Smaller Conservative Groups Emerge In Iran With An Eye On Power
Smaller conservative parties in Iran have become more active recently, in what could be a design to shape politics more to the liking of the Supreme Leader.
Smaller conservative parties in Iran have become more active recently, in what could be a design to shape politics more to the liking of the Supreme Leader.
Every week a new conservative group emerges on the Iranian political scene. Groups that already existed but were less visible, are given a wider exposure on national TV.
Even compared to Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and his aides who call themselves "neo-cons," the new conservatives, the likes of Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, are far more ruthless in their quest for power, according to some local media.
While traditional conservatives started forging alliances following former President Hassan Rouhani's victory in the 2013 presidential election, this time, it is a new generation of conservatives that is marching to occupy positions of power and to get ready for the next parliamentary elections in February or March 2024.
Last week, the party known as the Selfless Devotees of the Islamic Revolution held its congress in Tehran. With two other parties, The Society of Sacrificial Warriors, and the Society of Wayfarers, the three groups are known in the Iranian political circles as the Conservative Triplet. The names these groups use can be defined as super-revolutionary labels, but in fact their leaders are nothing more than typical political actors in an authoritarian system who want a bigger piece of the pie.
Currently, Iran’s parliament is dominated by the hardliner Paydari group, which has not always followed signals coming from the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The re-emergence of the triplet with new momentum, could be Khamenei's policy to introduce them as his favorite so that they could replace Paydari in 2024.
Apart from their leaders, most of the members of the three parties have been hitherto unknown. The Sacrificial Warriors come from a background of former revolutionary guards (IRGC), the Wayfarers are former, or current Basij militia members and the Selfless Devotees are the family members of the veteran soldiers of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
After Alireza Zakani took office as the Tehran Mayor last summer, many of the members of the Sacrificial and the Wayfarers have joined the Tehran municipality as managers. Meanwhile, as some newspapers in Tehran have noted, members of all the three parties frequently take part in news and current affairs programs on state television in a bid to build recognition and credibility for the future.
The Selfless Devotees have their roots in a pre-1979-armed group, which would have been characterized as terrorist if it was active today. The group's name was Saf (Rank) and its members included Yahya Rahim Safavi the former IRGC commander and the current military adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Low-ranking members of that group included current IRGC General Esmail Kowsari who has been a member of the Iranian parliament three times so far and every time he immediately went back to the IRGC to serve as a security officer. Kowsari was, for some time, the secretary-general of the party.
All three groups were formed in the 2000s when the IRGC was beginning to become a major political and economic power in Iran.
Among the three groups, the Sacrificial Warriors is politically more important than the others and has been involved in making all the major decisions of the conservative camp. Former President Ahmadinejad was a member of the central council of this party when he became Iran's president in 2005. Its members include powerful conservative politicians such as Ali Darabi and Hassan Fadaei. The former was the deputy chief of the state television under three different heads of the state TV.
It appears that the three groups are preparing to seize the parliament and dominate the presidential administration as the "young revolutionaries" Khamenei wants for his ‘second step of the revolution,’ his jargon for his vision of Iran in the next 40 years.
"Those who have seen the 21-minute footage released by Ria Novosti know how Putin looks stressed during the meeting, tidying his tie twice, moving his legs and shoulders. Why? Because he feels this is a very important political meeting that is vital for his country," a seven-minute-long video-commentary by media researcher Mohammad Lesani claimed.
The video-commentary entitled "Historical Arrangement, Iranian Power and Authority" which was published Friday by Fars news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) was widely circulated by other government-controlled media outlets.
"On the other hand, you see Mr. Raisi's serenity who is speaking calmly without moving his hands and legs," the video went on to say.
Many Iranian social media users have interpreted the placement of a massive table to separate the two presidents in the meeting as an intentional act to imply "distance" and said it was a sign of disrespect that Putin was chewing gum while Raisi was speaking. They have also pointed out that unlike most official meetings, the flags of the two countries were nowhere to be seen in the hall.
While showing a photo of Putin's meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nicol Pashinyan at the same table sitting a closer and facing the Russian president, the narrator said Putin had a "haughty" and "emperor-like" demeanor while Aliyev and Pashinyan looked as if they were being "politically humiliated".
The Fars video went to great lengths to justify the mise-en-scene in the room. Showing photos of Putin's meetings with other foreign dignitaries in the same hall, including his meetings with the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, the narrator said Putin meets foreign dignitaries in the same hall and "his important working meetings" at the same table.
"But the arrangement this time was a historical and unprecedented arrangement… Two political leaders are sitting at the two ends sides of the table…[resembling] balanced plates of a weighing scale," the video said.
"I wanted to make a response to those people who beat the drums of despair and think that the strategic agreements of our country with Russia, China, and other countries of the East …are supposedly equal to destroying our nation, identity, and Iran's power and authority," the narrator said in the video.
The publication of a photo of President Raisi praying at the same hall has also raised much controversy in social media. State media and hardliners say Raisi broke his meeting with the Russian president not to miss the noontime prayer and to display spirituality at a place where once atheists ruled.
Several Friday imams eulogized Raisi's move to stand to prayer at the Kremlin as a gesture of great significance. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative in Alborz province, Mohammad-Mehdi Hosseini-Hamedani, in his Friday sermon also predicted that Raisi may stand to prayer at the White House someday because his act of praying at the Kremlin "bore important messages".
"The President's conduct at Kremlin Palace revealed the meaning of spirituality. His prayer highlights his government's spiritual dialogue," Jamileh Alamolhoda told female seminary students at Al-Zahra University of the religious city of Qom. She added that the Iranian media should "properly elucidate such moves".
Iranian media Wednesday published a photo showing President Ebrahim Raisi standing to prayer on his own in the Kremlin where he was meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently during their three-hour meeting.
The photo has been used extensively in what appears to be a publicity campaign for Raisi amid public criticism of his government's efforts to expand relations with Russia and China. Among Iranians the names of both countries are associated with communism and atheism.
Critics who have been saying that the Islamic Republic is ready “to sell Iran” to Russia and China just to ensure its survival, attacked Raisi’s prayer as a political show, while he went to Moscow “to beg for help.”
Raisi on Thursday also met with head of the Council of Russian Muftis, Ravil Einoddin, officially representing Russia’s Muslims in Moscow. According to Iranian media, Einoddin referred to the picture showing Raisi praying at the Kremlin and hailed his prayer as "super symbolic and outstanding".
According to the website of Iran's President, Einoddin told Raisi that someone from Finland sent him a message about the picture showing Raisi's prayer. "The Iranian president’s prayer 'brought blessings to the Kremlin'," the presidential website quoted Einoddin as saying.
The quotes from Einoddin have been widely circulated by Raisi supporters on social media, who called his act "a very important political and diplomatic message". They have also mentioned the "first prayer" at the Kremlin by the former Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Qods Force commander Ghasem Soleimani during one of his visits to Moscow, which they say paved the way for Raisi's feat.
Quoting several social media post exalting Raisi's display of faith at the Kremlin, Iran's state-run television IRIB in a report Thursday said Raisi's religious gesture in the middle of his meeting with the Russian president has sparked "tens of political analyses".
Yet others have mentioned a letter in 1989 that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, sent to then-Soviet-leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In the letter he advised the Russian leader to study Islam and predicted the end of communism.
"None of the former Soviet leaders could imagine the representative of the most important religious ideology [in the world] would one day stand to prayer in the Kremlin Palace and to flaunt "political Islam" to the world," Mehdi Andarziyan, an "America and Zionism researcher" according to his profile, tweeted.
Publisher Farhad Fallah shared a photo of Raisi's prayer and an image in a Spanish language book that depicts Soleimani's prayer at the Kremlin. "Soleimani's prayer at the Kremlin is now a model for children in Latin America. These scenes may be ordinary to us but for others they are educational," he wrote.
Another Raisi supporter said on Twitter that the publication of the photo by Iranian authorities bore the message that "the thinking once formed on the basis of atheism" has been defeated. "God willing, after the annihilation of liberalism, some day soon, we will hold Friday prayers at the White House," he promised.
In a Telegram post Thursday, conservative journalist Mohammad Mohajeri said finding fault with performing religious duties is wrong, but the publication of the photo was "a sign of inexperience and maladroitness of the government media team and "very novice-like".