By Alireza Kamandi

Irrespective of who wins the June 28 snap presidential election, the Iranian government will continue to be the strong representative of the Iranian nation and act with authority to defend national interests at the global level, says a former Iranian diplomat.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Mohammad Mirali Mohammadi, a former Iranian political counselor in the United Kingdom, spoke about the upcoming vote and its significance.

“Western states have historically neglected strong signs of democratic norms and values in the political system of Iran, including very high participation rate in almost all previous 40 general elections to elect either presidents, members of parliament, members of village and city councils or members of the Assembly of Experts,” he stated, referring to the negative portrayal of Iranian democracy in the West.

“They are however interested in and highly invested in expensive propaganda campaigns to weaken the relation between public and state in Iran”, he hastened to add.

He said the Western interference in the internal affairs of Iran goes back to 1953 when the US and the UK plotted against the first democratically-elected government in the country.

The former diplomat said Western states have concentrated on misinformation campaigns and fake news for decades to attack Iranian elections, as the heart of any democratic system, to interfere in the election process, call the results invalid for all sorts of excuses, create chaos and insurgence, or call the Iranian government as non-representative.

“This is while in the newest part of this PSYWAR, they have focused on promoting a wrong discourse of calling the elections useless or predetermined, to invalidate the elections and convince the public not to be present at ballot boxes,” Mohammadi told the Press TV website.

“Now the participation rate is the focal point of their propaganda war against the rising power of Iran. Many expect that the participation rate will rise and Western propaganda will be defeated again.”

Regarding the legacy of Martyr President Raeisi’s government in foreign policy, the former Iranian political counselor in the UK said the Raeisi government was successful in circumventing and controlling the impact of American and European sanctions.  

“Iranians have the experience of a non-successful diplomatic attempt to remove sanctions via negotiations with the US, and there is a widespread public belief that the sanctions are parts of the US’s major animosity against Iran,” he stated.

“Hence, sanctions need to be tackled in a different term with a different language which the US better understands, namely, the term of power, not weakness.”

He credited Martyr Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for the paradigm shift in the country’s foreign policy and spearheading a vibrant and dynamic regional diplomacy to develop trust and better bilateral relations with neighboring nations, an approach which bore fruits for Iran in the form of full membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, as well as free trade deal with the Eurasian Economic Union and increased involvement in the Asian Cooperation Dialogue.

Commenting on the decline of US hegemony and its benefit to Iran and other nations, Mohammadi said many experts throughout the world have discussed for more than a decade the decline in the US power and its global hegemony and the rise of a new post-America world order, especially after it failed in Iraq war.

“The decline of the US hegemony would naturally lead to less imperialistic and interventionist policies of the US, which have already been celebrated by independent nations. Both independent nations which have resisted or in the case of Iran, which has made a revolution against the US imperialistic interventions, can benefit a multi-polar world order or a non-polar one, which has been discussed by political experts,” he remarked.

By creating new international alliances, Iran and independent nations can resist more easily against the US’s illegal and unilateral sanctions, act more freely in the global economy and safeguard their national interests with less US negative impact” he added.