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Iran’s parliamentary election on Friday saw a voter turnout of just over 40 per cent, according to figures released on Saturday – the lowest since Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. Reformist clerics and rights advocates including imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi had urged the electorate to boycott the vote after anti-government protests in 2022-23 were brutally repressed. Facing a stagnating economy; the cost of funding proxy militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen and Sudan, as well as launching missile strikes on Pakistan, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan; and facing terrorist attacks on its gas pipelines and the eastern city of Kerman, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sought to make voting a patriotic duty, saying “it is important to show the world that the nation is mobilised” and that “the enemies of Iran want to see if the people are present.” It would appear they are not.