The present paper investigates pragmatic competence by considering some corpora of 2013 Iran presidential debates. The Fararu news source was used for sampling third debate. The present study examined two aspects of pragmatic competence for analyzing the materials. First, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory was used to examine the positive and/or negative politeness of each candidate’s speech. Then, the study used the Pearson chi-square formula to examine the frequency of politeness strategies used by candidates. Second, Arundale’s (2010) face theory was used to analyze criticism responses exchanges between the candidates. The researchers assumed that, following the theories, pragmatic competence might have a great effect on election’s outcomes and mitigate the threat to candidates’ face. The findings showed a statistically significant difference between the frequencies of politeness strategies used by Iran’s 2013 presidential candidates. Moreover, there was one by one relation between the mitigating of face threatening acts and face constituting strategies used by candidaes. We hope the findings could add to the body of knowledge in both pragmatics and presidential election context.