Iran International
A Tehran news agency in a commentary Friday launched a blistering attack on the parliament speaker under the headline "Who Is Ghalibaf Criticizing These Days?"
"Which of the country's authorities is Ghalibaf really addressing and what it is bothering him?" asked an unsigned commentary in the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), charging that as a high-ranking official for many years, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) bore some responsible for the country’s state of affairs.
Ghalibaf's criticisms, rampant during the previous administration of President Hassan Rouhani, have continued since President Ebrahim Raisi took office in mid-August, highlighting divisions within the principlist camp.
The ISNA commentary argued that during the Rouhani administration, when the president pushed for market-oriented reforms and achieved the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Ghalibaf's criticisms were based on politics and policy differences.
"But do his criticisms not reflect back on him and his political faction now that an administration close to his political faction is in office and when some of his close associates are in management posts?" ISNA asked. The article suggested that Ghalibaf's continued criticisms might illustrate "a rupture" between influential principlists.
While Ghalibaf has generally avoided directly criticizing Raisi's government, some lawmakers have claimed that he secretly tried to influence parliamentarians into not voting approval for some of Raisi's nominations as ministers.
"Wrong beliefs and inefficient managers are two problems in our governance,” Ghalibaf said last week. “The problem is not lack of money and resources. We must invest time and energy for these things.”
The ISNA commentary argued that with Raisi's election as president, loyalists of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in control of all three branches of government – presidency, parliament, judiciary – might join forces to address people's problems rather than indulging in "a ping pong of criticism from behind podiums."
The commentary suggested Ghalibaf's continued carping about the country’s management might substantiate an argument, often used by reformists, that having all branches of government in the hands of a single faction might lead to disputes, and harm rather than benefit Iran.
Under Ghalibaf’s leadership, the parliament passed a law in December that complicated Rouhani’s efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), after Joe Biden won the November United States presidential election committed to restoring the deal. The law obliged the government to step up Iran’s nuclear program further beyond the limits set by the JCPOA and to reduce Iran’s cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Ahmadinejad who never left Iran after the end of his second term in 2013, suddenly flew to Dubai this week, proving that he is not under a political travel ban.
In a message he read out while visiting the Islamic Republic of Iran's stand and published on his Telegram channel, which has over 414,000 subscribers, the former populist president called himself "the representative of the Iranian nation" at the Expo.
He said he will carry "the Iranian nation's message of peace, friendship and brotherhood" to all other stands at the exhibition.
Some Persian-speaking media outlets outside Iran questioned his claim of representing the Iranian nation.
Ahmadinejad's telegram channel carried several photos and videos showing him with Iranian and foreign visitors taking selfies with him or greeting him at various stands.
Iranian reformist daily Arman wrote in an extensive commentary about Ahmadinejad's visit to the Expo that the former president "always likes to be in the spotlight. He wants others to talk about what he does and says."
The daily described the visit to a foreign country by Ahmadinejad as a move similar to other recent developments that indicate a change in the regime's treatment of former politicians whose movement had been restricted. Arman pointed out that former president Mohammad Khatami was recently allowed to deliver a speech at a mausoleum in Tehran and there are rumors that proreform Green Movement Leader Mirhossein Mousavi's wife who has been under house arrest for over a decade with her husband is now free to go around.
Meanwhile, another Green Movement Leader, Mehdi Karroubi was also allowed to deliver a speech in a small group of Iranian politicians last week when he said there is nothing wrong with the essence of the Islamic Republic and only its shortcomings need to be addressed.
However, it is still not known that the travel ban imposed on Khatami, and the ban on the publication of his pictures in the Iranian press have been lifted. Also, there is no news about whether restrictions on Mousavi are going to be lifted or eased.
Iranian analysts speaking to Iran International TV, including Morteza Kazemian, said that Ahmadinejad's situation appears to be different as he has a sizable following who might support his return to the political scene if not to power at one point.
Others say that the presence of many Ahmadinejad's political allies, including vice president Massoud Mirkazemi and Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian as well as several provincial governors in President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration and dozens of lawmakers in Majles gives him a special position.
Ahmadinejad is being accompanied by his wife during the visit and her appearance next to Ahmadinejad has attracted attention in Dubai.
Ahmadinejad's visit is taking place while both he and his media adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr who accompanies him have outstanding legal cases against them at the Iranian Judiciary which seems to have turned a blind eye to allow the foreign visit, Arman noted, adding that there is probably no travel ban imposed on Ahmadinejad. Javanfekr has also denied the existence of a travel ban.
Another former Ahmadinejad aide, Abdolreza Davari has denied accusations that Ahmadinejad, who has been extremely critical of the regime since 2017, is getting special treatment for keeping silent. Davari said this is not true as Raisi's condition for giving key posts to the former Ahmadinejad allies was cutting their ties with Ahmadinejad.
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.