Iran International
Former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami's remarks on his refusal to vote in Iran's recent elections have sparked significant controversy among political circles.
For the first time in his political career, Khatami not only refrained from voting in the parliament and Assembly of Experts elections, despite Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's repeated declarations that voting is a religious duty, but also defended his decision as a stance in solidarity with the majority of Iranians discontent with the country's governance, in a speech to his advisors on Wednesday.
While many reformists praise him as "a winner" for boycotting Iran's "stage-managed" elections, he faces strong criticism from other political factions and social media users, both within the regime and among dissidents, who accuse him of hypocrisy and opportunism.
In a note on Wednesday, the ultra-hardline Kayhan newspaper, whose chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari is an appointee of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, accused him and other abstaining reformists, such as the Etehad-e Mellat (Nation’s Unity) party, of complicity with the “known enemies of the regime”.
“Refusing to participate in the elections is the officially announced instruction of America and Israel. Is it not? So why are you selling your open complicity and collaboration with America and Israel as moving together with the people?” Kayhan wrote.
Khatami's election abstention, however, appears to have reinvigorated reformists who view his action as a significant step forward with the potential to reconcile with Iranians who have been disillusioned with reformists over the past decade.
Protesters in the past few years often chanted not only against hardliners but also against reformists who they saw as part of the system.
Khatami stated that he abstained from voting in solidarity with the many dissatisfied people who believe that "correcting/reforming" the current trajectory of affairs is the only way to salvage the country.
To him, not voting in the current adverse circumstances is another form of voting, and he hopes that his abstention can help restore people's "damaged trust" in the government and political currents, including reformists.
He argued that the country's urgent need is to restore social capital and "settle differences" between the government and people to "save the country from threats and crises," emphasizing that the ruling system has a greater responsibility in reforming its structure, approach, and behavior.
Khatami has faced criticism for his "historical delay" in refusing to participate in the elections managed by Khamenei and his appointees in the Guardian Council, as well as for not officially articulating his departure from "political Islam."
The political act of abstention by Khatami and his supporters can only be taken seriously when they officially denounce political Islam in every shape and form and admit that all people are equal irrespective of their backgrounds, thinking, and lifestyle, one of his critics argued in an article by Ehsan Rastgar published by Zeitoon news website Wednesday.
“As long as it is devoted to political Islam, this school of thought [to which Khatami and his supporters belong] is not different in essence and its overall approach from Shia fundamentalism and people like the leader of the Islamic Republic,” he wrote.
Once an advocate of “religious democracy,” Khatami referred to “developmental democracy” as the ideal form of governance in his speech and seemed to be endorsing secularism in governance.
The use of the term “developmental democracy” has baffled many who expected him to offer a more straightforward and clear definition of the form of governance he is proposing.
“Developmental democracy” is a notion proposed by Richard L. Sklar, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of California in a book of the same name in which he said developmental democracy is the best form of democracy for African countries.
According to his own website, Sklar’s developmental democracy posits a causal relationship between democratic practice and economic development.
This form of democracy has also been interpreted as one that gives priority to cultivating the development of individual abilities and holds that the estimation of democracy lies in its commitment to national and individual improvement.
This can also signal Khamenei's weakness in controlling the ultraconservatives he helped bring to power in an election on March 1 with the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history.
The latest indications of disobedience emerged within hours of Khamenei's advice and orders to hardliners to avoid disgraceful confrontations with each other.
Hamid Rasaei, a former hardliner lawmaker with a questionable reputation, who was disqualified to run in the 2020 parliamentary election, got the go ahead to run this year and won a seat at the parliament (Majles). Within a few days of his election, Rasaei attacked the incumbent Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and his predecessor Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel and called for Ghalibaf's removal from his post.
Both the incumbent and former speakers happen to be relatives of Khamenei. Iranian pundits predicted that granting too much leverage to the ultraconservatives would one day lead them to turn against the leader. It took only a few days for this prediction to come true.
Rasaei wrote in a tweet Friday evening that IRGC-linked Fars News Agency has called for rejecting his credentials as a member of parliament. Rasaei added defiantly that the IRGC agency's threat does not scare him.
As if that was not enough to signal the disobedience that was swiftly responded to by an IRGC media outlet, hours after Khamenei's speech on Thursday, Rasaei repeated his accusations against Ghalibaf once on X (previously known as Twitter) and again on live state television.
Rasaei tweeted that Ghalibaf should be removed from his post as Majles Speaker because he has won only around 400,000 votes in the election while he had won more than 1,200,000 votes in 2020. The decline in Ghalibaf's popularity meant that a major change should occur in the leadership of the parliament.
On prime-time Thursday evening, Rasaei repeated that in a live program on the state television and charged that Tasnim News Agency and Javan Newspaper, two of the media outlets of Iran's revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which he said support Ghalibaf, have attacked him subsequently.
Rasaei also claimed that Khamenei's advice to newly elected lawmakers to avoid conflicts and controversies did not address him. This comes while Tasnim News Agency made it clear on its official X account that Rasaei's statements on state TV were clearly in contravention of Khamenei's remarks.
However, the state TV's deputy chief for political affairs, Alireza Khodabakhshi, was fired the day after, possibly for allowing Rasaei to utter his provocative remarks on air. Khodabakhshi is a an ultraconservative Paydari figure.
In another sign of disobedience to Khamenei, Hassan Bayadi, one of the founders of Abadgaran, a political organization that gave rise to Paydari Party and supported former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and is currently a staunch supporter of the Raisi administration, accused the older generation of lawmakers of not knowing what to say and what not to say.
The Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) quoted Bayadi as using an expression Haddad Adel had used to describe the new ultraconservatives and older politicians. Haddad Adel had likened older conservatives such as Ghalibaf to big trees and the new ultraconservatives as tiny plants. Bayadi said in the interview with ILNA: "May God help us! The totalitarian big trees at the Parliament do not know what to say and what not to say."
Bayadi, who has been so far close to Khamenei's office, also made unforgivable mistakes in that statement: First he attacked Khamenei's relatives, and second, he did not abide by Khamenei's advice to avoid controversies and conflicts among insiders.
The occurrence of two such cases in one day, make it difficult for Khamenei to re-establish his authority in the eyes of his devoted followers who used to see him as an infallible God-like father figure. Almost everyone has seen the signs of aging and illness in Khamenei's face and posture, despite his attempt to walk without a walking stick to prove his fitness.
As conservative activist and analyst Abdolrahim Ansari pointed out, Khamenei did not ask ordinary social media activists to avoid infighting and controversy. He was addressed candidates who have been elected with his blessing without the right qualifications in an engineered election.