Regime Insiders Attack Raisi For Indecision, Inefficiency
Reports from Tehran indicate that regime insiders including conservatives in the government are fed up with the President Ebrahim Raisi’s government amid crises.
Reports from Tehran indicate that regime insiders including conservatives in the government are fed up with the President Ebrahim Raisi’s government amid crises.
Reformist newspaper Shargh wrote in a January 10 article that Expediency Council members have also become critical of the Raisi administration's inability to prepare the country's annual budget bill and the related 5-year development plan, as well as rising inflation and the devaluation of Iran's national currency.
Shargh further asked whether the conservatives are going to lose their patience in the face of the government's indecision and inaction while the country's worst economic crisis continues with an ever-increasing momentum.
At the same time, “poverty has been spreading” to large parts of the Iranian society while the government has not introduced any plan to support the low-income strata and prevent further shrinking of Iran's middle class, the daily wrote.
Conservative economist and a member of the Expediency Council Ahmad Tavakoli has recently warned the Raisi administration and Iran's conservative-dominated parliament: You may not be too far from the day when the poor pour into the streets and put an end to the current situation." He further warned: "Please do not do something that might lead to a revolt by the poor."
Tavakoli also criticized members of Iran's parliament for approving or rejecting economic issues including the bill about capital gains tax without having read at least two pages about the matter.
Meanwhile, another member of the Expediency Council, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghaddam, who is also a member of the right-wing Militant Clerics Association, said in an interview with Khabar Online: "The structural problem of Iran's economy is that we do not produce wealth. We simply distribute the resources. People see the situation in other countries…about better living standards."
Mesbahi added: "Iranians need to spend more money than they earn and the Iranian government's expenses are more than its revenues. As a result, both Iranian families and the Iranian government have to constantly borrow money to make ends meet."
He said, "Unfortunately the Iranian government lacks a strategic vision and does not have the right people to pursue a strategy. Raisi used to say during the 2021 presidential election that he has a 7000-page economic plan on his desk. I asked him to show me the plan, but he did not have anything. I offered him some suggestions, but he insisted on his opposition to the FATF saying that it will give the United States more pretext for sanctioning Iran."
The Financial Action Task Force, an inter-state watchdog has blacklisted Iran’s banking for lack of adherence to anti-terror financing rules and money laundering.
Mesbahi also criticized the government for not having a long-term plan and thus furthering its business on a day-to-day basis.
In yet another development, hardliner Students of Amir Kabir University in Tehran harshly criticized Raisi's justification for rising prices in Iran. They told him they expect him to have an effective hand to do things rather than a tongue to justify everything by words.
Hardliner cleric Naser Makarem Shirazi also criticized Raisi's economic policies. He said: "It is regrettable that the officials not only do not solve economic problems such as rial’s steep fall, but they tend to totally ignore the problem."
Meanwhile, conservative commentator Naser Imani has said recently: "Government officials have still not realized the country's situation and therefore, they cannot offer any solution for the problems. Their best defense often is to say that there is nothing wrong with their performance and it is the enemy who creates all the problems." However, Imani shied away from saying that two of those who always attribute Iran's problems to foreigners' conspiracies are Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi.
“I hail the women whose hijab [compliance] is weak but are loyal to the Islamic Revolution,” former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said in a program aired by the state television Monday.
Haddad-Adel who is father-in-law to Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, also insisted that the issue of the hijab should be “taken seriously” but not in a manner that it “polarizes” the society.
Haddad-Adel’s remarks came a few days after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei coined a new term, ‘feeble-hijabed’ in a speech last week to refer to women who wear the hijab but not strictly enough to be completely satisfactory. The speech was delivered to a hall filled with black veiled women.
Women in a Tehran shopping mall with scant hijab or no veil after the protests
But in fact, the protests have created a new reality that the regime has a hard time to counter. Many women appear without hijab in big cities taking heart from the protest movement. If the government uses force to stop them, it would enflame more opposition.
In the past four months many women from various walks of life, students and housewives to celebrities, have flouted the hijab rules. Actress Taraneh Alidousti, for instance, was arrested for posing on Instagram without a hijab on December 17 but as soon as she set foot outside the prison on bail last week, she again dropped her headscarf defiantly.
Without any proof, Khamenei claimed that women whose approach to wearing the hijab is laid-back had “slapped the mouths of those who advertised calls to protests”. This contradicts the earlier hysterical reaction of Khamenei’s hardliner supporters to women appearing without a veil in public. In fact, many on social media commented that disobeying the hijab requirement was a slap in the face of the regime that spent decades trying to enforce it.
Abiding by hijab rules is the inevitable duty for all Muslim women, he stressed but also said that women should not be labeled as non-religious or anti-revolutionary if they failed to fully honor the hijab requirements.
The veil should be worn in a manner that very little from the face remains visible with clothing that totally covers and obscures the shape of the body and legs. Women should also avoid wearing bright colors.
However, one of the women chosen to speak in the meeting with Khamenei last week uncharacteristically wore a red headscarf and a tunic over a checkered shirt. She also appeared to be wearing some make-up and lipstick.
The speaker’s outfit, which somehow resembled the Lebanese style of hijab, probably demonstrated the level of ‘tolerance’ to be shown by Khamenei when it came to forms of hijab other than the black veil.
Taking his cue from Khamenei, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) criticized the police over their harsh treatment of women with loose hijab the next day. "What right do we have to say that we won't let women use the subway if they are not wearing their hijab properly?" he asked.
Given their very aggressive approach to women’s defiance of hijab rules, religious hardliners will be finding the attempt to appease parts of the society very difficult even if Khamenei appears to be behind the move. “Some piety-minded people were not pleased with the Leader’s recent remarks about the hijab,” the Hamshahri newspaper wrote Saturday.
In fact, there all all sorts of contradictory statements by officials. On Tuesday, the hardliner Judiciary appeared to demand stricter hijab enforcement. Whether the contradiction are a part of a cynical policy or the result of genuine disagreements among the top echelons of the regime, is not clear.
Before the 1979 revolution very few imagined that the future government of Iran would be an Islamic Republic run by clerics or that all women would have to wear the hijab, which some women wore by choice back then.
Elias Hazrati, who is also the proprietor of the newspaper explained that restrictions imposed by the government have made it impossible for the editors to do their job according to the daily's editorial standards.
Hazrati said in the editorial that readers had complained why the paper did not carry a report on the anniversary of the Ukrainian plane, shot down by the Revolutionary Guard on January 8, 2020, as it took off from Tehran.
He stated that "in fact, Etemad's editors had prepared several reports on the topic with added value by its analysts. But Etemad's editorial standards were not compatible with the closed circle some policymakers and state institutions have drawn around the media to restrict their activities."
"When we found out how limited the scope of our articles should be, we decided not to publish the story at all," wrote Hazrati. However, his statement revealed that at least sensitive articles are read and censored by individuals other than the daily's editors before publication. He also spoke about directives that were issued by "some institutions" to censor the media.
The statement by Hazrati, which came in an editorial entitled "A transparent report to our readers" in the January 9 issue of Etemad, was made a week after security forces stormed the home of the daily's political editor Medi Beik's and arrested him after confiscating his cell phone, computer and other equipment.
When Beik's wife broke the news about his arrest, his colleagues in the newspaper expressed support for him in social media comments. On January 7 several columnists as well as Hazrati himself expressed support for Beik on the frontpage of the newspaper, pointing out that he should not be jailed for doing his job.
Beik became very well-known for publishing a series of reports about young protesters in prison. In one particular case, Amir Hossein Rahimi, a 15 year-old jailed protesters with shotgun pellets in his head and neck whose mother did not have the bail money to secure his release, was finally freed thanks to an article in Etemad about the case. The shotgun pellets were subsequently taken out in a Tehran hospital.
Hazrati’s reference to "institutions" refers to the IRGC and the intelligence ministry in the Iranian political jargon. Although IRGC's aerospace commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh has admitted that it was an IRGC battery that fired two missiles on the Ukrainian aircraft, still, discussing the matter is some sort of taboo for the press. Even the Iranian Judiciary has not been able to convince the families of the victims why due judicial process has not been observed to determine the main culprits.
Hazrati said: "We trust that our policy is quite clear. We believe that well-documented reports by Etemad and other media outlets can pave the way for the people's trust in the government." He pointed out that the arguments about the downing of the aircraft and secrecy around the case has eroded this trust. However, he noted that perhaps the authorities do not want any coverage of the matter while a court is investigating the case.
"But we believe that free media are part of responsible governance. Democratic countries welcome transparent news dissemination. And experts and the family members of the victims have a right to speak about the case outside the court," he said.
The story has been controversial from the start as Iranian officials denied any attack on the aircraft for three days before admitting that it was hit by two missiles. Still, no one wants to accept any responsibility.