Tehran's Feeling Of Insecurity Gives Rise To Intolerance Of Critics
A group of hardliners in Iran attacked the outspoken editor of a conservative paper during a speech, signaling rising intolerance even against regime loyalists.
A group of hardliners in Iran attacked the outspoken editor of a conservative paper during a speech, signaling rising intolerance even against regime loyalists.
Masih Mohajeri was speaking on Thursday at the anniversary of a 1981 explosion that killed tens of top officials of the newly established Islamic Republic, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti. But a mob of angry clerics disrupted his speech.
What stirred the confrontation was the speaker's praise for former President and Expediency Council Chief Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the man who brought Ali Khamenei to the position of Supreme Leader and was later pushed aside.
Like in many similar occasions, the attack seems to have been provoked by an article in the hardliner newspaper Kayhan which is close Khamenei’s office.
Ironically, both Kayhan and Jomhouri Eslami are financially backed by Khamenei, who is still the proprietor of Jomhouri Eslami, although his name no longer appears in the masthead.
Mohajeri, a cleric with no factional ties and free of any corruption allegations, has become a vocal critic of hardliners. In May, he called on President Ebrahim Raisi to resign amid a serious economic crisis.
Prior to the speech, Mohajeri had written an editorial in his newspaper, praising Beheshti, in the same way Khamenei had praised his former revolutionary colleague recently in a speech.
In his editorial, Mohajeri wrote, "I wish today's officials in Iran were as polite and considerate as Beheshti was. In that case we would have not seen the power struggle, unfairness and unethical conduct characteristic of Iranian politics."
Meanwhile, he criticized the exiled Mojahedin-e Kharq opposition group, otherwise known as the MeK, for allegedly being behind the blast that killed over 70 Iranian officials in 1981, many of them hardliner clerics.
In a video of the audience's attack on Mohajeri, a man trying to calm down the situation asks an angry young cleric whether he supports the Mek, an implicit accusation that could be incriminating in Iran where the Mojahedin are outlawed. The episode at the mosque in Yazd ended with Mohajeri leaving the scene.
The Kayhan had attacked Mohajeri after he wrote the editorial the day before his speech in Yazd, accusing him of "deviation" and behaving in a way that has made him "popular among the enemies who usually echo his words and promote his editorials."
The Kayhan particularly lashed out at Mohajeri for writing that "If Beheshti was alive today, he would have been put under house arrest," implicitly highlighting intolerance for criticism. Khamenei has put the Islamic Republic's first Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and former Majles Speaker Mehdi Karroubi under house arrest for more than a decade.
Both Kayhan's behavior and the attack on Mohajeri in Yazd are further examples of this intolerance. However, the recent dismissal of the IRGC Intelligence Chief Hossein Ta’eb, and the ensuing widespread spy-catching operation that has started within the IRGC and Khamenei's headquarters mark a feeling of insecurity in the regime's core. The inner instability is to the point that the IRGC general in charge of Khamenei's own security was replaced and General Ali Nasiri, a counter-intelligence officer has reportedly been arrested on charges of espionage for Israel.
The general belief in Iran, as evidenced on social media is that individuals such as Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan, badly feel this insecurity and might be trying to prove their devotion to the Supreme Leader by attacking his old enemies and political rivals although some of them are dead and others have been languishing under house arrest.
Fans took to social media when it became clear on Tuesday that the Persian Gulf Pro League Esteghlal FC had no intention of renewing the contract of its captain, Voria Ghafouri and pushed the hashtag “Voria is not alone” to the top of Persian Twitter. A group of Esteghlal fans also held a protest rally outside the club’s headquarters after the announcement was made on Wednesday.
Ghafouri’s future with his club and the national team became highly doubtful in May when he rebuked the government for its handling of protests sparked by a sudden rise in prices and many feared that the authorities would push for his exclusion from his team as punishment.
“Voria Ghafouri was excluded because he did not consent to side with the government against the Iranian people,” dissident blogger Hossein Ronaghi tweeted. “In the Islamic Republic sports is totally political ... Elimination of popular athletes [who speak up] is meant to cover up the crimes of the government,” he wrote.
Hardliners deny any connection between the footballer’s political views and his exclusion from his team due to alleged interference of state authorities.
In a tweet Wednesday, Abdolreza Davari, one of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's advisors and confidants who later turned against him, accused the former captain of Esteghlal FC of making controversial statements “to play victim” because he knows but at the age of 35 he is no longer physically fit to play and that the renewal of his contract is not likely.
“It is the right of the Iranian people to live a happy life,” the national team star said in a post-match interview in May in reference to the economic and social pressures Iranian people have been enduring and said authorities responsible for it must feel shame.
The outspoken footballer has been in trouble with the authorities for quite some time. In 2019 he was summoned for explanations after he criticized Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif in an Instagram post for saying Iranians were “proud of being under pressure defending the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria.”
"You are not under pressure … It is the ordinary people who are under pressure," Ghafouri retorted to Zarif.
Ghafouri’s criticism of Iran’s regional policies and the authorities for downplaying the impact of US sanctions on ordinary Iranians also drew an angry response from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
"Some people, who benefit from the country's peace and security enjoying their jobs and their favorite sports, bite the hand that feeds them,” Khamenei said in a clear reference to Ghafouri in a public speech on February 18, 2019.
Ghafouri was summoned by the Ministry of Sport for an explanation for his comments within a few hours of Khamenei's speech.
The footballer is also known for supporting women's right to watch football in stadiums from which they have been banned for over four decades.
In 2019, a young girl, Sahar Khodayari, died in hospital after setting herself on fire outside a court in Tehran where she was to go on trial for attempting to enter a stadium disguised as a man to watch her favorite team. She became known as ‘The Blue Girl’ for the color of her club. Ghafouri wore a jersey with Blue Girl written on his chest to honor herbefore a match.
On June 28, 1981, a bomb hidden in the microphone, or the audio system, exploded at a meeting of the Islamic Republican Party killing around 70 top officials of the new revolutionary government. The chief prize for whoever was behind the plot was ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, seen at the time as the number two figure after the founder of the clerical regime, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Beheshti died.
The Supreme Leader paid his utmost respects to Beheshti in his speech, but introduced him as a top judicial official, not as the powerful figure he was at the time.
Khamenei reminisced the tough months in the summer of 1981, when the Mujahedin organization (MEK) and a variety of leftist and Marxist groups challenged Khomeini and the Islamic Republic.
“They threw everything they had at us,” but the regime survived and has continued to survive for four decades, the aging leader boasted.
Indeed, the regime has survived, but Khamenei did not mention the methods used for survival. For one, he failed to mention the hundreds of people executed right after the revolution, all without a real trial, including Amir-Abbas Hoveida, the long-time prime minister during the monarchy, who had no trace of financial corruption and was known for his diligent pursuit of economic development.
Khamenei also failed to mention the jailing of thousands of MEK members and other leftists in the 1980s, and Khomeini’s decision to massacre them in prisons while they were serving their sentences. Around 5,000 prisoners were killed in 1988 in a matter of 30 days.
He also did not mention the ‘chain murders’ of intellectuals in the early 1990s and the thousands of journalists, dissidents and ordinary people killed during protests or use of excessive force by the government in the three decades since.
Khamenei also claimed in his speech that Islamic Republic’s enemies have been looking for its demise for more than four decades, seeing signs of weakness as potential good news, but they have been disappointed.
“The enemy cannot understand that in this world, other than political calculations, there are also other considerations, which are God’s rules and traditions,” he said. Khamenei has been reinforcing his legitimacy by claiming that he is the highest Shiite authority on earth, and it is the hand of God that has secured his rule.
Khamenei also did not mention Iran’s economic decline since 1979, especially in the past 15 years as his foreign policy and nuclear program have brought about devastating sanctions. The currency rial has fallen by close to 4,500-fold since 1978, from 70 rials to the dollar to over 300,000.
Facing serious economic problems and continuing anti-government protests, he called on his followers to stick with “God’s rules”, meaning “jihad” to defend the regime.
He then repeated worn-out slogans, such as fighting corruption, while just this week news emerged about another massive embezzlement case of more than $700 million dollars in animal feed imports.
Khamenei also asked the hardliner judiciary, which is controlled by him, to deal with cyperspace to protect "people's psychological peace", implicitly encouraging a push by his followers to restrict access to the Internet.