SUV Bribe Scandal In Iran Continues To Divide Khamenei Loyalists
A recent scandal about Iranian lawmakers receiving SUVs from the industry minister to refrain from his impeachment has expanded to engulf top government officials.
A recent scandal about Iranian lawmakers receiving SUVs from the industry minister to refrain from his impeachment has expanded to engulf top government officials.
An investigative committee in the parliament announced Saturday there is evidence that presidential administration officials and their family members also received cars, “outside legal procedures.”
Importing cars has been mostly banned by the government in recent years and domestic production is limited, making personal vehicles a sought-after commodity. Obtaining domestically produced vehicles is hard and there are long waiting lists that boosts their price among buyers.
In late April, a scandal broke out when a lawmaker revealed that around 70 members of parliament had received SUVs from former industry minister Reza Fatemi Amin last year, when parliament was examining a motion to impeach him for the country’s economic crisis.
After initial denials by the minister and other officials, he was eventually impeached April 30 as the scandal raised a media frenzy and a wave of criticism even by regime insiders.
The scandal has badly hurt the already frail legitimacy of the parliament packed with hardliners elected with little competition. It also came on the heels of unprecedented anti-regime protests and just proved the arguments of opponents who say the Islamic Republic is lawless and undemocratic.
The political pressure generated by growing popular resentment and protests have opened a rift among hardliners who just a few months ago were representing one united front of Khamenei loyalists.
When the SUV scandal broke, some in parliament threatened other hardliners in the government that it would be easy to reveal the same corrupt practices in the presidential administration and at government ministries. Now, they are revealing information about ‘car trading’ in the executive branch as a modern euphemism for ‘horse trading.’
Lawmaker Ehsan Arkani, who heads a committee supervising the presidential administration told local media Saturday that the parliament has evidence of officials receiving vehicles for one of the government-controlled car companies that also produces SUVs.
“A special sales package was designed by this carmaker for people whose names were submitted by various ministries, and we have these names,” Arkani claimed, although so far no names have been made public in the scandal.
Lawmakers accuse their peers of receiving ‘car bribes’ and now executive branch officials are accused of conspiring to do the same, while none of the parties has released any names in the political tug of war.
However, more than 200 members of parliament have sent text messages to the public saying they were never involved in the scheme and did not receive a car.
Parliamentary elections will take place next March and political observers say the current parliament has little to show after three years in office, amid a serious economic crisis.
The national currency has lost half its value since September and annual inflation is believed to be above 50 percent. People are struggling even to buy basic food items, and politicians are mudslinging over new cars.
While President Ebrahim Raisi’s special inspector for the executive branch, Hassan Darvishian, alleged recently that lawmakers had received more than 100 cars illegally, Arkani hit back, saying Mr. Darvishian’s job is to keep an eye on executive branch officials and entities, not to inspect the parliament.
“It is better if Mr. Darvishian issued a report about vehicles given to people in the presidential administration’, and if he is not willing to do that, parliament would be happy to oblige, Arkanian said.
Habib Chaab, 49, former leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), was hanged on Saturday morning, weeks after his sentence for “corruption on earth” was confirmed by the judiciary.
The Swedish-Iranian dual national was tried by a revolutionary court in Tehran in December. Denied his own choice of defense attorney, he was represented by a court-appointed lawyer. He had been forced to make self-incriminating confessions.
On Sunday, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said he was “appalled”, adding: “The UK strongly opposes the death penalty. We call on the regime to stop all executions, now.”
On Saturday, the European Union had condemned “in the strongest terms” the execution of Chaab, reiterating strong opposition against the application of capital punishment in any circumstance, adding: “The European Union calls on Iran to refrain from any future executions and to pursue a consistent policy towards the abolition of capital punishment.
"The increasing number of EU and dual EU-Iranian nationals arbitrarily detained in Iran, the restrictions imposed on consular access to EU nationals, the denial of consular protection and the right to a fair trial, stand in direct violation of international law.”
Several European officials, including Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, condemned the execution. However, they mainly focused on the irreversibility of capital punishment, rather than highlighting how the Islamic Republic is using it to crush dissent.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador to Stockholm over the hanging.
The Islamic Republic authorities say Chaab was found guilty of leading ASMLA (Harakat al-Nidal in Arabic), a movement which advocates the separation of southwestern Khuzestan Province and for plotting "numerous bombings and terrorist operations" in the oil-rich province with a large Arabic speaking population.
Tehran classifies the ASMLA as a ‘terrorist’ organization responsible for acts of terror including an attack on a military parade in Ahvaz on September 22, 2018, which killed 25 military and civilians. ASMLA claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Iran's relations with Sweden have been strained since July 2022 when a Swedish court sentenced a former Iranian jailor, Hamid Nouri, to life imprisonment over executions of political prisoners in 1988.
This weekend it emerged that three Iranian Arab prisoners who have been sentenced to death have now been moved to an unknown location, prompting fears that their execution is imminent.
In February, the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court sentenced them to death along with three other prisoners on charges of "transferring currency and remittances through a foreign bank, armed attacks, and being associated with a political movement."
Norway-based monitoring group the Iran Human Rights Organization (IHR) said on Saturday that the Islamic Republic has carried out at least 42 executions in the past 10 days alone, or one person every six hours. At least 194 people have been executed in 2023 in Iran.
