Scandal Offers Iran Hardliners A Shot At Top Parliament Post
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's future as speaker of Iran’s parliament (Majles) may not be guaranteed following the scandal of his family's luxury shopping in Turkey.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's future as speaker of Iran’s parliament (Majles) may not be guaranteed following the scandal of his family's luxury shopping in Turkey.
Although Ghalibaf has already left behind bigger scandals including one involving an 8,000 trillion rial corruption case as the mayor of Tehran (2005-2017) and using drug smugglers' money in his presidential campaign as revealed by former President Hassan Rouhani, this smaller "error" might cost him his position as the speaker of parliament.
Speculations in Tehran indicate that the shopping spree by his family may have not been revealed if it were not for the under-cover photography and filming by elements close to the ultraconservative Paydari Party whose members are Ghalibaf's political rivals in the Majles.
According to Khabar Online website, "Ghalibaf suspects that his political rivals in Paydari Party have conspired to publish a video that shows his family at the airport." The website further quoted Iranian journalist Saba Azarpeik, who posted a picture of Qalibaf's daughter in Turkey on Twitter, as having said: "Who do you think followed Ghalibaf's family in Turkey and took this photograph?" She added: "Mr. Ghalibaf! It appears that as far as some others are concerned, your career has come to an end!"
Azarpeik wrote in another tweet: "Even if the disclosure about Ghalibaf's family is part of a Paydari Party project, we should not ignore this scandal. Our collective knowledge can challenge Ghalibaf about corruption and at the same time criticize the Paydari cult for its Taliban-like ideology." She wrote in a third tweet: "If he cannot control his own family, he should tell us about it. Perhaps the country's officials should think again about handing over the affairs of the nation to him."
Meanwhile, another Iranian journalist Sadeq Hosseini wrote that the scandal is an indication of political rivalries in the conservative camp as hardliners are trying to take revenge for Ghalibaf's lack of support for the bill to restrict social media access among other things. Khabar Online has characterized the episode as Paydari Party leading member Saeed Jalili's project to target Ghalibaf.
Khabar Online observed that "except Ghalibaf's son Elias who has defended his father, many including university students, business activists, workers, academics, clerics and political elites have criticized him for his family's shopping spree, reminding that he has always pretended to be an advocate of ‘Jihadist Economy’ and austerity measures.
All this is happening against the backdrop of a major election at the Majles next week to choose the parliament's next speaker. Until last week, despite all the manoeuvres of his political rivals, Ghalibaf was almost sure that he was going to win and start a second term as Majles Speaker, an extremely high position equal in rank with the judiciary chief and the president of the state.
Some of his staunch rivals including current Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani have effectively ended their bid for the post. But there is one heavyweight rival who is eyeing the position. He is Deputy Speaker Ali Nikzad, who is a key member of Paydari Party.
With the silent escalation of disputes between Qalibaf and President Ebrahim Raisi, Nikzad who was the chairman of Raisi's presidential election campaign as his closest confidant would be the ideal candidate for the post of Majles speaker, as far as Raisi and his team are concerned.
Nikzad, born in 1965 in Ardabil was the governor General of Ardabil Province under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and later become his minister of roads and urban planning and acting minister of housing. Like most Ahmadinejad aides, he distanced himself from him in public after 2011 when the former president fell out with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Although Nikzad has a good chance of being elected as the parliament's next speaker, Iranian lawmakers know from history, somebody might whisper a message from Khamenei's office a few minutes before voting and demand a vote for Ghalibaf.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s wife, daughter and son-in-law arrived at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport on Tuesday from Istanbul with apparently a large layette set they bought from Turkey. People at the airport didn’t recognize them at first but when a photo of the family circulated on social media, their identity was revealed, followed by a barrage of criticism, and resurfacing of other alleged corruption cases against the family.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf became parliament speaker in 2020 after 'revolutionary principlists' or hardliners swept an engineered election, when most reformists were banned from running as candidates.
The harsh reaction to the incident is because of the hardship most Iranian face with 40-percent inflation and an eight-fold drop in the value of the national currency, impoverishing tens of millions of middle-class people.
Something that added to the controversy was a video of Ghalibaf in the 2017 presidential debates in which he censured a former minister for traveling to Italy to buy baby clothes. “You people think our economy will get better, never!” Ghalibaf is heard saying in the video.
The word for the layette in Persian is ‘sismuni’ a relic of Sanskrit that has survived in the language from Old Persian. Social media users have added the suffix for political scandals “gate” to it and are sharing the hashtag ‘SismuniGate’ in reference to the Watergate scandal.
In reaction to the latest chapter of Ghalibafs’ scandals, many activists and officials have called for the resignation of the parliament speaker. Reformist political commentator Abbas Abdi, however, says the news is so devastating that as a matter of principle he must resign from all his positions, but his replacement will definitely be worse than him. “So, I do not suggest resignation” he added.
The more important issue here is contradictory behavior by officials, he said, noting that “These paradoxes are not limited to this small case that has been exposed. It has destroyed almost all areas of Iran’s political and social life”.
Another civil activist, Vahid Ashtari, referring to government policies said it is not possible to preach to people to buy Iranian-made cars and other products, ban the import of home appliances, and send your family to Turkey to buy ‘sismuni’.
University professor and political activist Rahmatollah Bigdeli called for Ghalibaf’s to step aside, saying, "Only Ghalibaf's resignation will erase this stain”.
Ghalibaf's son Elias, criticized the trip by his sister, and said, “My sister and her husband did something that is absolutely wrong, especially in the current economic situation people face”. However, he added his father shouldn’t be judged by the actions of his sister, something also echoed by his media assistant, Mohammad Saeed Ahadian.
Ghalibaf is a household name in many corruption cases in the Islamic Republic. During his term as mayor of the capital Tehran, several of his deputies and people in his close circle were sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison but the judiciary never prosecuted him, maybe because he is a close relative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
During the same period, Ghalibaf handed over lands with a total area of 71,397 square meters to his wife’s charity institute in 2011, apart from another 2.5 trillion rials, nearly $100 million at the time.
An audio file of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commanders discussing massive financial corruption that leaked in February also directly involved Ghalibaf.
Some Iranian social media users say the country’s push to restrict the internet in Iran is aimed at preventing the exposure of such scandals by the Islamic Republic’s authorities and their families – especially their relatives who have been making the best use of their position since President Ebrahim Raisi took office.
Lawmaker Mansour Haghighatpour said on Tuesday that Faezeh Hashemi has crossed the Islamic Republic's "red lines" and "trampled on the country's values and national interests. So much leniency emboldens people like her. I believe that the Islamic Republic must take appropriate punitive action against Faezeh Hashemi and discipline her," he said.
Hashemi is the daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and a member of the Central Council of the pro-reform Kargozaran-e Sazandegi (Executives of Construction) Party.
Fars news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard on Tuesday called Hashemi a "foot soldier" of the United States while another IRGC-affiliated media outlet, Javan newspaper dubbed her "flagrant" and criticized her party and the Rafsanjani clan for not officially renouncing her.
Hashemi had said during a discussion on the social media app Clubhouse on April 16 that removing the IRGC from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) was not in Iran's interest.
Hashemi had argued it is possible that certain factions in the IRGC may be intentionally taking actions to keep the whole entity on the US terrorist list. She cited IRGC's missile attack on Iraq's Kurdish regional capital of Erbil in March and criticized the Guards for boasting about the attack instead of keeping a profile as the country’s defender, posing no threat to others in the region.
She also said the IRGC is constantly broadening both the sphere and scope of its activities in Iran’s economy and politics, making it even harder to stick to its military role. “The only way for the IRGC to return to the barracks is to keep them on the [FTO] sanctions list,” she said.
This is not the first time in recent years that Hashemi has ventured into criticizing the Iranian regime’s core values or positions, espoused by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his hardliner supporters. In January, she said the Islamic Republic was responsible in the killing half a million Syrians with its military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
Hardliner social media users have accused Hashemi of being a traitor to the country, while others including some anti-regime activists have said that her criticism of the regime could only be acceptable when she also admits her father's role in engineering the selection of Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader in 1989, and later allowing the IRGC to assume an economic role.
Abdolreza Davari, one of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's advisors and confidants said Hashemi was wrong to say the IRGC should not be delisted and considered her remarks "against national security" but defended her right to freedom of expression. "Why should she and her late father be subjected to so many threats, accusations, and abuse instead of her remarks being logically criticized?" Davari tweeted.
Faezeh Hashemi is perhaps the most controversial of Hashemi-Rafsanjani's five children and often targeted by hardliners for her candid criticism of the regime, compulsory hijab, and prosecution of followers of the banned Baha'i faith. She is also the former president of Women's Sports Federation and editor-in-chief of banned reformist Zan newspaper.
Hashemi has been prosecuted for her activities on several occasions and served two six-month prison sentences for "propaganda against the state" and similar charges in 2012 and 2017.
According To Jahan-e Sanaat newspaper in Tehran, disagreements between parliament (Majles) and President Ebrahim Raisi are mainly in four areas: A controversial petrochemical plant, a bill to restrict internet access, discontinuing cheap dollars for essential imports and the motions planned by a sizeable group of lawmakers to unseat Raisi's economic ministers.
The petrochemical plant, that is still being built despite strong opposition by Raisi and his Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, is a project that has faced strong opposition by locals and environmentalists. The location in northern Iran by the Caspian Sea is near a natural reserve which is ecologically vulnerable, and the area is too densely populated for a project whose first outcome for the region will be pollution.
Widespread opposition to the project has reached a sensitive point as media has revealed that the man behind the project is allegedly a corrupt individual who has borrowed money from state banks under two different identities and has refused to pay back a $50-million loan after many years.
The only top official who has supported the project in public is Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf who is now quietly at loggerheads with Raisi over the issue.
The second area of disagreement is a bill to restrict internet access which particularly targets foreign social media platforms. The bill is ironically called "The Protection Bill" as its advocates claim that is meant to protect users from the perils of social media.
Raisi opposes the bill mainly because he knows that there are 1.7 million small businesses active on Instagram that provide jobs to around nine million Iranians. Banning access to social media will add those nine million to millions of other hungry bellies Raisi has to feed.
Some have said that Raisi also knows the country still lacks the infrastructure to replace the Internet with a local intranet network. So, he fears that the state’s administrative, financial and health systems as well as many public services might collapse and create even more problems for a government that already faces a host of hard issues.
The third disagreement between the Majles and the administration is the preferential rate of 42,000 rials per US dollar allocated for importing essential food and medicine. Lawmakers, who have come on board claiming to be revolutionaries, believe this is the only area they can have an impact by cutting a major source of potential corruption by individuals who have misused the cheap dollars to make profits in businesses that have nothing to do with essential imports.
Here too, Raisi knows that cutting off the subsidy will further increase the cost of living and will land his administration in trouble by creating the risk of street protests.
Finally, is the motion planned by over 50 of parliament's lawmakers to impeach Raisi's economic ministers including Industry Minister Reza Fatemi Amin and Labor Minister Hojjat Abdolmaleki who are believed to be his most vulnerable aides. Political circles in Tehran seem to be quite certain that the industry minister will be leaving the administration during the coming weeks.
These are only the main outstanding problems between the Majles and Raisi. Other problems such as the claim by some lawmakers that the administration has kept them in the dark about the nuclear negotiations also make matters worse, if lawmakers conclude that Raisi is in a weak position.
Javan newspaper linked with the Revolutionary Guard carried an editorial on April 14 criticizing Raisi's latest order to lower rising prices.
The president, seeming incapable of controlling consumer inflation, had called on government watchdogs to look "behind the scenes” to find the culprits he called the mafia. Javan pointed out that the "Mafia has infiltrated the body of the government and culprits for rising prices were in fact Raisi's own colleagues in his administration."
The daily further warned that if there is a hidden hand behind the scenes, it means the government is not in control of the country's economy.
The editorial insisted that the administration has a contract with the nation, made promises, accepted responsibility and created some expectations, but it has taken too long, and nothing has been accomplished.
The newspaper also questioned why there are so many mafias in the economy, including the car mafia, the medicine mafia, the potato mafia and so on. It charged that no mafia can exist without infiltrating the body of the government. It concluded, "So, the mafia is the same as the government's managers!"
The IRGC-linked paper then called on Raisi to uproot these mafias based in government buildings in the same way one would uproot the weeds in a garden.
While Javan criticized Raisi, it is well known that the IRGC is a major player in the economy, having been accused repeatedly of building up a business empire through its political influence and hidden networks.
In another development, former lawmaker Mansoor Haghighatpoor told Khabar Online website that Raisi was not involved in choosing his cabinet ministers and others did it for him. He did not name the "others" but vaguely referred to them as "pressure groups who did their job independent of Raisi's will.”
Like the Javan editorial, the former MP said that Raisi has failed to solve major problems facing the country, and now the people expect him to solve small problems such as potato and tomato shortages.
Haghighatpoor said that one of Raisi’s biggest problems is lack of expertise among his ministers.
He said everyone knew during the June 2021 presidential election that the candidates who were barred from running for president had far better qualifications than those who were approved – including Raisi.
Referring to intractable problems such as rising prices and unemployment, Haghighatpoor said he was sure Raisi will soon start to reshuffle his cabinet.
Politicians on social media were also certain during the weekend that Industry Ministry Reza Fatemi Amin and Labor Minister Hojjat Abdolmaleki will have to leave the Raisi administration soon.
This comes while several members of the parliament, including Jalal Mahmoudzadeh, a lawmaker for Mahabad have said that the Majles presidium has so far prevented lawmakers from tabling the impeachment motion to dismiss quite a few cabinet ministers.
Although over 50 Iranian lawmakers have long called for the impeachment of ministers in Raisi's economic team, Raisi has not commented on the matter.
Another person who is silent about general dissatisfaction with the government is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who has maintained public silence.
A few political activists such as reformist commentator Javad Emam have said that changing the ministers will not make the situation any better as everyone else in Raisi's circle of friends and acquaintances also lacks executive experience and a thorough understanding of the country's economic problems.