Divide Between Government And People Deepening In Iran
An Iranian sociologist who was an adviser to reformist President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), says Iranians perceive the current power structure as an alien entity.
An Iranian sociologist who was an adviser to reformist President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), says Iranians perceive the current power structure as an alien entity.
"When the government is perceived as a stranger, the society cannot tolerate its shortcomings." Hossein Valeh said in an interview with Roiuydad24 on Saturday. The government has lost trust because of its aversion to being inclusive, he added.
What is worse is that "The regime has widened the gap between itself and the nation instead of trying to fill it." It has become less attentive to popular demands.
Pervasive political instability in Iran began in 2017, when after years of deteriorating relations with the West and international sanctions, the economy became stagnant. Anti-regime protests that started in December of that year in fact never stopped and in September 2022 millions of disenchanted people came out into the streets nationwide, posing the most serious challenge to the clerical regime in four decades.
Valeh, a former diplomat and a current assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, also told Rouiydad24: "Generally, when there is a divide between the government and the nation, the country becomes polarized."
"In such a situation, no one hears the voice of truth and instead, everyone will listen to those who reduce the other side to the level of an enemy," Valeh said, adding that each side perceives any positive news about itself as a fact and any negative statement as a lie without bothering to establish the truth."
The sociologist maintained: "The gap between the government and the nation is currently deep and wide. As a result, we tend to believe any fake news which supports our point of view or rules out the other side's opinion." He added: Maciavelli has taken over our collective unconscious."
Under these circumstances expectations from the government will rise. The people will minimize its achievements and maximize its shortcomings in their perceptions.
He explained that there are accumulated divides in Iran based on religious versus non- religious, traditional versus modern and liberal versus despotic dichotomies. Valeh added that since the 18th century, this accumulated dichotomies have been the driving force of political developments while also creating social conflicts.
The people's distrust of the government will increase the cost of governance and make progress difficult. It will eventually erode the government's legitimacy altogether. Meanwhile, in the absence of public trust, the government cannot make up for its inefficiency.
Particularly dangerous is the divide between the very young generation and the aging clerics supported by the Revolutionary Guard who try to keep the society within the bounds of their isolationist religious ideology.
Along the same line, highlighting the divide between the state and the nation, former government spokesman Ali Rabiei wrote in Etemad Online that it appears there is a tendency in the government to oppose people's happiness. "Regrettably the government has forgotten the events that took place during the protests in the fall of 2022, and that is dangerous.
He pointed out that the government tends to ignore all the explanations and reasons that have been highlighted for last year's events, and it does not understand the people's concerns about the present and the future. The result, he said, is an unhappy and frustrated society.
Rabiei added: "The political depression reveals itself as lack of interest in political participation within the system and a tendency to protest."
Iranian lawmaker Ali Khezrian said Sunday that parts of a recent agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are contrary to the "strategic action" law ratified by the parliament in December 2020.
Khezrian is an influential lawmaker belonging to the hardline Paydari group dominating the Iranian parliament.
He was referring to the bill passed by the parliament, dominated by hardliners, in December 2020, dubbed the ‘Strategic Action To Eliminate Sanctions and Defend Iranian Nation's Interests.’
The bill authorized higher-level uranium enrichment to force the United States to lift economic sanctions imposed in 2018, when former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement.
The bill also mandated restrictions on nuclear monitoring by the IAEA. Since the passage of the law, Iran has further restricted international monitoring and inspections, adding to the complicated dynamics of renewing the JCPOA.
The bill’s stipulation about higher levels of uranium enrichment was not an empty negotiating tactic. Iran actually began enrichment at 20 percent in early 2021, breaking the JCPOA limit of 3.65 percent. Subsequently, enrichment was increased to 60 percent during talks with West to revive the JCPOA. Tehran now has enough fissile material for at least two nuclear bombs, and it also gradually restricted IAEA monitoring access to its nuclear facilities, introducing another complicating factor into the JCPOA talks.
Khezrian, who is the spokesman of the parliament’s Article 90 Committee, made the remarks as he was talking about a recent meeting of the Committee and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami and his deputies.
The committee is supposed to deal with complaints against the President, Parliament or the Judiciary.
Khezrian said that after Eslami briefed the committee on the agreement reached with the IAEA in March, the lawmakers were unanimous that it violates the "strategic action" law as well as the orders of the Supreme Leader.
He said that re-installing IAEA monitoring systems at Esfahan (Isfahan) nuclear site was beyond the Safeguards Agreement and based on the additional protocol to the IAEA-Iran agreement, which cover basic requirements of cooperation with the IAEA under the NPT. He added that two EMDs (Environmental Monitoring Devices) were also installed at Natanz and Fordow nuclear sites to oversee the enrichment lines, calling them even beyond the JCPOA.
According to Khezrian, “the EMDs were installed without obtaining legal permits from the relevant authorities, which is not only against the law approved by the parliament, but also beyond the JCPOA obligations, because in the JCPOA, the OLEM (the On-Line Enrichment Monitor) device is mentioned for measuring the level of enrichment, so it should be clarified what are the differences between these two devices.”
Earlier in June, Iran said it reinstalled 10 cameras of the UN nuclear watchdog in one of its installations that were removed last year when the UN watchdog’s board of governors in June 2022 censured Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the agency.
Following his criticism, several lawmakers close to the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi – and members of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee -- rejected Khezrian’s claims, emphasizing that the recent measures are in line with the law.
MP Shahriar Heidari said that the ‘strategic action law’ had been written and approved with the aim of canceling sanctions, adding, “If the other side accepts the lifting of sanctions, cooperation between Iran and the IAEA is bound to increase according to the clauses of the Law.”
Echoing similar views, lawmakers Fada-Hossein Maleki and Yaghoub Rezazadeh said that the measures adopted by the country’s nuclear agency are “completely in line with the law of strategic action.”
All these remarks were made a few days after IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed concerns about Iran's nuclear program and the regime’s sluggish cooperation with the agency. "Iran's continuing enrichment activities, it's raising concerns,” he said.
The recent movements in the Iranian political landscape seem to be a reaction to reports that European diplomats have informed Tehran they plan to retain EU ballistic missile sanctions set to expire in October under the defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
According to a report published by the Guardian on Sunday, the UK and other European powers are expected soon to announce plans to breach the 2015 Iran nuclear deal for the first time. The justification cited by EU and British diplomats included Iran’s own breach of the accord.
The past few days marked the birthdays of several of the most iconic protesters who were either shot dead by security forces, such as Mahdis Hosseini and Peyman Manbari, executed on trumped up charges such as Saeed Yaqoubi, or beaten to death such as 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh whom so many have come to cherish.
Iranian social media is full of posts that share a common structure, all mentioning the name of a dead protester and what their age would be if they were alive on their birthdays.
While Iranians on social media are paying tribute to them as “the young and enlightened generation of Iran,” the authorities have put pressure on their families to prevent gatherings for their birthdays fearing larger antiregime events.
Sarina Esmailzadeh died on the way to hospital after being severely beaten in the head with batons during the early days of nationwide protests following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She had joined a protest in Karaj, a large city half an hour from the capital Tehran, on September 21. Regime officials claim she jumped from a neighbor’s rooftop and killed herself. They insist her death was unrelated to protests, but the nature of her injury and death was verified by Amnesty International.
The 16-year-old YouTuber, whose funeral ceremony and the 40th day after her death turned into large demonstrations, was among the first martyrs of the Iranian uprising and would have become 17 today if the Islamic Republic was not in power in Iran. Her name is now a trendy hashtag on twitter with tens of thousands of people talking about her or her video blogs on her birthday.
Sarina, who sang Hozier’s 2013 hit song on a family road trip to the historic city of Kashan in her first vlog on YouTube titled ”My First Vlog!”, has a trove of posts about Iranian teens and the problems people face in the society.
"Iranian teenagers are no longer the teenager of 20 years ago. They are aware of the situation in the world and ask themselves what they should have less than American teenagers," she said in of her whimsical yet witty videos after pointing out that the people in Iran only expect welfare and prosperity.
Former political prisoner Hossein Ronaghi said all the Iranian nation seeks justice for Sarina, calling on people to honor her and keep her memory alive however they can.
Mahdis Hosseini, another teenager would have also turned 17 on Friday if she was not injured by bullets during a protest in the northern city of Amol on September 21. She went into hiding for a couple of weeks without receiving hospital care, for fear of not being arrested. Two days after she returned home, she was left alone for several hours, and when her mother returned, she found her dead body.
Peyman Manbari, who would have turned 26 on Saturday, was killed during a rally in the Kurdish-majority city of Sanandaj in October. His family and friends had planned to gather at his grave but had to cancel under threats and pressure by Iran’s intelligence agencies.
Agents contacted the Manbari family and “told them that they don't even have the right to have a birthday for him in their own home," said Fatemeh Heydari, who lost her brother Javad in a crackdown on a protest rally in the city of Qazvin. “How many young lives, how many grieving families, how much endless sufferings are enough to satisfy your criminal nature so that you stop taking the lives of our loved ones?” she asked.
If not executed, Saeed Yaghoubi's 38th birthday was also on Saturday. Saeed was hanged along with Saleh Mirhashemi and Majid Kazemi in May after they were convicted over the death of two IRGC Basij militia members and a police officer in protests in November.
Human rights campaigners say they were tortured into confessions, and there was no reliable evidence against them.
Leaked audio from police radio chatter from the night the three regime agents were killed indicates that they were shot by friendly fire of plainclothes forces. The victims had alibis, with the family of one of the victims saying there is CCTV video footage of their son at work.
According to the cousin of one the executed protesters, "the family of Saeed Yaghoubi (Yaqoubi) was not allowed to be near his grave on his birthday."
Iran’s exiled prince Reza Pahlavi also tweeted in their honor, decrying “Khamenei’s child and youth-killing regime.” “The memories of these brave children of Iran are eternal," he added.
“We believe that given the absence of liberalism and courage among Shia clerics, [the Sunni] Mowlavi Abdolhamid must receive all-encompassing support from Iranians in Iran and abroad,” a statement released Saturday by fifteen prominent political, academic and media figures said.
Security forces during the week arrested several people close to Mowlavi Abdolhamid, the outspoken leader of the Sunnis in Sistan-Baluchestan, including his grandson. The regime has been pressuring him to put an end to criticism of the government in his very popular Friday sermons in Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province.
Abdolhamid’s sermons which make headlines almost every Friday have been followed by anti-government protests since what has come to be known as the Bloody Friday of Zahedan.
On September 30, 2022, security forces opened fire on civilian anti-government protesters killing more than 93 protesters including children and onlookers in Zahedan after Friday prayers.
This week’s Friday prayers in Zahedan were for the first time since then led by Mowlavi Abdul Ghani Badri, the interim Friday imam of Zahedan. Abdolhamid who had delivered a sermon the previous day for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, asked worshippers to march silently instead of the usual protests and chanting.
The religious intellectuals praised Sunni clerics who, particularly in the predominantly Sunni provinces of Kordestan and Sistan-Baluchestan, who have turned into “symbols of resistance and endurance of the Mahsa Movement.”
Signatories of the statement underlined that in addition to democracy and social justice, establishment of a government in Iran in which religion and state are separate is necessary. The intellectuals included philosopher and theoretician Soroush Dabbagh (Abdolkarim Soroush), female Islamic scholar Sedigheh Vasmaghi, former cleric Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, historian Hashem Aghajari, Muslim scholar Mohammad Javad Akbarin, and commentator and journalist Reza Alijani.
Speaking to Iran International TV, Turkey-based political science researcher Meysam Badamchi who is among the signatories of the statement said Abdolhamid is now speaking not only about the wishes and demands of Sunnis but also those of other Iranians when he criticizes the government.
The signatories – who come from a Shia background themselves -- wanted to defend the rights of Mowlavi Abdolhamid as a Sunni cleric and the right of the people of Iran to criticize the government at a time when the Shia clerical establishment has chosen to remain silent about violation of people’s rights, he said.
“Religious Intellectual” refers to a number of political groups and public figures who believe in separation of religion and state and respect freedom of choice. Unlike theoreticians of the Islamic Republic, they consider religion a personal matter rather than the source of laws that regulate politics, economy and society.
They do not believe in the rule of Islamic jurist (Velayat-e Faghih (Wilayat al-Faqih) or Supreme Leader) which gives a cleric such as Ali Khamenei extraordinary powers including the power to overrule all elected bodies and officials and hence, people’s choice.
As a system of governance, Velayat-e Faqih has underpinned the way the Iranian regime has operated since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. At its most basic, the theory, advocated by some Shia thinkers, justifies the rule of the clergy over the state.
Religious intellectuals have usually joined forces with reformists to create alliances against conservatives and hardliners (often collectively referred to as Principlists) at the times of elections.
Religious intellectualism has a long history in Iran and the Islamic Republic. Philosophers and theologists such as Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, Mohammad Mojtahed-Shabestari and politicians such as Mehdi Bazargan, the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic, have defined the tenants of religious intellectualism over the past few decades.
The non-religious opposition generally looks at religious modernists with caution, given their desire to completely severe ties between politics and religion.