. In Tehran, only 25 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
The principalists defeated the reformists, who had previously dominated the parliament and supported President Hassan Rouhani.
A prominent journalist and reformist supporter predicted the principalist landslide. He told me that President Donald Trumps withdrawal from the nuclear accord in 2018 and the economic problems stemming from U.S. sanctions humiliated the reformists. It was Trumps gift to the hardliners........................................