Khamenei Admits To Judiciary Malpractice In Rare Admission
In a rare public criticism, Iran’s Supreme Leader has admitted that the nation has lost trust in the judiciary, blaming it on malpractice and media representation.
In a rare public criticism, Iran’s Supreme Leader has admitted that the nation has lost trust in the judiciary, blaming it on malpractice and media representation.
“There is a small minority who abuse their position and tarnish the image of the judiciary in the eyes of the people,” Khamenei said in a revealing meeting with judiciary officials Tuesday.
He called on authorities to fight corruption within the judicial system and warned that "corruption is contagious". He said: "When corruption enters a system, this disease spreads. It is increasing day by day."
Khamenei said the media is partially to blame, tarnishing the judiciary's reputation further, refusing to acknowledge the heavy-handed and brutal punishments it has been handing down to civilians since the protests began in September in the wake of Mahsa Amini's death in morality police custody.
Khamenei's words contradict the fact that he controls the religious judiciary that is only accountable to him and plays the role of both prosecutor and judge. The courts in Iran are not independent, but part of the large bureaucracy known as the Judiciary, whose head is appointed by the Supreme Leader,
As “one of the main pillars in the establishment of the Islamic republic,” he said instability in the judiciary can lead to disruptions in the entire regime as he urged his inner circle to tighten up the flailing system.
Political pundit Rouhollah Rahimpour told Iran International that the main duty of the judiciary has become defending the regime against the people and cracking down any voice of dissent.
He called the distrust of the judiciary a natural consequence "when the judicial system does not pursue justice" and only works as a tool in the hands of the regime to stifle criticism and quash protests.
The regime used overwhelming force with military weapons in its crackdown on the protests since September, killing more than 500 civilians and arresting tens of thousands more. Hundreds of other protestors suffered hospitalization and permanent injuries, including the loss of eyes when shotgun pellets were fired at the faces of demonstrators.
After the wave of nationwide protests which has still yet to subside, the Iranian regime has embarked on a wave of executions which has seen dozens of prisoners hanged this year.
Iran's Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei claimed Monday that scores of Iranians only took part in protests due to foreign influence, undermining the strength of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement which has seen hundreds of thousands of Iranians calling for the end of the brutal dictatorship.
The PIJ has established several armed cells and recruited dozens of gunmen in the northern West Bank, specifically in Jenin and Nablus. “The PIJ has become a dominant force in the northern West Bank, largely thanks to the financial aid it receives from Iran," a source told Israel's Jerusalem Post. “Islamic Jihad is using Iranian money to buy weapons and loyalty in the West Bank [and] the organization is paying high salaries to its members.”
Palestinian Islamic Jihad has stepped up its activity over the last year, largely thanks to extra funding from Tehran, including an incident in April in which dozens of rockets were launched in a cross border attack on Israel from Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Last August, the PIJ unleashed almost 2,000 rockets and mortars in three days of fighting.
The PIJ, like Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have become full-fledged Iranian proxies, receiving Iranian funding, training, sophisticated equipment, and, most importantly, Tehran’s instructions on their confrontation with Israel. Last year, then defense minister Benny Gantz claimed that the PIJ was receiving tens of millions of dollars from Tehran. This week the group's leaders met with President Raisi, among others, in a show of force against Israel.
The evolution from guerrilla-terrorist militias to armies results from a long process initiated by Tehran with the active assistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The escalating events in recent months have shown the ongoing coordination and consultation among the top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and PIJ in Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, with the aim of creating a united front facing Israel from Iran-supported Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank.
Saeed Hajjarian, known as the most senior theoretician of reforms in Iran has said in an interview with reformist daily Etemad that “the sooner the Iranian government resigns the better.” He added that “the presence of this government and the school of thought it represents is a major loss for the nation.”
He said: “I am not suggesting that [President Ebrahim] Raisi should be replaced by a reformist figure. What I am suggesting is that the same conservatives at the Majles and in the government should sit together and think of an efficient replacement.”
Hardliners loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have pushed reformists out of the parliament (Majles) and the presidency since 2020, monopolizing all political power. However, as Iran’s economic situation has worsened partly because of US sanctions, reformists have become more vocal, demanding a chance to return to government positions.
“The Iranian opposition groups outside Iran are preoccupied with themselves. Instead of thinking of being an alternative to the current government, they are fighting with each other. On the other hand, they have been far from Iran for a long time and do not know the country’s problems, so their rhetoric sounds irrelevant,” he claimed.
While there have been disagreements among opposition activists, many in Iran still expect solutions from their compatriots who can freely engage in politics in Western countries.
In fact, some opposition figures, such as exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi have notable following in Iran, although there are no reliable polls to judge the exact measure of his popularity.
As a key political figure who for the first time spoke about an alternative to the current political system, Hajjarian pointed out that the only choice is “absolute republicanism” with no adjective to characterize it.
“I believe we cannot vote for an absolute monarchy or a hereditary form of succession or an Islamic Emirate. All of these are against the international human rights charter,” he claimed, ignoring the fact that many democratic countries are constitutional monarchies. He further pointed out that a benevolent dictatorship is like a poison for Iranians.
As a regime insider, it is not surprising that the former intelligence officer spoke against monarchy at a time when many Iranians look back with nostalgia to the pre-1979 period under the Pahlavi dynasty.
Hajjarian also failed to mention that the Islamic Republic is based on the unquestionable rule of a cleric, the Supreme Leader. Also, the republicanism he is advocating is impossible to establish within the current Islamic constitution, which reserves the final say to the Supreme Leader.
In another part of the interview, Hajjarian characterized the government of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “rich populism” and described the Raisi administration as a populist government that does not have money.
He said some of the outstanding problems in Iran such as the crisis of the pension fund and discrimination against women can create a political tremor and the government knows that it is incapable of coping with them.
Hajjarian said that borderlines between reformism and other political groups are blurred and most of those known as reformists are pseudo-reformists who are simply trying to find a way out of the current impasse.
Nevertheless, he argued that reformists are the only group with a plan, while critics say that they were in power for 16 years in the past 26 years and were not able to change the nature of the regime.
The former intelligence officer said Iran is in a state of suspension. If the situation worsens and the economic pressures become unbearable, Iran might show more flexibility toward the West.