“Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy,” Bush said in a statement. “The June 17 presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record.” Bush accused Teheran of denying an opportunity to run more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including “popular reformers and women who have done so much for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.”

“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,” Bush said. Teheran, he said, shut down independent newspapers and web sites and jailed those “who dare to challenge the corrupt system.”

“It brutalises its people and denies them their liberty,” Bush said. “To the Iranian people, I say: ‘As you stand for your own liberty, the people of America stand with you’.” Bush said: “Today, Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world. 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 June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record,” the US president said as Iranian voters prepared for the tightest presidential election in the Islamic republic’s history.