Iran’s Hardliners Will Win Parliament, Conservative Says
As a power struggle among conservatives in Iran continues, a leading commentator predicts the next parliament speaker will come from the hardliner Paydari group.
As a power struggle among conservatives in Iran continues, a leading commentator predicts the next parliament speaker will come from the hardliner Paydari group.
Reformist daily Etemad revealed this week that a new round of political struggles over power is underway between Paydari and parliament (Majles) Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The rivalry extends beyond the Majles election and partly revolves around competition for Iran's presidency in 2025. The feud is discernible in pro-Ghalibaf daily Sobh-e No and Paydari's mouthpiece Raja News websites.
The newspaper wrote that Ghalibaf and Paydari's media fleets have been exchanging accusations and counteraccusations throughout the month of July. The daily added that the two were on the verge of a coalition ahead of the March 2024 parliamentary elections, but in the absence of Iran's reformists on the scene, they started to compete against each other.
Iran’s reformists who were mostly barred from competing in the 2020 parliamentary elections have not decided to register for the upcoming vote, because they are not sure if conservatives controlling the electoral system will allow them to compete.
Etemad also wrote that the rivalry goes beyond the Majles election and is partly about competition over Iran's presidency in 2025. Raja News accused Sobh-e No of belittling what it called Raisi's achievement in making Iran a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Sobh-e No responded by jokingly calling the Paydari a bunch of super-revolutionaries working against Ghalibaf.
While the media battle continues, a conservative commentator and a former editor of the Kayhan, Mohammad Mohajeri told Etemad Online that if the upcoming elections will become a rivalry among conservatives without reformists playing a part in the elections, Paydari is most likely to win the parliament in March.
"We can congratulate Morteza Agha-Tehrani as the next speaker of the Majles even today," he said. Agha-Tehran was previously the leader of the Paydari Party but stepped down due to allegations about having US citizenship or permanent residency and was replaced by former IRGC officer and Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli. Nonetheless, many inside and outside the party believe Agha-Tehran has the final say in the party.
Mohajeri further charged that Paydari operates like a business firm and is currently pretending to have the upper hand in Iranian politics in order to get concessions from other conservative groups.
He added that "Paydari candidates had an average of 250,000 votes in the 2020 parliamentary elections. They can win all the 30 seats for Tehran if others do not compete for any reason." Mohajeri further said, "For the same reason Paydari wants a low-turnout election in March."
While the parliament is sending the final months of its four-year term, some observers say it suffers from an unprecedented lack of influence and popularity. Former lawmaker Iraj Nadimi told Rouydad24 that not only the current members of the parliament cannot solve any of the country's problems, but they also keep creating new problems.
Nadimi said the Majles is incapable of supervising the government, and instead it is currently following the government. He added that despite Khamenei's support for the Majles, it is no longer trusted by the people.
"People in the streets, are generally unhappy about the parliament's performance because it cannot solve their problems, because its legislative agenda was not aimed at addressing challenges." Nadimi was likely referring to the economic crisis that has impoverished tens of millions of people and the regime’s unwillingness to reach a nuclear agreement with the West that could lift crippling economic sanctions.
Ali Mohammadi-Sirat, the Supreme Leader’s man in IRGC’s Quds (Qods) Force - a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations – said the man who disrespected the Quran should fear for his life. He called upon Swedish authorities to hand over the individual to a Muslim country, emphasizing that “whoever insults Prophet Muhammad and the Holy Quran will be sentenced to execution”.
The incident involved Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant, who burned pages from the Quran in front of the central mosque in Stockholm on the first day of Eid al-Adha, after obtaining a permit from a Swedish court. Some 200 onlookers witnessed him tearing up a copy of the Quran and wiping his shoes with the pages. He then put bacon on the book and set it on fire whilst another protestor addressed crowds with a megaphone. Momika repeated the desecration in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on July 20. The following day, in neighboring Denmark, members of the far-right nationalist group "Danske Patrioter (Danish Patriots)" burned a copy of the Quran in front of Iraq's Embassy in Copenhagen.
Iran's Supreme Leader called for the severest punishment for the perpetrators, describing it as "a bitter, conspiratorial, and perilous act.” In an interview with IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency on Wednesday, Mohammadi-Sirat repeated Khamenei’s demands and stressed that these men will not be safe wherever they are, a similar fate to that of Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born British writer who was stabbed in August 2022 because of a death edict by Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini. In the late 1980s, Khomeini issued a Fatwa for the killing of Rushdie for his book, Satanic Verses, seen by some Muslims as insulting to Prophet Muhammed. Iran also announced a reward for Rushdie’s killing.
Earlier this month, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Commander Hossein Salami also threatened attacks against those responsible for the incident, saying that those who burn or desecrate the Quran will not enjoy security.
“We will not allow those who insult the Quran to have security. If someone wants to play with our Quran and religion, we will play with all his world,” Salami said. “Sooner or later the vengeful hand of ‘mujaheds’ will reach politicians and stage managers behind this sort of crimes, and we will render the highest punishment to the perpetrator.”
Khamenei’s representative in Quds force – designated as a terrorist group by the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain – claimed that the clandestine orchestrators of Quran burnings are the United States and Israel. “The leaders of the Israeli regime have arranged such an action through one of their spies to divert public attention” from the country’s internal turmoil and “its weakness against the resistance front,” he said, using Islamic Republic jargon for its allies and proxies in the region, including Palestinian militant groups.
Mohammadi-Sirat's remarks came two days after Nasser Kanaani, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry called on European countries to take stronger action against the burning of the Quran. “We want governments of countries in which such shameful insults occur to prevent the repetition of such disgraceful actions and to strongly deal with the perpetrators,” he stated,
Iran has announced that it will not accept a Swedish ambassador and has no plans to send a new ambassador to Sweden.
On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly passed a Morocco-drafted resolution, deploring ''all acts of violence against persons on the basis of their religion or belief, as well as any such acts directed against their religious symbols, holy books, homes, businesses, properties, schools, cultural centers or places of worship, as well as all attacks on and in religious places, sites and shrines in violation of international law.''
On July 12, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council also passed a motion to condemn the burning of Quran despite nay votes by Western countries, which said it conflicts with their positions on human rights and freedom of expression.
In response to an Iran International press query about the arrest of Saman Pashaei, an Iranian-Kurd and the world’s third-ranked junior wrestling champion, an IOC spokesperson said, “We continue to monitor the situation very closely.”
The IOC spokesperson referred Iran International to its “position relating to the situation of sport and the athletes in Iran.” The IOC position on its website is dated March 29 and states: “The IOC EB [Executive Board] reserves the right to take any appropriate action relating to the participation of the Iranian NOC [National Olympic Committee] and athletes in the upcoming Olympic Games Paris 2024, depending on the developments in this situation.”
The IOC has faced intense criticism over the years from the United for Navid campaign and Rob Koehler, Director General of Global Athlete, for failing to punish Iran’s regime for its executions and imprisonment of athletes who have demonstrated against Khamenei’s regime.
United for Navid is an organization composed of highly decorated Iranian athletes who seek justice for the champion Iranian Greco-Roman wrestler Navid Afkari who was hanged by the clerical regime in September 2020.
Sardar Pashaei, the executive manager of United for Navid and the brother of Saman, told Iran International “I firmly state that the International Olympic Committee’s inaction in the face of the Iranian regime’s behavior will lead to a worsening situation, not an improvement. With each passing day, Iran’s regime will grow bolder in punishing athletes, resulting in a grave moral and practical failure on the part of the IOC.”
Just weeks ago, Iran’s regime imposed the death penalty on school boxing champion Mohammad Javad Vafaei-Sani for allegedly setting government property, including a penitentiary, on fire.
A letter signed by 108 human rights experts and NGOs was sent to Volker Türk,
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on July 19, urging the UN official to intervene to save the boxer’s life. According to the letter, “He was arrested in March 2020 (Persian calendar month of Esfand 1398) for taking part in the November 2019 anti-government protests. He was tortured for several months and eventually handed down an execution sentence for ‘efsad-fil-arz’ (‘corruption on Earth’) by Branch Four of the Mashhad Revolutionary Court.”
The letter added, “In recent months, the Iranian authorities have executed at least seven other protesters on similar bogus charges with total impunity. These political executions are a callous attempt by the authorities to frighten and silence an increasingly restive population no longer willing to accept their corrupt and oppressive rule.”
According to the March IOC statement, “The IOC has expressed serious concerns over the past few months vis-à-vis the situation of the Iranian athletes and the Olympic community as a whole in the current context of the upheavals and demonstrations in the country and has urged the NOC to take appropriate action with the highest authorities to protect the athletes and members of the Olympic community from a humanitarian perspective.”
The IOC conducted a meeting with the Iranian regime-controlled National Olympic Committee NOC. According to the IOC, it requested and received a written report from the NOC “on all the issues addressed during the meeting, including the status of women in sport.”
The IOC said, “Having studied the report, the IOC will continue to monitor the situation and to request immediate intervention from the NOC whenever there is any specific issue affecting the athletes and members of the Olympic community in the country.”
Pashaei, who was the former head coach of Iran’s national Greco-Roman wrestling team, said “Instead of meeting with Iranian officials, the International Olympic Committee should meet with us, the athletes, and listen to our truth. Over the past few months, athletes have endured imprisonment, torture, and even had their families taken hostage, while Iranian officials have only worked to conceal these atrocities instead of supporting athletes.”
In February, the IOC warned the Iranian regime-controlled NOC to respect the Olympic charter due to the Iranian regime’s promotion of discrimination against Israeli athletes. In April 2022, the Iranian karate champion Sajjad Ganjzadeh criticized the Islamic Republic’s boycott policy targeting Israeli athletes. He wrote on Instagram “We cannot tolerate this anymore. Not competing is more difficult than competing.”
According to the February IOC press statement, ”The Iranian NOC made clear commitments to pursue and expand its efforts to safeguard the athletes’ rights, from both a humanitarian and a sporting perspective, and to continue to act in accordance with the Olympic Charter and fully respect the principle of non-discrimination.”
Iran International noted at the time that sports is under the direct control of the government, and in many instances, the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the Iranian Olympic committee would be hardly able to deliver its promises. The US government sanctioned the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
According to a report in Aftab News website, affiliated with reformists, the government borrowed around $12 billion from four major quasi-private banks in three months ending June 21. To ensure availability of funds, it issued directives to these banks to reduce lending to the private sector, causing the loss of 500,000 jobs amid an already serious economic crisis.
The government borrowed more than 4,000 trillion rials, or more than $8 billion just from Bank Mellat, both for its own operating expenses and for money-losing public and semi-public companies run by political appointees and well-connected insiders.
Fully government owned banks issue no figures, and it is not clear how much they have lent to the government, but Aftab News warned that government borrowing is much higher at these banks that are run by appointed officials. The semi-government banks, such as Mellat, are traded on Tehran stock exchange and issue financial reports.
The issue is that these banks faced with balance sheet problems when they lend excessively to the government, are forced to borrow from the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which in turn has to print more money, fueling inflation. Official numbers indicate that the annual inflation is hovering around 50 percent, but some observers recently claimed that in fact inflation has reached 70 percent.
A market analyst said in April that “The growth rate of the monetary base has reached 38 percent and liquidity has reached 34 percent. This unprecedented gap means that the government is printing more money and making up for the budget deficit by heavily borrowing from banks and forcing them to borrow from the central bank.”
As a result of increasing money supply, the rial has fallen 12-fold in the past 5 years and has halved in value in the past one year. It is now trading around 500,000 to one US dollar.
The former governor of Iran's central bank Abdolnasser Hemmati, who is among the outspoken critics of the current administration, also said in March that “in order to control inflation and rial’s exchange rate, the government should take serious measures to reverse growing liquidity.”
It is not entirely clear why the government is so much short of money when its oil exports have substantially increased since 2021, reaching a reported volume of 1.5 million barrels per day.
The only reasonable explanation is that it offers deep discounts to those who are willing to risk US third-party sanctions, which are mainly Chinese refineries. According to some estimates, Iran is able to offload its crude oil for just $40 a barrel, or half that of current global prices. Moreover, it is not being paid in hard currency, and part of the sales are based on barter for needed imports.
Economists expect the inflation rate to accelerate if no major economic improvement takes place. Currently, Iran’s only hope is for the United States to lift its sanctions or agree for third countries to release around $20 billion of Tehran’s frozen funds. But some say even in that case, the reprieve will be a temporary one, as the current government has proven to haveextremely weak management abilities.