Iran Speaker Scandal Expands To Alleged Apartment Purchases
Mardo Soghom
Iran International
Ramifications of a scandal surrounding Iran’s parliament speaker continue, with accusations that his family bought two apartments in Turkey in a recent trip.
Iran International
Ramifications of a scandal surrounding Iran’s parliament speaker continue, with accusations that his family bought two apartments in Turkey in a recent trip.
An Iranian journalist living in Turkey, Amirhossein Miresmaili, tweeted on April 21 that speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s wife, daughter and sone-in-law who had gone shopping in Istanbul bought two luxury apartments in a famous complex for a total price of 400 billion Iranian rials or $1.6 million.
Miresmaili told Iran International that three days after he revealed the real estate purchase, the Ghalibaf’s have not denied the report, although another journalist residing in Iran has repeated the allegation. He insisted that Iranians in Turkey had seen the family at the Sky Land high rises in Istanbul and the apartments were bought in someone else’s name.
The Ghalibaf family scandal broke when videos emerged that they were having arguments in Istanbul airport for overweight luggage, and it became clear that they had bought luxury items for a baby on the way for Ghalibaf’s daughter. Later a journalist in Iran who had first exposed the shopping trip said that Ghalibafs had returned with more than 20 pieces of luggage.
The parliament speaker’s son and assistant went into damage control mode, expressing regret and Fars news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard tried to deny the shopping trip, but no one believed the denial and the attempt soon died down. Calls for Ghaliaf’s resignation rang out loud in Tehran, but the final arbiter of such issues, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has remained silent.
Ghalibaf has been involved in numerous financial corruption cases, especially during his tenure as Tehran mayor from 2005-2017. As a former Revolutionary Guard general, in many of his corruption cases there is a thread to other high ranking IRGC figures, including Qasem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.
Iran is in a four-day religious holiday and newspapers are not published while politicians and most journalist enjoy the free time probably on the Caspian seashore, far away from the capital. To what extent the apartment shopping allegation will gain traction once the holiday is over, is hard to say, but serious damage has been done to both Ghalibaf and the domestic image of the Islamic Republic, already mired by numerous previous cases of corruption and embezzlement by top officials and regime insiders.
One of the interesting public debates that ensued after the news about Ghalibaf’s scandal was a view expressed by political commentator Sadeq Zibakalam, a former revolutionary turned regime critic, who said luxury shopping abroad is not a crime in itself and many Iranians aspire to live a better life. The issue he said is with whose money such adventures are financed. Nevertheless, many on social media criticized Zibakalam for apparently defending Ghalibaf, which he subsequently denied, saying he simply did not want to kick him while he was down.
But apparently there are others who would not hesitate to stab Ghalibaf while he is wounded. Soon there will be a vote to elect a new parliament speaker and ‘revolutionary’ hardliners would be happy to steal the seat from Ghalibaf.
Speaking in Tehran on Friday, Khatami warned that "the people cannot plan for their future as they do not know what may happen tomorrow and this could lead to unrest."
Also on Friday, a leading conservative politician said that the current government led by Raisi is incompetent and that it is the outcome of the non-competitive presidential election in 2021.
According to Khabarovsk Online, Abolghassem Raoufian, the Leader of the Iran Zamin Party said that "now the supporters of Raisi's administration should also be held accountable for establishing a government that lacks the potential, experience and knowledge needed to run the affairs of the state."
Political observers in media have said on various occasions that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was the main supporter of Raisi’s candidacy and the Guardian Council under his jurisdiction disqualified capable candidates from other political factions to facilitate Raisi's victory in the election.
Raoufian charged that the Raisi refuses to work with reformists, independents and even conservative politicians who are not a member of his camp. His insistence on working only with "young revolutionaries" has been costly for the country, said Raoufian. As a result the president has failed to deliver on his campaign promises.
Raoufian said that public opinion and reformist activists were right to be against the widespread disqualification of candidates in the 2021 election. He called for a major reshuffling of the government to give a chance to others to come forward and contribute to solving the country's problems.
Meanwhile, Reformist politician Ali Sufi told Khabar Online that parts of Iran's conservatives have now turned into staunch critics of Raisi. This marks the failure of the conservative's "consolidated government" policy advocated by conservative figureheads in Iran.
Sufi said that the Iranian state television fabricates statistics to show Raisi in a good light, adding that some of his ministers are actively involved in fabricating "positive" statistics.
Confirming Sufi's remark of fabricated statistics, Lawmaker Gholamali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi added in an interview with Rouydad24 that "the people are suffering because of the poor performance of the Raisi administration.” Like Raoufian, Imanabadi also said that "Those who have engineered the 2021 presidential election should be held accountable for the poor performance of the Raisi administration.
Imanabadi asked: "How can you hand over the affairs of the state to a President who is just beginning to understand the economy?"
Khabar Online on Friday carried an article that asked: "Who gives these distorted figures to the President?" The article pointed out that for instance, the inflation figures Raisi has recently announced are far from the truth. The article added that because the president is not fully familiar with economic terms, sometimes his comments damage public confidence.
The report also argued that the problem of inflation cannot be solved by shouting orders at officials, and added that it is impossible to bring prices down by punishing a few shopkeepers.
The report quoted the Aftab News website as saying that since most of Raisi's experience was in the judiciary, he should have sought assistance from economic experts, but his economic team is damaging the people's trust in the government by offering baseless figures.
The report stressed that Raisi's economic team should at least be able to explain why the inflation rate in Iran has been constantly on the rise since 2018.
Ensaf News, a reformist website, on Friday reported that students of Amirkabir University in Tehran, one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the country, have said that morality guard patrols have also been issuing warnings to male and female students who talk to each other and confiscated their student cards or written down their details, presumably to keep a record of their "infringements".
Other guards who are stationed at the gates of the university and its dormitories have also been unprecedently strict since universities opened recently after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, students say, denying access to those whose appearance is not deemed "appropriate".
"Everybody gets scared of getting into trouble when there is a sound of motorbikes," one of the students at Amirkabir University told Ensaf. She said she had been told off by one of the guards who took her student card number for the record because the front of her short hair showed from under her headscarf. "It was never like this at this university before the pandemic," she said.
According to Ensaf News, students say after the re-opening of higher education institutions this year, the atmosphere has greatly changed. Authorities appointed after hardline President Ebrahim Raisi was elected, they say, are apparently finding it a good time to enforce an aggressive approach to Islamic discipline on students.
According to Ensaf News, the morality guards have in some cases forced girls to return to their dormitories and change into more "modest" coats. The new strict measures to which they are not accustomed, students say, have affected their attendance in classes because even one's color of socks can get them into trouble.
Students use social media to share experiences. They write that in some universities, including Tehran University, they are now required to wear at least veils similar to nuns instead of ordinary headscarves to cover their shoulders and that they are prevented from entering if they don't.
Since hijab became compulsory in Iran, within a couple of years from the Islamic Revolution of 1979, all government offices and universities have had special officers monitoring women's abidance by the rules of compulsory hijab and preventing those failing to meet their standards of modesty from entering the premises.
Men whose clothing looked "too western", too tight, or those who wore short-sleeve shirts would also be turned away at the gates.
In larger cities most universities in the past two decades only required women to wear regular headscarves and long coats in black or other modest colors such as brown, beige or gray, and trousers coming down to ankles but not the long black veil (chador) that completely covers the body from head to toe.
Universities in some smaller, more conservative towns, however, have always required girls to wear the veil. Many students, particularly those from large cities studying in smaller towns, would bring the veil with them to campus and only wear it when they were close to the gate.
Authorities have always promoted the long black veil as "the optimum (or best) type of hijab" but only a fraction of Iranian women wear it on a regular basis.
In some universities even the Islamic Student Unions have protested to the new strict measures. "Universities are not military barracks and dormitories are not prisons," the Islamic Union of Science and Technology University in Tehran said in a statement on Wednesday.