June 12, 2013
The
Islamic Republic yesterday put up a
rudimentary website with
similar to graphics to the election website it used in 2009, to inform
Iranian-Americans where they could vote in this Friday’s election show.
Under U.S. law, it is illegal for the
regime to engage in operations outside of a 25 mile radius of
its permanent mission to the United Nations in New York, and the
Interests Section in the Pakistani embassy in Washington, DC. Tuesday’s
announcement that the regime would open 19 official polling stations
around the United States was in open defiance of the law.
Today, the regime went further and issued a 4 page statement from the
Interests Section, telling Iranian-Americans that the polling
places were being set up in coordination with the local police
departments in each city. “If you encounter any problems with security”
in reaching the polls, the statement said, “you should contact the
local Police Department.”
"Staff will have
the number of the local police department and will post it" in the
polling places in case of incidents," the statement said.
The statement also said that staff
operating the polling places "will
have the official stamp of the Council of Guardians" and will
stamp both the individual ballots and the voter's Iranian passport (on
page 40).
"Keep the official flag of the islamic Republic at the voting table and
at the location," it added.
Canada is not allowing the regime to operate polling stations, a
decision hotly criticized by Tehran. “Canada had deprived many Iranians
of exercising their legal right,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Seyyed
Abbas Araqchi, said
in Tehran.
Araqchi noted that even when Canada and the Islamic Republic maintained
diplomatic relations, the Canadian government never allowed polling
stations to be set up outside Ottawa.”
“This suggests that the United States government has given its approval
to the regime to set up polling stations here in the United States,”
said Roozbeh Farahanipour, a
pro-freedom activist in Los Angeles.
According to a listing published at the regime’s election-show website,
six polling stations will operate in California; two in Texas; two in
the Washington, DC area; two in the New York city area; and others in
Tampa, Philadelphia, Nashville, Chicago, Oklahoma city, Minneapolis,
and Milwaukee.
FDI urges Iranian-Americans to
report these sites to the local FBI and encourage them to shut them
down because they are being operated in violation of U.S. law.
“Joseph Stalin had elections. That didn’t make the Soviet
Union a democracy,” said FDI
President and CEO Kenneth R. Timmerman. “The election show of
the Islamic Republic of Iran is no different from the sham elections of
the old Soviet Union. No one should be fooled.
“Iranians know what free and fair elections look like. And they know
they won’t be seeing them this Friday in Iran.”
Kenneth R. Timmerman is President and CEO of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.