Khamenei’s Chief Of Staff Denies Rumors Of Ill Health
Ali Khamenei's Chief of Staff says Iran’s Supreme Leader is in perfect health despite being in his 80s.
Ali Khamenei's Chief of Staff says Iran’s Supreme Leader is in perfect health despite being in his 80s.
Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani said Tuesday that “every now and then it is said that the leader is sick", playing down rumors of his deteriorating health - speculation which is causing questions of who would step into his shoes in his absence.
It is unclear who his successor would be at this stage and it is a taboo to discuss such matters though there have been several names mentioned speculating who would take over in his wake.
Most prominent is Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, believed to be being groomed for the role. He runs the beit-e rahbari (House of Leadership), as a cleric with “ayatollah” status — a prerequisite for the supreme leadership, though experts say this appointment would cause chaos in the regime, where powerful figures such as President Raisi are also vying for the title.
Last year, the New York Times claimed Iran’s Supreme Leader's health situation was grave, the 84-year-old having had emergency surgery at a clinic set up at his home and office complex for bowel obstruction.
He had been suffering extreme stomach pains and high fever, one of the people told the New York Times, explaining that he was on bed rest under observation by a team of doctors.
It was claimed that all his meetings were cancelled amid numerous rumors about his death on social media, before he reappeared shortly after in two televised speeches and attended a religious event in a bid to quash the rumors.
Khamenei has been Iran's supreme leader since 1989, and has been battling ill health for almost a decade. In 2014, he underwent a successful prostate cancer operation which also triggered fears for what would come next.
Ayatollah Alamolhoda -- the Friday Imam of Mashhad, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative in the city and the father-in-law of President Ebrahim Raisi -- has been pocketing large sums of money from the Goharshad endowment without any real responsibility or duties.
As part of the decree that gives the charitable foundation to Alamolhoda, he can have 10 percent of its total income as his personal salary, while another 10 percent provides the salaries of all the other staff who work there.
The revelations were made by Vahid Ashtari, known for revealing corruption among Iran’s senior officials. He published a thread of tweets on Monday with details about one of the biggest financial endowments of the country, Goharshad, ironically meaning Happy Jewel in English, which was handed over to senior firebrand cleric Alamolhoda six years ago.
The Goharshad endowment has more than 1,000 hectares of land in Mashhad and more than 5,700 lots of land and real estates in the city of Chenaran, about 45 km (about 27.96 mi) west of the city. However, 5,700 is only the number of the lots that have separate documents while the real number is nearly 26,000 (25,825) pieces of property, including agricultural and animal farms.
In Iran, such endowments are like holding companies with several cultural, educational and healthcare institutes as well as other affiliated companies working in horticulture and construction. A report by IRNA in 2019, cited a deputy of the Endowment Organization of Khorasan Razavi province as saying that Goharshad is the most profitable charitable organization in the province.
Granting the guardianship of such a colossal entity to Alamolhoda was controversial in the first place, but new details have caused further outrage among Iranians.
Not surprisingly, Alamolhoda has done what most of the influential regime insiders do with such opportunities. He asked the managerial board of the foundation to give him the 10-percent cut but he relinquished all decision-making and responsibilities to the province’s Endowment Organization.
Ashtari is a member of Edalat Khahan (Justice Seekers), a political group of mainly of young conservatives and university students who are loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and are also close to former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili who ran against Raisi. In April 2022, his revelations sparked the Layette-gate scandal that led to calls for the resignation of Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and resurfacing of other alleged corruption cases against his family.
In June, Ashtari revealed in a series of tweets that a 150-hectare piece of land endowed by a local family in Qazvin including a farm with 1,000 cattle has been rented out at a monthly rent of 10m rials (around $20 at current exchange rates) to Mona Chaychian, the daughter-in-law of the head of the State Endowment Organization Mehdi Khamoushi, another Khamenei appointee.
Ashtari who dubbed the case as “Daughter-in-Law Favoritism in Endowment Organization” pointed out in his tweets that young couples are unable to rent a basement in the outskirts of the city of Qazvin with the same amount of money as a point of comparison. “The Endowments [Organization has officially turned into the back yard of corruption [-mongers],” he wrote.
The Organization has confirmed the deal but claimed that Khamoushi was not involved in it and threatened to sue the whistle-blower.
In the case of the parliament speaker, Ashtari revealed that Ghalibaf’s wife, daughter and son-in-law had returned from Turkey with massive extra luggage including a baby bed and stroller that formed part of the layette for his yet unborn grandchild. All this as Iranians have to pay hefty prices for imported goods and tens of million are now considered to have sunk into poverty.
Critics accused Ghalibaf of hypocrisy for his admonishing others for luxury and telling Iranians they should support domestically made products.
Ashtari has been sentenced to two years in prison and banned from media and social media activity for his role in what has been dubbed “Layette Gate”. It is believed he has appealed the sentence.
According to the annual list released by Transparency International in January, Iran ranks 150 out of 180 countries in the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), one stop lower than the previous year.
The regime authorities routinely criticize corruption in the country, with Khamenei having issued an anti-corruption decree, demanding the heads of the three branches of government not slacken in efforts against graft. All this while it is Khamenei's own inner circle which has become most notorious for its own corruption.
In a program aired by the state television Sunday, Mansour Kabkanian, a member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, said 48 percent of the hugely sought after 3,000 seats, such as those in medical and engineering schools, are taken by students hailing from the top income percentile families while students from the bottom income brackets only manage to make it to 0.2 percent of top majors.
Only 1.3 of applicants from the bottom three percentiles make it to medical and dentistry schools against 86 percent from the top three, he said, adding that in some engineering fields, such as electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, the three bottom percentiles have no chance at all but those from the top three percentiles make up 87 percent of all students admitted.
Many Iranians believe that the standardized university entrance exams, known as Concours, which is usually held at a nationwide scale in summer every year, is responsible for such a huge gap in admission of students from the wealthy and underprivileged families.
They argue that Concours only allows for those with money who can afford not only top private schools, but also preparatory classes and private lessons, expert advice on making the best choices, and even corrupt practices such as purchasing the test questions and their correct answers at astronomical prices.
Those profiting from the lucrative business of running Concours classes and publication of expensive study material have for years used their influence and money to prevent the entrance exam system being replaced by better and fairer methods of student admission to universities, the media have been saying for years.
The Iranian media have dubbed the allegedly profiteering Concours businesses as ‘the Concours Mafia’.
“The Concours mafia has been corrupting the exams for years. In public schools they teach you that 2+2 makes four while in the Concours exam they require you to calculate the mass of the sun in your head,” a critic tweeted.
“The mafia establishes the [exam preparatory] school so that you have to fill their pockets to succeed. Those who create the test questions make them arbitrarily [hard] in order to sell the key to test questions before the exam [to make a profit],” he added.
The term ‘mafia’ is often used by Iranian media to refer to influential groups that ensure their own profits through bribing officials and lawmakers. Critics of the automaking industry, for instance, have said for years that a “mafia-like” influential group is behind a ban on car imports to eliminate competition to Iran's inefficient auto industry where their interests lie.
The head of the higher education ministry’s evaluation organization, Abdolrasoul Pourabbas, claimed earlier this year that corruption in holding Concours has decreased this year as a result of using new methods and devices to uncover cheating during the exams. Last year he had sworn on camera that allegations of corruption were false.
Pourabbas said that “some ringleaders of fraud networks” were arrested in several provinces and added that there are plans to end the Concours. Such statements have been made by various officials for around two decades.
Nearly 1.2 million applicants participated in the exams this year held July 6 and 7 across the country.