To hear the talking heads tell it, we are all looking forward to the day when Iran holds “free and fair elections” again. Once Israel and the United States have completed the process of vaporizing the theocratic despots who have subjugated the Persians for these past 47 years, we can’t wait to see the country ruled by a popularly-elected government at last.
It sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?
Perhaps we should take a moment to consider that dream. Contrary to popular belief, elections don’t guarantee freedom, prosperity, tolerance, or happiness. Too often, what guarantees those societal advances is completely different, and free and fair elections undermine them at least as often as they help.
Even if they’re fair and honest — making sure only legitimate citizens vote, making sure they only vote once, dying a finger in purple ink so they can’t vote twice, etc. — an election is still going to put people in charge of a government. And we must never forget that most of the evil done in the world is done by governments.
Iran has had an elected parliament for years (even though their ayatollahs have held the lion’s share of the power), and that government has murdered tens of thousands of its own people in cold blood in just the past three months.
They’re not alone. In recent decades, the people of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France had free and fair elections, and elected governments that allowed their countries to import millions of unassimilable rapists and killers, who have irrevocably damaged their once-safe cities and countrysides.
For the past ten years, the people of Canada have had free and fair elections, electing
In the 2000s, the people of the Gaza Strip were allowed to hold free and fair elections. Whom did they choose? The homicidal maniacs of Hamas.
In the 1930s, the people of the Weimar Republic of Germany had free and fair elections. They voted for Nazis; they freely elected Adolf Hitler.
This may sound like an attack on elections. It’s not. But it is a call to recognize that elections are a tool, not a solution in themselves.
Elections are a method of choosing which people to put in government. You still have to choose what to allow that government to do, no matter who wins.
First and foremost, you must limit the government. Here in the United States, at our Founding, we were blessed with the greatest generation in the history of the world. Our states sent their best and brightest to a Constitutional Convention in 1787, and they thoughtfully, cautiously, meticulously laid out a form of government that would limit the power of both the elected officials and the bureaucracy.
Our Framers first divided the national (federal) government into three branches, then severely limited what any of the branches could do, either alone or together. The Framers left the existing colonial governments — the states — in place, unchanged, as a powerful counter against national power: by giving the states a near-veto power over federal decisions, through the appointment of the upper house of the federal Legislature. (Many have forgotten that for our first 120 years, the state legislatures appointed all U.S. senators. No bill could be passed, no judge, ambassador, or Cabinet officer could be appointed, without the approval of the state governments’ hand-picked repre
And on top of all these limitations, the Framers added a Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments — just to make it clear as crystal that there are many things that the national government simply cannot do, under any circumstances, no matter how popular it is, no matter how many “phones and pens” they may accumulate, no matter how huge their elective mandate.
What our Founding Fathers understood — and what too many have forgotten in the centuries since — is that it’s not elections that matter, but the power granted to the people who end up getting elected. Has the country constitutionally secured the rights of the people? Has the country constitutionally tied the hands of that government sufficiently, so that even if the very worst people do somehow end up getting elected, they have been denied the power to act as tyrannically as they would desire?
Here in the United States, over this past century, we have seen political candidates — and even an entire political party — repeatedly make promises that are blatantly illegal under any reading of the federal or state constitutions. The courts take much too long to catch up, but they often end up eventually overturning such attempts. How much better it would be if the public didn’t vote for such tyrants in the first place, but such is the risk with elections.
Everything depends on the quality of the walls that have been put up around the government — the limitations on both the candidates who win and the bureaucrats they appoint.
Today we see thrilled anticipation for the Iranian elections that we hope will soon be around the corner, but how much thrilled anticipation have we seen for the development of a constitution that protects the Iranian people from yet another dictatorship, this time popularly elected by a frustrated, hurried, and perhaps too trusting electorate?
No matter whether Iran gets a republic or a monarchy or a military dictatorship, it still needs protections against the powerlust to which all politicians and bureaucrats are susceptible.
Iran was a free and decent, modern and Western-facing nation once, not that long ago, and it can be again. But it’s constitutions, not elections, that will pave the way.
Before a single vote is cast, Iran will need a constitution that protects the public from the imposition of sharia law, from the oppression of crippling taxes, and from the particularly third-world problem of corrupt licensing by favoritism.
Before a single vote is cast, there must be legal limitations on all those entrusted with power, to respect the reasonable public practice of all religions, and the enforcement of real punishment of both public and private violators of such freedom.
There’s a reason why churches and synagogues are routinely attacked and burned all over Africa today: Even when their governments claim to be liberal, they don’t enforce it. Iran used to have Muslims and Sikhs, Hindus
The country has been tyrannically ruled by an apocalyptic death cult, the Twelvers, for 47 years. Even after this war is finished, there will still be Twelvers among the electorate; there are sure to be Twelvers who will seek election to the new government and jobs in the new bureaucracy. There will be politicians who use taqiyya to justify lying to their constituents in order to win.
Their new constitution must be written to assume that some of the worst of the worst will often win elections and hold public office. When that happens, how well will their hands be tied, how well will their powers be limited, so that they cannot repeat the tyranny of the past 47 years, and render this entire war a tragic waste?
It’s a difficult task. It has been hard even for us, and our nation was birthed by thoughtful, churchgoing devotees of the Scottish Enlightenment. Imagine how hard it will be for a tribal people, educated in madrassahs and force-fed sharia law from the cradle.
The rebirth of Persia, once such a noble and free nation, is a wonderful opportunity. It would be such a terrible waste if we rush them into ill thought out elections without first laying the
Before we pray for an election with purple fingers, pray first for a constitution with walls and teeth.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, consultant and public speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his biting political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his collection of essays on public policy in the 2020s, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, exclusively on Amazon.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/looking_ahead_to_elections_in_iran.html
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