Foreign Policy > Iran

Looking Ahead to Elections in Iran

Elections are a tool, not a solution. To fix Iran requires more.

John F. Di Leo | April 12, 2026

To hear the talking heads tell it, we are all looking forward to the day when Iran holds “free and fair elections” again.  Once Israel and the United States have completed the process of vaporizing the theocratic despots who have subjugated the Persians for these past 47 years, we can’t wait to see the country ruled by a popularly-elected government at last. 

It sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?

Perhaps we should take a moment to consider that dream.  Contrary to popular belief, elections don’t guarantee freedom, prosperity, tolerance, or happiness.  Too often, what guarantees those societal advances is completely different, and free and fair elections undermine them at least as often as they help. 

Even if they’re fair and honest — making sure only legitimate citizens vote, making sure they only vote once, dying a finger in purple ink so they can’t vote twice, etc. — an election is still going to put people in charge of a government.  And we must never forget that most of the evil done in the world is done by governments. 

Iran has had an elected parliament for years (even though their ayatollahs have held the lion’s share of the power), and that government has murdered tens of thousands of its own people in cold blood in just the past three months. 

They’re not alone.  In recent decades, the people of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France had free and fair elections, and elected governments that allowed their countries to import millions of unassimilable rapists and killers, who have irrevocably damaged their once-safe cities and countrysides. 

For the past ten years, the people of Canada have had free and fair elections, electing governments that have, by official policy, catapulted euthanasia into the position of a leading cause of death in Canada. 

In the 2000s, the people of the Gaza Strip were allowed to hold free and fair elections.  Whom did they choose?  The homicidal maniacs of Hamas. 

In the 1930s, the people of the Weimar Republic of Germany had free and fair elections.  They voted for Nazis; they freely elected Adolf........

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