Canada Blocks Iranians From Voting

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission, Esmail Mousavi, lashed out at the Canadian government, accusing them of preventing Iranian citizens of Canada from participating in the election. Canada and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since 2012, meaning that there is no Iranian embassy or consulate in which Iranian citizens can vote in Canada, and Canada has not allowed the Iranian government to set up any polling station inside the country since diplomatic relations broke a decade ago, citing the meaninglessness of Iran’s elections and the lack of legal obligation for Canada to allow the vote. Mousavi said that Iran will organise voting stations inside the United States near the Canadian border to cater for its citizens in Canada.

Read more at the Young Journalists Club

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Raisi Meets with Sunni Members of Parliament

Ebrahim Raisi held a meeting with Sunni members of parliament in which they endorsed his candidacy and called for unity. A Sunni representative from the southern city of Bushehr said of Raisi “we expect him to work for the realization of humanity and fulfill our demands of the government” while a representative from the north-east called for unity in order to eliminate conflict and achieve glory. A representative from Kurdistan also asked Raisi to seriously deal with the problems that affect Sunni provinces, such as discrimination in employment and poor infrastructure.

Read more at IRNA

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Rezaei: Banks are Worse than the Ba’athists

Mohsen Rezaei criticised the damage that the banking sector has done to the Iranian economy and society at large, saying that they have caused more damage to Iran than the Iraqis during the 8-year long Iran-Iraq War. Rezaei said he will make the Central Bank more autonomous and deal directly with the financial instability experienced by most Iranians.

Read more at Hamshahri

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Hemmati: I Will Meet Directly with US President

Abdol-Naser Hemmati told Associated Press that if elected, he would be willing to meet directly with US President Joe Biden. Hemmati added that the US would have to return to the JCPOA first, meaning lifting sanctions, without any additional restrictions being added to the existing nuclear deal. Aside from a phone conversation between Rouhani and Obama in 2013, no Iranian leader has had a direct interaction with an American leader since the Revolution.

Read more at Donya-e-Eqtesad

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Raisi Holds Rally in Ahvaz

Ebrahim Raisi held a rally in Ahvaz, Khuzestan, an oil rich city in the south west of Iran. Notification of the rally went out on text message a few hours before, calling supporters to gather at 8pm at Takhti Stadium. Raisi’s headquarters said that the rally was held in accordance to COIVD rules, although images and footage from the rally seem to contradict this. Further north, in Hamedan, disqualified candidate Rostam Ghasemi held rallies in three towns on Raisi’s behalf. Ghasemi, like another disqualified candidate, Saeed Mohammad, it believed to have put his support behind Raisi’s campaign in exchange for a future senior role.

Read about the calling of Raisi’s rally at Tasnim.
See images of Raisi’s rally on Twitter.
Read about Ghasemi’s campaigning at Tasnim

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Mehr-Alizadeh in Fake Doctorate Scandal

FarsNews accused Reformist candidate Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh of lying about having a doctorate in economic engineering from Tilberg University in the Netherlands. A spokesman for Mehr-Alizadeh said that the candidate does have a doctorate and will supply the testamur soon but seemed to confirm it was not from a Dutch institution but rather an Iranian university. There have been periodic scandals of politicians with fake European and North American qualifications over the past two decades. This scandal comes amidst Mehr-Alizadeh’s claims about Ebrahim Raisi’s lack of education, and a concerted campaign by pro-Raisi press (Fars is linked to the IRGC) to discredit the frontrunner’s opponents.

Read more at FarsNews

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Politics Centres on Election Banners

Campaign banners of candidates became news on Wednesday. Ebrahim Raisi issued a statement ordering his headquarters to remove his banners saying that they are a waste of money and damage the environment, and requested that donors to his campaign direct their funds to projects that help the people, and not to printing or distributing banners. Saeed Jalili’s supporters, on the other hand, were subject to criticism for creating their own banners through graffiti throughout Tehran. Jalili’s supporters were also blamed for setting alight the banners of Abdol-Naser Hemmati in Qom.

Read about Raisi’s statement at Tasnim
See images of pro-Jalili graffiti on Twitter
See images of burnt Hemmati banners on Twitter

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Tehran Police Chief Responds to Debates

Hossein Rahimi, commander of the Greater Tehran police, criticised candidates for statements they made in the second debate regarding the Guidance Patrol, a morality police who enforce the hijab in public. Rahimi said “it is not possible to play with the Islamic and moral values ​​of the society”, and these issues should not be exploited to collect votes. During the debate, Ebrahim Raisi promised to create a Guidance Patrol to police economic managers, and both Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh and Ali-Reza Zakani weighed into a discussion about the enforcement of hijab in public.

Read more by ISNA

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Health Minister Complains of COVID Politics

The Minister for Health, Dr Saeed Namaki, criticised candidates for their COVID management platforms, saying that by doing so, they were turning an issue that affected the peoples’ well-being into a factional political matter. Namaki spoke of the victims of four waves of the pandemic that has hit Iran, adding that “I am the Minister of Health of all the people of this land: Shia, Sunni, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, atheist, Principalist, Reformist, factionless and even a prisoner sentenced to death – people must accept that the Minister of Health is not political”.

Read more at ISNA

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