TEHRAN — Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, says with the disaster that happened in the U.S. state of Iowa, Washington is in no place to talk about Iran’s elections.

Marandi was referring to last week’s Iowa Democratic caucuses which aroused controversies due to a delay in announcing final results and inconsistencies in votes.

“We are witnessing how they are trying to prevent Senator Sanders from winning and this has become clear for the people in the worst possible form,” he said in an interview with Mehr published on Sunday. 

On Thursday, three days after the caucus, and with three percent of the results still unreported, the Democratic Party chairman Tom Perez requested a recanvass of the results.

“Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass,” said Perez.

Meanwhile, Sanders supporters on social media accused the Democratic National Committee of rigging the caucus against their candidate. Sanders won the popular vote on both the initial and final alignments, but another candidate Pete Buttigieg secured more delegates than the Vermont senator.

Also on Thursday, Sanders criticized the Iowa Democratic Party handling of the caucus results, saying at a New Hampshire town hall that the party “screwed up.”

“It is really sad that the Democratic Party of Iowa screwed up the counting process so severely,” Sanders told CNN, noting that the scenario “distressed” him.

MH/PA