US sanctions Iranian election officials who bar candidates

The U.S. said it has sanctioned members of an Iranian government agency that it says rigs elections in the country by disqualifying candidates who don’t echo the political ideology of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Five members of Iran’s Guardian Council and its Elections Supervision Committee, who are appointed by Khamenei, were added to the U.S. sanctions list on Thursday, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

“The Trump administration will not tolerate the manipulation of elections to favor the regime’s malign agenda, and this action exposes those senior regime officials responsible for preventing the Iranian people from freely choosing their leaders,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement. “The United States will continue to support the democratic aspirations of Iranians.”

The commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Hossein Salami, urged Iranians to turn out for parliamentary elections on Friday in defiance of the U.S. and said “every vote by the people is a slap in the face of an enemy who is hoping for a low turnout,” the semi-official Tasnim news reported.

The government is concerned about low turnout for the election after the Guardian Council and its elections committee issued mass disqualifications of reformist and moderate candidates. Treasury said in its statement that “several thousand” candidates were ruled ineligible for the election, “including several incumbent legislators.”

Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, told reporters Thursday that the balloting is “political theater” because “the real election took place in secret long before any ballots were cast.”