The Background
Working through the Pakistani Consulate in Washington, D.C., the Iranian government recruited dozens of activists to operate more than 30 voting stations at hotels, mosques, churches, a California film studio—and even a car dealership in Maryland—as part of an election to choose the replacement for Iranian President Ephraim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.
U.S. authorities permit Iran to operate voting stations even as they accuse Tehran of interfering with American elections.
The initial round of voting, which eliminated one of three regime-approved candidates who sought to replace Raisi, took place on June 28, 2024. The final round, which resulted in the election of Masoud Pezeshkian, took place on July 5. Numerous commentators portrayed Pezeshkian as a “moderate” and a “reformer” despite his alleged role in “violently enforcing the hijab on women at a university in 1979, well before it became mandatory.”
Iran-connected activists hosted U.S. balloting stations on behalf of the regime in 2017 and 2021, but this year’s balloting on American soil was something different, and for two reasons:
First, it took place just weeks after U.S. forces helped to knock down hundreds of Iranian drones and rockets aimed at Israel in mid-April in an attack that critically injured a seven-year-old girl. Defending against the attack cost Israel and its allies more than $1 billion.
Second, CNN reports that the Secret Service learned of an Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump. Assuming the report is true — and there hasn’t been much pushback — the Biden Administration buttressed the legitimacy of a hostile regime as it sought to upend American politics. Even the Canadian government denied the Islamic Republic of Iran the privilege of holding elections on its soil, as did Australia. Nevertheless, the United States was not the only modern democracy to allow balloting to proceed on its soil, with the Tehran Times reporting that voting took place in New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Greece.
Lawdan Bazargan, an American-based Iranian human rights activist whose brother was murdered by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the late 1980s, argues that “it is entirely inappropriate to allow a repressive, gender-apartheid regime that has the blood of Iranians and Americans on its hands to hold sham elections on U.S. soil.” She added: “The Iranian constitution discriminates against women and non-Shi’a Muslims, blocking them from running for the presidency, which further undermines any claims to legitimate democratic processes.” To buttress her point, Bazargan reminded readers of Iran International that all three of the candidates on the ballot were “approved by the Guardian Council, an unelected body [which] vets all candidates and can disqualify any deemed insufficiently loyal to the regime.”
Regime organizers show little tolerance for questions
Efforts by election organizers to keep some balloting locations secret from critics further underscored the problematic nature of the elections. After protesters showed up at the preliminary balloting stations on June 28, organizers hid balloting stations in California and Massachusetts for the final vote on July 5. Sources reported that would-be voters had to email pictures of their passport before learning the locations.
It is entirely inappropriate to allow a repressive, gender-apartheid regime that has the blood of Iranians and Americans on its hands to hold sham elections on U.S. soil.
Lawdan Bazargan
Vahidreza Nasirian, a Boston-area engineer who ran the balloting stations for the Iranian regime in Massachusetts on June 28, spoke in particularly hostile terms with FWI. Apparently smarting from having to retreat from a voting station at the Weston Congregational Church in Weston, Massachusetts, to the Nejaf Islamic Center, a Shi’a mosque located in nearby Milford, Nasirian showed little tolerance for questions about whose interests he was representing when overseeing the balloting. In particular, he took offense at questions about the role the Omid Islamic Center—a Shi’a congregation which rents space from the Weston church where balloting took place—in hosting the elections.
“I know who you are and it’s better for you to stop what you are trying to do,” he said. When asked to clarify his statement, Nasirian replied, “You know exactly what that means,” before ending the phone conversation.
Nasirian then declared in subsequent text to FWI. “I shared our conversation with my lawyer and I am legally advised to tell you to NOT contact me or my family again. Any further contact, harassment, or false accusations may be reported to authorities and legally pursued.”
Nasirian, who has given lectures at the Omid Islamic Center, was likely flustered by questions about the center’s finances. The center, which previously rented out space from St. Peter’s, an Episcopal Church in Weston, before moving to the Congregational Church where it currently operates, instructed would-be benefactors on its website to write checks out to these two churches — and not the Omid Islamic Center itself.
FWI contacted the two churches to ask them about this arrangement. Officials at both churches stated they were ignorant of why the Omid Center had its donors write checks out to their institutions. “We were unaware that the church was listed on the Omid Islamic Center website as a place to receive donations,” an official working for the Weston Congregational Church wrote to FWI. “Thank you for pointing that out to us. That is completely inappropriate, and we will ask that it be removed immediately.” (As of this writing, the Omid Islamic Center still asks donors to write checks out to the Weston Congregational Church. The Omid Islamic Center has not responded to repeated inquiries about this discrepancy.)
Violations of FARA?
The people who ran the balloting stations on behalf of Iran may have run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a federal law which requires people – American citizens or not – working on behalf of a foreign government to inform officials of their efforts on behalf of foreign governments. Jeff Breinholt, a retired Department of Justice attorney with 34 years of service and a senior research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, noted that, “Even if it were Denmark holding an election, Americans helping them would have to file under FARA.”
Breinholt also warned that those who rented the halls on behalf of the Iranian regime — and anyone with whom they did business — could unwittingly find themselves under the scrutiny of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), which oversees interactions with foreign governments under sanctions. Breinholt also stressed that the Biden administration has an obligation to protect U.S. sovereignty.
Federal officials have not responded to FWI queries about the applicability of FARA and OFAC regulations on the people who ran the elections on behalf of the Iranian government, but in 2021, Brian O’Toole, a former official with the U.S. Treasury, told Voice of America that hosting “voting events was ‘clearly’ an export of a service to the Iranian government [which] is generally prohibited” by federal regulations. In 2024, he called this a “gray area.”
Elika Eftekhari, a sanctions attorney and a board member of the Alliance for Human Rights and Democracy in Iran added: “We do not have a lot of clarity on how the U.S. government decided to permit Islamic Republic polling stations in the United States. But one explanation can be OFAC’s General License E, which exempts NGO activities from sanctions if they are for ‘democracy-building.’ However, democracy-building only works if the elections are free and fair, otherwise we are enabling oppression.”
In their defense, the people who rented out space to the Iranian election workers may not have had any idea they were doing business with people acting on behalf of a foreign adversary.
Such was the case with Zachary Roe, the director of the Center for Interfaith Collaboration (CIC) which operates out of the church in Weston where voting took place on June 28. Roe discovered he was dealing with people operating on behalf of the Iranian government during a conversation with anti-regime activists from a group called “Boston to Iran” who showed up to protest the balloting. After learning that he rented space to people working on behalf of a deeply antisemitic regime that had recently attacked Israel, Roe, a kippah-wearing Zionist Jew, told the Iranian electioneers they had to leave. The CIC subsequently returned their payment for the rental.
In an email to FWI, Roe indicated that the election organizers were not forthcoming in describing why they wanted to rent the space at the church, which is conveniently located near two interstate highways outside of Boston. “The first email from the renter said, ‘This is for a community event,’” Roe wrote to FWI. Roe’s email to FWI continued as follows:
In my response to him I asked, “Could you please share the name of the organization you represent for the rental?” In his response he said, “We are not an organization. This is an election event for the Iranian community of the Boston area organized by volunteers.”
I incorrectly and naively assumed that this was some sort of nonprofit event or discussion/vote on something affecting the local Iranian community. At no point did he mention anything about the Iranian presidential election. Perhaps this was something that he assumed would be evident when he said “election,” but I wasn’t even aware that it was possible to cast votes in the Iranian election in the United States or even happening that day, let alone that he would be suggesting doing so in our space.
I can assure you that if I had a full understanding of the event, I would have made it very clear that we would not allow the space to be used for those purposes. Thus, the rental was revoked when the full nature of the event was made clear. It did not fit with the mission of the center, which is “to promote interreligious dialogue, understanding, and cooperation while providing opportunities for individuals from diverse faith backgrounds to engage in meaningful conversations and collaborative efforts that lead to authentic relationships and transform our world.” Thus, they were asked to leave.
The proprietor of Load Bearing Studios, a photographic and sound studio in Santa Ana, California, had a similar experience when he rented out space for balloting in the final election on July 5. “It was an absolute nightmare,” said the proprietor, who would not give his name. “My business got torn apart [on social media]. I didn’t know I wasn’t taking any part in it. Over the course of the day, I found out a lot of stuff.”
The studio owner rented his space out the night before the balloting to a “super nice,” “super-Westernized Iranian-American” by the name of Amir who said that he had worked as a low-level volunteer on previous Iranian elections in the U.S., but had agreed to take charge of a balloting station at the last minute for this round of voting. “I support democracy … but I would have preferred not to play a role in it,” the proprietor said.
The Biden administration’s decision to allow a hostile regime to host elections on U.S. soil should generate controversy. “Something doesn’t seem right about this,” Breinhart said. “When the U.S. cedes jurisdiction to private parties working on behalf of foreign states, that’s a radical act.”
Dexter Van Zile, the Middle East Forum’s Violin Family Research Fellow, serves as managing editor of Focus on Western Islamism.