WASHINGTON, June 16 (UPI) -- President Bush on Thursday called Iran's upcoming presidential election unfair and said Americans stand with Iranians struggling for their liberty.
"Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world," Bush said in a written statement. "Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.
"The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest -- and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around."
Iran's presidential election Friday features seven candidates for the presidency, a weak No. 2 position behind the country's supreme Islamist leader, the ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The seven include former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative whose previous liberalization efforts were blocked by the powerful Council of Guardians, a 12-person body appointed by Khamenei that screens all proposed laws and political candidates.
Bush noted the council blocked the candidacies of more than 1,000 others, including "popular reformers and women," while the government suppresses free speech and "brutalizes its people."
