Iran International
An ultra-conservative newspaper in Iran claimed Wednesday that ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani had resigned as the coordinator of a 25-year pact with China.
Farhikhtegan, a daily affiliated with the Islamic Azad University, said Larijani, who was appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, preferred to allow the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) to shape Iran’s economic relations with Beijing.
While Larijani, 64, has neither confirmed nor denied the report, it appears that his long political career may be over. He has served in the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), as head of state broadcasting, as minister of culture, and as Iran’s top security official.
Farhikhtegan analyzed Larijani’s demise in terms of a simple dichotomy between west and east. The Rouhani administration had downplayed relations with "the east," the paper said, and instead had focused on efforts to improve links with Western countries, despite the imposition of United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions in 2018.
The Chinese government had not cooperated with the Rouhani administration due to its "coldness" towards China and "pro-west outlook in foreign policy,” Farhikhtegan explained. This “pro-west outlook,” the newspaper argued, had led to Rouhani emphasis on reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
"The Chinese during this time were prepared to cooperate with the Islamic Republic, but not with Rouhani's administration," Farhikhtegan wrote, claiming this led to Khamenei's decision to put Larijani in charge of developing the cooperation agreement.
The newspaper attached little importance to China being a JCPOA signatory and a supporter of its revival. Nor to the cooperation agreement being signed during the Rouhani administration.
Back in April, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denied a claim that China had insisted on involvinga designated representative of Khamenei in the talks over the pact said and that he himself had suggested Larijani − a Rouhani ally in securing parliamentary support for the JCPOA − as a coordinator.
The strategic pact, the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, is linked to China’s Belt and Road strategy, which is expanding Beijing’s trading links across Asia to Europe, and envisages increasing Chinese investment in Iran over 25 years as Beijing continues as Tehran’s main oil customer.
Larijani has remained largely silent since the constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, did not approve him as a candidate in June’s presidential elections after it was reported he had a daughter living in the United States.
After Larijani was rejected by the council, Khamenei acknowledged during a televised speech that some disqualifications had been unfair. He referred obliquely to allegations made against family members of some candidates that "turned out not to be true."
Larijani supporters hoped in vain that Khamenei would intervene to reinstate Larijani, who hails from an influential Shia Muslim clerical family, as he did with two reformists in 2005.
The change in the Iranian media scene started with the appointment of Payman Jebelli as the head of the country's state television as the most significant media outlet directly under the supervision of Khamenei and his office. A long-time manager at state television, he has close links with Khamenei’s office and key hardliners.
Minister of Culture Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili made the remark while introducing Farshad Mehdipour, another hardline journalist and a relative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's wife as his deputy minister for the press. Mehdipour was previously the editor of conservative e Sobh-e No newspaper that was Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's mouthpiece when he was the mayor of Tehran. Esmaili introduced Mehdipour as a “theoretician” in news dissemination.
No one knows how much the government spends on state media, but in mid-2010s before the effective devaluation of Iran currency, the state television budget alone was close to one billion dollars, with more than 40,000 employees in 2020 compared with CNN’s 4,000. Thousands of people also work for hundreds of state newspapers and websites.
Another step in the restructuring of the media landscape is the belated appointment of the managing director and members of the high council of the official news agency IRNA, which stands for the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Esmaili appointed Ali Naderi, an ultraconservative journalist and the former editor of hardline Raja News, a pro-Ahmadinejad and pro-Paydari Party news outlet as the new managing director of IRNA. Naderi has said that IRNA is going to be "the news agency of the government and the political system [Nezam]”, which is also a nickname for Khamenei used by his devotees when they wish to distance him from his style of micromanagement.
IRNA has traditionally been under the control of presidential administrations, usually echoing the ideas and highlighting 'accomplishments' of the country's presidents. Its political slant changed with every presidential election. It was a proreform news outlet under President Mohammad Khatami, a hardline agency under Ahmadinejad and a moderate conservative news organization under President Hassan Rouhani.
With the appointment of the members of the High Council of Policymaking of IRNA, it appears that Tehran is serious about tightening its grip on the media, news dissemination and all sorts of cultural activities. The new council members are hardliners mainly supporting the ultraconservative Paydari Party, although Mehdipour is better characterized as a member of Qalibaf's self-proclaimed neo-con group.
Esmaili appointed another Paydari Party affiliate Mohammad Khazaei as deputy culture minister for cinema.
Meanwhile, the new deputy for cultural affairs who oversees books and other publications, Yasser Ahmadvand, and the acting deputy minister for artistic affairs Mahmoud Shaloui whose mandate is to make sure that musical and theatrical activities, as well as paintings and sculptures strictly comply with Shiite standards, are also well-known hardliner figures.
Even before introducing the new changes, dozens of news outlets in Iran belonged to either Khamenei's office (Kayhan, Khorasan and a fleet of social media platforms, etc.) or the revolutionary guards IRGC (Tasnim, Fars, Sepah News, Basij News, Basirat, Javan, Sobh-e Sadeq, etc). Others such as Mehr (Islamic Propagation Organization), Hemayat, Mizan News (the Judiciary) and scores of others were funded by various government offices.
The question now is that if the entire system is becoming part and parcel of the “regime”, or Khamenei’s office, and there is no room for factional politics, why the government needs over 50 TV channels and tens of news agencies, newspapers and news websites. Their only purpose appears to be for insider groups to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from state coffers.