Many Regime Insiders In Iran See Lackluster Elections in 2024
Politicians in Iran voice concern that barring reformist and non-conservative candidates will lead to a low turnout and lackluster parliamentary elections next year.
Politicians in Iran voice concern that barring reformist and non-conservative candidates will lead to a low turnout and lackluster parliamentary elections next year.
Some officials including former interior minister and deputy intelligence minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi are also deeply concerned about the adverse impact of the country's dire economic situation on many voters who are simply dissatisfied with all regime politicians.
Pourmohammadi has said that the people are disgruntled, and this could lead to voter apathy as Iranian conservatives have been grudgingly acknowledging that the economic crisis gripping Iran for the past five years has worsened under hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi and as a result the regime’s legitimacy might suffer.
Referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's call for a high-turnout election in March 2024, Pourmohammadi said in an interview with IRGC-linked Javan newspaper on Saturday that voters cannot be forced to go to the polls. The interview was widely carried by other news media in Iran including Didban website.
He said, "People will vote if they are happy about the current situation and have high hopes about the future." Meanwhile he blamed various state organizations for popular dissatisfaction, but specifically singled out the presidential administration.
Pourmohammadi added that promises made by state officials and later forgotten, have deeply annoyed Iranians. He further added that the government and the ruling clerics should correct their behavior and stop blaming foreign enemies for the problems they have created themselves and failed to solve.
Pourmohammadi, a conservative cleric himself, maintained that young Iranians have distanced themselves from the ruling class. Conservative politicians and political parties should understand that winning a low turnout election is in fact a failure and will lead to further loss of trust between the people and the Iranian rulers.
The former minister also called for allowing “moderates” to run in the elections. Meanwhile referring to some reformist figures who have called for boycotting the elections if they are not allowed to run, Pourmohammadi advised them to avoid confrontational rhetoric. He also called on conservatives not to attack those who have talked about boycotting the elections. "Let us stress on our common points instead," he said.
The role of the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog has become highly controversial after it disqualified hundreds of relatively moderate candidates in the 2020 parliamentary vote and again key leading figures in the 2021 presidential election. As a result, hardliners established total control of the legislature and are dominating all positions in the presidential administration.
In another development, former Guardian Council Spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodai who is still a leading member of the Council has said that "When a candidate is disqualified by the Guardian Council, the reason(s) for his or her disqualification should be given to them in a confidential manner." But, many disqualified candidates have said they never received a clear explanation. Most served in important posts in the past and could not understand why they were barred from running.
Referring to the changes made to the Election Law recently, many Iranian politicians including former lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi have said that the changes have given the Guardian Council a more influential role in elections. He said based on the amendment made to the Election Law, the Guardian Council's supervision continues until the endorsement of new MPs credentials. Meanwhile, the Guardian Council is now represented in the State and local Security Council meetings about the elections.
Iran International has obtained a long list of Akbar Tabari’s properties, such as large shopping malls, houses, large land holdings, apartments and shops, that were not even mentioned during the numerous hearing sessions held after he and 21 others were arrested in 2019 for running a bribery ring inside the regime’s judiciary department.
Almost all the people implicated in the case were released before completing their sentences. Late in June, Gholamali Mohammadi, the head of Iran's Prisons Organization, announced that Tabari -- the highest-ranking judiciary official in the case -- was released from prison after serving just 45 months of a 31-year prison term, posting a bail of 3 trillion rials ($6 million).
Before being arrested in July 2019, Tabari held senior financial and executive positions within the Iranian judiciary for nearly 20 years. He was eventually sentenced to 31 years in prison for leading a bribery network and receiving multiple bribes and for money laundering.
According to Iran International’s investigative journalist Mojtaba Pourmohsen, Tabari continued his illegal activities from inside the prison as the court sessions were being held.
Our sources said that several of his associates have been converting his assets into foreign currencies and sending to Portugal and the Canadian city of Vancouver, adding that authorities turn a blind eye -- or facilitate -- his affairs to protect Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and Gholam-Hossein Esmaeili, a senior justice and former spokesman of the Judiciary who is now the chief of staff of President Ebrahim Raisi. Tabari was removed from his posts in the judiciary only seven days after Ebrahim Raisi was appointed as Chief Justice in March 2019.
Delving into evidence pertaining to the list of Tabari’s assets would have opened the pandora’s box and revealed the deep corruption in the highest levels of the country’s judiciary, our sources said, justifying the reason why Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave the green not to investigate the case thoroughly. Another piece of evidence that was buried would have led to further investigation about Sadeq Larijani, another former Chief Justice and the current chairman of Expediency Discernment Council -- an advisory body appointed by the Supreme Leader.
One of our sources claimed that the known facts and figures about Tabari’s case are only the tip of the iceberg in the judiciary’s corruption that may include a large number of senior officials of the country’s judicial system.
Mohammadi, the head of Iran's Prisons Organization, said in the late June TV interview that Tabari's release was the result of a "judicial authority's decision within legal parameters," a reference to Mohseni-Ejei, the current head of the judiciary.
Tabari's release cast aspersions about the fairness of Iran's judiciary in high-profile cases, showing preferential treatment to former regime officials and those who can buy their way out of jail. While regime opponents are subjected to immediate secret trials and severe punishment, including those arrested during the recent nationwide protests, the process of reviewing the charges of officials and their affiliates is usually slow, and their sentences are usually suspended after a short period.
Another question raised following Tabari’s release was how a former government employee can post a $6 million bail when monthly salaries of top officials is around $1,000. According to official documents of the case, a copy of which was obtained by Iran International, well-known Iranian tycoon Mohammad (Dariush) Afrashtehpour paid the bail money. Afrashtehpour is one of the so-called ‘major debtors’ to state banks who has been involved in a plethora of financial schemes under several administrations.
Amid concerns about Paydari's attempts to engineer the upcoming parliamentary elections, a leading reformist party in Tehran reported on Saturday that the hardliner group also aims to extend its "purification" project to the Assembly of Experts (AoE), the constitutional body that would select Ali Khamenei’s successor.
Etemad newspaper wrote that radical conservatives have started garnering support for their own hardline conservative candidates for the next election of the Assembly of Experts which is to be held alongside the parliamentary elections in March 2024.
The purification project, referring to hardliners monopolizing government institutions, began with the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2021 and 2020, when relatively moderate candidates were barred from competing. Now there are suspicions that hardliners plan to repeat the same tactic in 2024, to make sure that all the members of the parliament come from the same political faction and appoint their men to the Assembly of experts.
Currently, two seminary associations, as well as moderates and Paydari are likely to compete in the AoE elections, but the influential Paydari's intervention could potentially change the number and combination of the contestants.
At the same time, centrist politician Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the former leader of the Executives of Construction Party, warned that hardliners are likely to arrange the disqualification of moderates and reformists in the parliamentary election in a bid to form an all-conservative parliament.
Karbaschi further warned that this might substantially curtail participation in the upcoming elections as it effectively restricts competition to candidates affiliated to the same hardline faction. Voters will have little interest or incentive to go to the polls when they know the outcome.
Karbaschi said: "It looks like that hardliners have not been quite happy with the current conservative dominated Majles and wish to introduce more ‘revolutionary’ candidates.” In the new jargon of Iranian reformists and moderate conservatives, the term "revolutionary" is used to characterize reckless ultraconservatives with little if any political experience.
He reiterated that the situation will not change dramatically if the future parliament is more "revolutionary" than the current one. "It is all down to the Guardian Council not to reject candidates and to the Interior Ministry to hold a timely and healthy election," Karbaschi said and added, “We cannot predict the future, but what hardliners are saying is not promising."
Meanwhile, conservative political analyst Javad Aryamanesh told reporters in Tehran that some reformist groups are likely to form a coalition with former Majles Speaker Ali Larijani, a relatively moderate conservative. Aryamanesh reiterated that Larijani is also willing to work with moderate reformists.
However, he noted that some reformist politicians might not take part in the upcoming elections. Aryanmanesh argued that the expected low turnout in March is not related only to a lack of political choice for voters, but is partly due to profound dissatisfaction with the current economic crisis and hyperinflation.
"The masses of Iranians are unhappy about the current situation which is marked by poverty, corruption, discrimination and injustice, and this is far more important in determining the fate of the elections than the combination of the political parties," Aryanmanesh stressed.
During his weekly press conference Monday, Nasser Kanaani, the spokesperson of Iran's foreign ministry, said that normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel would harm regional peace and stability.
His remarks came as US President Joe Biden said July 28 that a deal may be on the way after talks his national security adviser held with Saudi officials in Jeddah on the issue.
The Islamic Republic, Israel's sworn enemy, has always opposed normalization of relations between Arab countries and the Jewish state. The regime has repeatedly described the two-state solution – perhaps the only peaceful way to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestinians -- as a betrayal of the ‘Palestinian cause.’ Top Iranian officials in the past have called for the annihilation of "the Zionist entity.".
“It is quite clear that strengthening and stabilizing the position of the Zionist regime in the region has been America's first priority for many years," Kanaani said, noting that the United States has succeeded in establishing relations between Israel and several regional countries. “But what happened in practice was allowing the Zionist regime to increase its crimes against the Palestinian nation,” he claimed.
“Peace with the Zionist regime will not help the Palestinian nation; Iran considers any step taken towards the recognition of the regime neither in the interest of Palestine nor in the interest of peace and security in the region,” Kanaani said in a tacit threat that could potentially lead to further unrest in the region by Tehran’s proxies.
In June, Jaber Rajabi, a political analyst and activist, told Iran International that although the Islamic Republic seeks to portray itself as sympathetic to the Palestinians and championing their cause, it never supports those Palestinians who seek peace and stability, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, and only supports militant groups.
Rajabi said that the Islamic Republic is not committed to what he described as the Palestinian cause, noting that the regime views the Palestinian issue as a bargaining chip. Among the few cards that the Islamic republic can play in the international arena is fomenting unrest in Israel, he claimed, adding that the regime believes it can only make gains if there is a crisis.
In April, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed that Israel is on the defensive, and the United States has suffered major setbacks and consecutive defeats in the region.
During the Monday press briefing, Kanaani also claimed that Iran is pursuing a policy of good neighborliness and seeks to resolve disputes with neighboring states through dialogue. However, he reiterated that the regime will not tolerate a violation of its rights over a disputed Persian Gulf natural gas field shared with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Called Arash in Iran and Durra or Dorra by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait -- the offshore field was discovered in 1967 and is estimated to have a total proven reserves of around 310 million barrels of oil and 20 trillion cubic feet of gas. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia insist that Iran has no right over the field, claiming “exclusive” right, while Iran says any development without its consent is “illegal” according to international laws as it claims 40 percent of the field located in its territorial waters.
“Iran believes that such issues should be discussed within the framework of technical, specialized, and legal negotiations and that it is not helpful to raise them in the media,” Kanaani emphasized.
His remarks – as well as similar ones by the country’s oil minister on Sunday – came after Kuwait's oil minister Saad Al Barrak told SkyNews Arabia July 27 that his country will start drilling and begin production at the gas field without waiting for border demarcation with Iran, reiterating the two Arab countries’ position that Iran must validate its claim to the field by demarcating its own maritime borders first.
As controversies surrounding the case are escalating, the disputed maritime field in the Persian Gulf has become a litmus test for the recent détente between Tehran and Riyadh.