Iran’s senior leaders flooded the media with eve-of-poll warnings that abstentions in Friday’s parliamentary elections – either through indifference or as a protest – will only encourage Donald Trump to step up economic sanctions against Tehran.

The one-week period of officially sanctioned campaigning for a seat in the next five year parliament ended on Wednesday night, 24 hours before voting started amid the first serious outbreak of coronavirus in Iran.

Fifty-eight million Iranians are entitled to vote in what the Iranian government claims is the benchmark for democracy in west Asia, but which many in the west dismiss as an elaborate charade. On Thursday the US announced sanctions against five members of the guardian council, saying the body that vets all parliamentary candidates was guilty of electoral manipulation.