Iran Announces Election Results: ‘Americans Lose’

Iran’s state-controlled PressTV outlet ran a column Friday concluding that a loss for President Donald Trump was a “win for duopoly,” meaning America’s free election system, and that no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election, “Americans lose.”

PressTV and other Iranian state media outlets have invested significant time in “analysis” pieces that conclude that the American people are repressed, their votes do not matter, and that only a revolution will save America. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted the collapse of America in its entirety in remarks on Election Day, citing a lack of morality in the country.

Iran is an Islamic theocracy that uses criminal law to punish dancing, women showing their hair, “blasphemy,” and any political dissent. While Iran does hold elections, Khamenei gets to choose who appears on the ballot, preventing the public from having any legitimate choice.

PressTV insisted on Friday, however, that Americans are the ones truly disenfranchised.

“’Democracy with American characteristics’ in the 21st century,” PressTV asserted, paraphrasing the Communist Party’s slogan “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” “means a never-ending duopoly, where citizens go to boarded up polling places on streets emptied of civilians but full of security forces, as if they are going to war and not just to vote like a normal person.”

“Because Trump posed a threat to the duopoly, they and their 1% allies absolutely freaked out in 2016 and spent four years throwing everything they had at him to boot him out by any means necessary. The cost was absolutely enormous on a cultural level,” the propaganda outlet asserted.

PressTV defended Trump as a representative of anti-establishment sentiment, but diagnosed that sentiment as a clamor for a multi-party system like those common in Europe, a claim for which the outlet did not present any evidence from polls or any other indications.

“You can dislike it all you want, but Trumpism is obviously a genuine, authentic movement, and 2020 confirms it was even a successful one,” PressTV asserted. “Call it the Flatworm Phenomenon: Democrats may succeed in chopping off the head but the body will undoubtedly live, election results prove.”

Trump’s supporters did not support Trump, who the article dismissed as narcissistic and amoral, but rather, appreciated that he validated that they felt “scammed and disgusted by the decisions of the political and cultural elite over the past 30 years,” the Iranian outlet continued.

Ultimately, the article concludes, Trump’s crusade to “drain the swamp” was “obstructed by his own nonsense” and “the only winners in the American duopoly are the richest 1%, of course, not ever a grassroots anything.”

This analysis complements an opinion piece published Wednesday that declared no American votes make a difference in how the country is run because they do not trigger a revolution that fundamentally changes the character of the regime.

“It’s when the rest of the world gets to find out who will be dropping the bombs the next time because that’s really what it means to millions of people around the world. Also, be careful, your vote is important. If you vote for the wrong guy US policy could fall into the hands of warmongers. That’s a joke because it’s like a trick question,” the column read, calling anyone who believed in voting “ridiculous.”

Khamenei himself weighed in on the elections on Tuesday, asserting that Iran had no preference between Trump and rival Joe Biden and that he expected America itself to collapse soon due to its “moral deviations.” While Khamenei insisted that neither option was preferable to his regime, his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, asserted that Biden was “more promising” to it. Under President Barack Obama, who Biden served as vice president, Iran made billions of dollars from the end of sanctions that followed the Iran nuclear deal.

“The statements by the Biden camp have been more promising, but we will have to wait and see,” Zarif said while on a tour of Venezuela. “What is important for us is how the White House behaves after the election, not what promises are there, what slogans are made. The behavior of the U.S. is important. If the U.S. decides to stop its malign behavior against Iran, then it will be a different story no matter who sits in the White House.”

In remarks similar to Khamenei’s on Friday, an Iranian general claimed that Tehran was preparing for the possibility of the United States becoming unstable as the final results of the election remain in doubt.

General Yadollah Javani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that the “possibility of deepening crisis and eruption of civil unrest” in America was high.

“The US authorities and Police officials themselves have admitted that America needs to brace for post-election turmoil, General Yadollah Javani said,” according to Tasnim. “The fact that the security forces in major American states have been put on alert reveals the depth of the possible crisis, the IRGC general noted.