Minutes after voting concluded in Iran’s presidential elections at midnight Friday, unidentified assailants attacked a vehicle transporting election boxes in Sistan-Baluchistan Province on June 29.
The assault allegedly resulted in the deaths of two security force members, and injuries to several others, according to Iran's state news agency IRNA. Additionally, one of the assailants was also reportedly killed.
Early Saturday conflicting reports emerged from IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News agency, initially identifying the two deceased as ballot security officers but later describing them as border guards.
Quoting Iranian border police commander Brigadier General Ahmad Ali Goudarzi, IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News agency reported that one of the assailants was killed during an “armed conflict between the border guards and a terrorist group in the Jakigor border region, located in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.” Goudarzi further added that two others were injured and fled the scene of the conflict.
Iranian media identified the two killed Farhad Jalili and Ebrahim Marmazi.
Reacting to the news, Iranian Presidential candidate Masoud Pezeshkian referred to the two victims as members of Iran’s “police forces”.
“The news of the oppressed martyrdom of the zealous police forces of Rask city by the criminals, who were attacked in a cowardly way while protecting the people's votes, caused a lot of emotion and pain,” Pezeshkian wrote on X Saturday.
Former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif responded to the incident, commending the two as "zealous men of the police force" and "martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Iran and protecting democracy."
“They did not allow the theft of the votes of the brave people of Sistan and Baluchistan and in this way, they reached a high level of martyrdom,” Zarif stated.
"I am a former hostage…I endured Evin, Iran's most notorious jail, and can't understand how Sweden can leave its citizen to die there," Namazi wrote in an opinion piece for the Guardian on Friday.
As part of the Stockholm-Tehran deal on June 15 two Swedish citizens Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi were swapped with Hamid Nouri, a former prison official serving a life sentence in Sweden for war crimes for his role in mass executions of political prisoners in Iran in 1988. Sweden said that Iran refused to negotiate the release of Djalali in the deal.
“I am overjoyed to see Floderus and Azizi back home with their loved ones, but Stockholm’s decision to strike that deal and leave behind a Swedish citizen facing execution in Iran was unconscionable,” Namazi wrote.
Namazi argued that Sweden's failure to secure Djalali’s release reflects a troubling hierarchy in valuing citizens' lives and a severe lapse in negotiation.
“I believe it [Sweden] could have secured the release of all its nationals and several other European hostages, too, had it understood the value of the card it was holding,” Namazi added.
With a death sentence looming, Djalali has recently gone on a hunger strike as a last resort. In a message from Evin prison, he criticized the Swedish Prime Minister for leaving him out of the deal.
Namazi further referred to Djalali’s recent hunger strike adding that this isn’t the first time Dajali has been left out of a prisoner swap deal.
“I was still in Evin prison when Ahmadreza was omitted from the Belgium deal. As someone who had experienced the despair of being left behind from hostage deals several times myself, I understood his pain – though I wasn’t on death row,” Namazi wrote.
In May 2023, in a prisoner exchange deal with Brussels, Iran released Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele with Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat convicted of a plot to bomb an Iranian opposition rally in Paris in 2018.
Namazi wrote that Djalai was “purportedly the main candidate” to be swapped for Assadi but “his fate changed when Sweden arrested and sentenced Nouri, who had close ties to some of the most senior figures in the Islamic Republic.”
In December 2023, Amnesty International issued a statement saying that Djalali “is at grave risk of imminent retaliatory execution” the week that the appeals court in Sweden reaffirmed the life sentence of Hamid Nouri.
Namazi additionally recounted details of the times when he spent time in Evin with Djalali:
“He told me about the times when his captors took him to the brink of execution to bring pressure to bear on his would-be rescuers, and how in one instance he was tossed back in a solitary cell for five months to await his death”
“One morning, his sadistic jailers told him he would be hanged at sunrise the next day, and gave him what they said was a final call to his wife to say goodbye. He wished they had killed him in the first year of his arrest,” wrote Namazi shedding light onto the psychological torture Djalali was subject to.
Djalali a disaster medicine specialist was arrested in 2016 during a visit to Tehran. He was sentenced to death in 2017 on trumped-up charges without legal due process. He remains on hunger strike with his condition deteriorating as warned by human rights groups, activists, and his wife Vida Mehrannia.
Namazi, who was imprisoned in Iran for 8 years was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on trumped-up charges of “collaborating with a foreign government”. He was released on 18 September 2023 as part of a prisoner swap with Iran brokered by the Biden administration, in which the US released 5 Iranian prisoners and paid $6 billion to the Iranian government.
Pezeshkian is leading with 10.4 million votes. Total votes cast is 24.53 million out of more than 61 million eligible voters.
He is followed by Saeed Jalili with almost 9.5 million votes, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf with 3.4 million, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi with 206 thousand votes, according to official figures released by the Interior Ministry Saturday morning.
Voter turnout at around 40% is the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic. Additionally, there are 1.05 million invalid votes. The majority of voters boycotted the election, snubbing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who had call for a large turnout.
Throughout Friday, there were numerous reports of low turnout, even by journalists and politicians who were observing the polling stations. The 40% turnout is a total defeat for the Islamic Republic and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who repeatedly urged people to vote, making the election a referendum on his regime's legitimacy.
In 2021, turnout was 48 percent, the lowest in any presidential elections, while the present 40% turnout marks an unprecedented trend in the Islamic Republic's history since 1979. The 2021 number included the highest-ever percent of void and blank votes at 13 percent of all ballots cast.
The polls were extended three times until midnight with the hope that more people would flock to vote. Traditionally, Iranian voters mostly go to polling stations in the evening hours and voting is usually extended beyond the official hours. But on Friday nothing helped to lift the mood of voters.
Since 2020, it has become clear that a majority of Iranians have lost faith in the government's ability to improve the economy and allow more social and political freedoms. Participation in both presidential and parliamentary elections has fallen below 50%, with many people doubting the official election results and suspecting that the government is exaggerating even the low turnout numbers.
On Friday, some political observers in Tehran were commenting that the government was struggling to bring the official number of votes up to 40%, as no one would have believed any higher number.
In a tweet following the extension of voting hours, former Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif urged Iranians not to stay home. “Ignore the deceptive text messages and attempts to keep you at home,” he wrote, without explaining the origin or content of these messages.
Citizen reporters mentioned receiving a text message from the interior ministry in the afternoon, quoting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who stated that their votes, regardless of the candidate, were votes for the Islamic Republic.
“The meaning of the text message is: Those of you who are hesitant whether to vote for Pezeshkian or not, stay home! Because your votes are votes for the Islamic Republic,” one of the tweets regarding the interior ministry’s text message said. “Our vote is not [for] a referendum. It’s voting for a normal life. This text message has hidden intentions,” another tweet said.
