Rouhani lashes out at US for claims against Iran elections
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has dismissed a recent US report criticizing elections in the Islamic Republic, urging American officials to focus on the internal affairs of their own country.
“Elections in Iran are free, clean, competitive and democratic,” Rouhani told IRIB on the sidelines of a meeting of the Assembly of Experts in Tehran on Tuesday.
In its 2016 human rights report released on March 3, US Department of State had questioned the electoral process in the Islamic Republic.
“I think those who are criticizing elections in Iran need to take a look at the recent [presidential] election [in the US] and the problems they had,” he added in reference to massive protest rallies held across the US and many other countries against the election of Donald Trump as president.
The Iranian president emphasized that both parties in the US - Democratic and Republican - had protested the results of the recent presidential election in the country.
Rouhani said even the current US president himself was skeptical about the cleanness of the polls before being elected as president.
In the run-up to the November 8 election, Trump repeatedly accused the media of bias for not covering “a large-scale voter fraud” during early voting across the country. In addition, he called the election process rigged, and said the media was colluding with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in order to beat him.
US Electoral College voted for Trump to become president despite him losing the popular vote by some three million votes.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Rouhani reiterated that elections in Iran are based on a mechanism and the participation of people and enjoy a very strict executive and supervisory system.
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