Iran International
Iran's state media and officials paint a picture of enthusiastic voter turnout in elections on Friday, yet social media accounts offer a contrasting narrative through videos and images.
The election headquarters extended the polling hours three times, two hours each time until midnight, instead of the initial closing time at 6:00 pm. This tactic to show a high turnout and busy polling stations was also used in previous elections.
Spokesman of the Guardian Council, Hadi Tahan-Nazif, told reporters in the early hours of the evening that turnout had already surpassed the previous elections in 2020. He avoided answering reporters’ questions about the number of ballots distributed to the polling stations which could provide a preliminary estimate of the turnout.
The regime appears to be deeply concerned about low turnout because officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have always boasted that higher turnout in Iranian elections in comparison with some Western countries was proof of the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and popularity with its citizens.
Photos showing a deserted polling station in the Kurdish city of Boukan.
In the past two weeks, many clergymen and regime politicians came out urging people to vote, spreading fear that a low turnout can endanger the country’s security and make governance even worse than what it has been in recent years.
Khamenei cast his vote a few minutes after the opening of the polls and made a speech in which he told voters to head to the polls and vote as early as possible. “Pay attention to this: Make friends happy and disappoint the ill-wishers,” he said while stressing that the eyes of the world, both friends and enemies, were on the Iranian elections.
Local authorities in some provinces and cities such as Lorestan, Kordestan, and Mashhad announced partial turnout figures in the afternoon. In Lorestan a local official claimed that 10 percent of the voters had cast their votes by 4:00 PM local time. For Kordestan, the turnout was said to be 25 percent by 7:00 PM. Even these official figures seem low, given a trend that regime loyalists usually vote early in the day.
A polling station at 10:00 AM in the religious city of Qom
According to the governor of Mashhad, which is the country’s second largest city, 33 percent of the eligible voters had already voted by around 4:00 PM local time. He said in the previous parliamentary elections in 2020 turnout was 33 percent so this time it is going to be higher when the polls close.
The religious city of Mashhad is a major stronghold of hardliners where turnout is usually much higher than in the capital Tehran.
An empty polling station in Qasr-e Qand in Sistan and Baluchestan province
But local officials were later warned not to announce any figures before the completion of the elections and to leave such announcements to the election headquarters.
Videos and photos posted from across the country on social media or sent to Iran International TV, however, show much fewer people, or even none, at the polls. Many social media users have jokingly compared the sparse queues and rather deserted polling stations with the queues at nearby restaurants and cashpoints where more people could be seen on Friday.
They also claim that the state television is using photos and footage from the previous elections as “live” material and have identified some photos of voters and queues used by the state media that belong to four years ago.
The photo on the left was taken in the elections of 2020 in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj as seen from the picture on the right.
Statements by some officials also suggest that despite the government propaganda, turnout fell far shorter than what authorities expected or hoped for.
“I invite all those who have trusted and voted for me and the main list of the Revolutionary Front, to increase their participation, to contact their friends or acquaintances right now and convince them to participate in the elections. It is not important just to win the elections, increasing participation is a priority,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf tweeted several hours after the polls opened.
While the Iranian regime heavily relies on Beijing as its primary oil customer, the actual data on bilateral economic relations appears less promising for the sanctions-stricken country.
China's foreign trade statistics for 2023 reveal that Beijing's largest trade volume is with the European Union, reaching $783 billion last year. Following the EU are major economies such as the US ($664 billion), Japan ($318 billion), South Korea, and others.
This overall picture will most probably not appeal to the Iranian regime sympathizers who have frequently lauded Tehran-Beijing ties as a sign of Iran’s foreign policy success; they have to be very patient to get to Iran’s name on the list.
Iran's placement as China's 38th trading partner, with trade volume not exceeding $32 billion, falls significantly behind several neighboring and regional rivals. Saudi Arabia, for instance, boasts a trade volume with China of $107 billion, followed by the UAE, Iraq, Turkey, and Oman.
Next in the region are the UAE ($95 billion), Iraq ($50 billion), Turkey ($43 billion) and Oman ($35 billion). Qatar, Kuwait, Pakistan and Egypt are the only regional countries whose volume of trade with China is less than Iran’s.
Iran Economist news website covered China’s foreign trade data in 2023 and Iran’s meager share in it, ironically calling it “the new achievement” of the Iranian government.
Faraz Daily, an online newspaper, warned that decline in trade with China is just a symptom which reflects a much enormous problem: Iran’s decline share of the world trade. According to the newspaper, Iran’s share of world trade has alarmingly decreased to %0.24 in 2022.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, economist and the founder of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a think-tank focusing on economic diplomacy in the Middle East and Central Asia, remarked on X that “Chinese exports to Iran have fallen significantly since their 2014 peak” while Beijing’s trade with Moscow has grown.
Many observers contend that China has over the past years considered Iran as an instrument through which it can boost its leverage in the region. According to Amin Saikal, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, “in befriending Iran and Afghan theocracies, China has positioned itself to be able to extend its influence across West Asia, given Tehran’s formidable proxy presence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.”
Despite this, Iranian officials have made numerous concessions to China, including granting contracts for infrastructure projects in Tehran, a move criticized by Ahmad Khorram, former Roads and Transportation Minister, as detrimental to local expertise.
Earlier this month, Tehran’s municipality announced that China will soon start building housing units in the capital. Mayor Alireza Zakani said several contracts have been signed with Chinese companies to revamp the capital’s infrastructure, including construction and transportation projects, at the expense of local businesses amidst a crippling economic crisis.
Rejecting the deal as an insult to the local expertise, Ahmad Khorram, former Roads and Transportation Minister, warned that “we have given China privileges that are unprecedented in our country.” According to the former minister, Tehran provides Beijing with all these privileges to guarantee its support in the UN Security Council.
Both China and Russia have collaborated with the US over banning Iran’s nuclear program and were the first countries to back the Security Council’s resolutions against Iran, he stressed.
Titled "White Torture," the documentary, showcased at an event organized by the Nobel Foundation, illuminated the isolation techniques employed in Iranian prisons to break prisoners and highlights the plight of political detainees enduring prolonged periods of solitary confinement, as recounted by Mohammadi's interviews.
Initially screened online by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, in November 2021, the documentary has since been presented in numerous cities worldwide.
Mohammadi, who herself endured four periods of solitary confinement, denounces it as a "cruel and inhumane punishment." In her book, "White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners," she vows to tirelessly advocate for its abolition.
The outspoken rights defender who is currently serving a 12-year sentence has also written a book entitled White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners “I will not rest until it is abolished,” she said in her book.
Originally published in London in 2022, Mohammadi's book, a two-volume anthology featuring interviews with fellow inmates, has been translated into English, Swedish, German, and French.
To mark the release of her book White Torture in France, Le Monde sent Mohammadi questions via an underground network of activists. Two weeks later, Mohammadi’s answers to the questions were received.
“I consider the practice of ‘white torture,’ in other words incarceration in solitary confinement by the government, to be unjust and brutal. The solitary confinement cell is the ‘mother’ of all executions in Iran,” she told Le Monde.
“In the course of my work on human rights and against the death penalty, I have learned that many of those executed, were subjected to the physical, mental and psychological torture of incarceration in solitary confinement. They made false confessions which then formed the basis, unlawful, of their death sentence,” The outspoken campaigner against the death penalty added.
The families and lawyers of several of the nine Woman, Life, Freedom protesters executed by the regime since December 2022, have alleged that the victims were subjected to various physical and psychological tortures including solitary confinement to make false confessions against themselves which were then used as proof of their “crimes” and eventual execution.
The torture-induced confessions of protesters including Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard were shown on state television even before their trials were held.
White torture, in the sense used by Mohammadi, is different from white room torture, another form of psychological torture technique aimed at complete sensory deprivation and isolation that can lead to hallucinations and psychosis.
In the latter form, which has also been employed in the prisons of the Islamic Republic, the prisoner is held for long stretches of time in a soundproofed cell with white walls and no windows, given white clothing and food such as rice, and is often deprived from sleep. Amir-Abbas Fakhravar, then a freelance journalist, was subjected to this kind of torture at Evin Prison for eight months in 2004.