Insider Opposition Grows To Khamenei’s Intransigence
Opposition to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from within his own government appears to be on the rise one month after the start of an anti-government uprising.
Opposition to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from within his own government appears to be on the rise one month after the start of an anti-government uprising.
During this period, Khamenei has made it clear at least twice that he wants the protests to be crushed and protesters punished heavy-handedly. Although a few officials including Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Mashhad Friday prayers Imam Ahmad Alamolhoda have echoed Khamenei’s call for violent crackdown, several politicians including one government minister, a senior aide, and several lawmakers and former state officials have pointed out that the regime needs to make compromises on some of its values in order to peacefully curb the dissent.
Khamenei’s senior aide Ali Larijani, a former speaker of the Iranian parliament, said in an October 12 interview with Ettela’at Newspaper, which is owned and maintained by Khamenei’s office, that the regime’s “insistence on its social values will elicit violent reactions on the part of the protesters.” Quoting another state official as saying that more than 50 percent of Iranian women do not observe the government-imposed dress code, Larijani said: “When a behavior is so widely prevalent in the society it is wrong to involve the police in a bid to curb that behavior.”
Meanwhile on October 11, referring to the government and Iranian hard-liners’ attempt to impose a rekigious lifestyle on modern Iranian women, Tourism Minister Ezzatollah Zarghami asked in a tweet that “what should the people do if they do not wish to be guided by the morality police?”
On Friday, Khamenei’s representative and the Friday prayers imam of Mashhad, accused the critics, including the minister, of undermining the holy Koran and Iran’s constitutional law. He also accused the protesters of not believing in God and his prophet; an accusation that could entail the death sentence for the protesters.
On the same day, Iranian lawmaker, Gholamreza Montazeri, who is the deputy chairman of the Cultural Committee of the Iranian parliament, expressed his opposition to a violent crackdown on protests and called for understanding the new generation which comprises a majority of protesters.
However, instead of addressing Khamenei, which could have endangered his position as a lawmaker, he chose to address the Interior Minister who had echoed Khamenei’s statement. He said: “If you deprive Iranian protestors of voicing their criticism of the system, they will turn to strangers and talk to them.”
Earlier in this week, former labor minister Ali Rabiei and former presidential chief of staff Mohamad Ali Abtahi warned the government, and in fact Khamenei, that “if the dissatisfactions are not addressed properly, dissent will remain active and sooner or later it will find its way into the streets.” They added that "the world is listening to the voice of Iranians' protest and stressed that this voice should be also heard inside Iran."
On Thursday, the editor of Jomhouri Eslami newspaper, Masih Mohajeri and senior cleric Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli called on the government, as they too shied away from addressing Khamenei for fear of repression, to understand the protesters and the causes of dissent and bring about changes that would make the government efficient in dealing with the country’s problems.
However, regardless of all the criticism and advice from regime insiders, Khamenei finds it hard to listen to anyone. Earlier this week, when Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei called for a dialogue between the government and the protesters, he was forced in less than a day to change his words and order the courts of law under his jurisdiction to deal with protesters with utmost firmness and not to ignore the slightest wrongdoing.
This comes while the protesters who take to the streets daily, risking their lives, freedom and property insist that the uprising should continue until the Islamic Republic is toppled.
On Thursday, October 13, the editor of the Islamic Republic newspaper, Masih Mohajeri, wrote in an editorial that "protesters may end the uprising and get closer to state officials if they see that their economic problems are solved and their citizenship rights are respected by those officials."
Without explaining how that would be possible, the editorial stressed that the protesters' demands must be met. Also, without mentioning the government's inefficiency, the editorial pointed out, "There are many individuals in the country who are ready to serve the people, but radical elements have kept them away from the government for various reasons. So, they are isolated, and their capabilities are not used in the management of the country."
Meanwhile, senior cleric, Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli called on the government "to solve the country's economic problems as everybody issuffering from the painful poverty that is imposed on the people." He further stressed: "There is no whip more painful than poverty." He warned that economic problems will not be solved as long as there are embezzlements and astronomical salaries.”
However, neither Mohajeri, nor Javadi Amoli mentioned that the current government and to a great extent its predecessor were unable to tackle the economic problems which are largely the outcome of counter-productive decisions made by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his hard-line followers and inner circle.
They did not say how can Iran's economic problems be solved without an effective foreign policy that can end the country's international isolation and lift international sanctions that have paralyzed the country's economy. They also ignored the fact that without abiding by international financial regulations banning sponsorship of terrorism and money laundering, the country's economy will not be linked to global markets.
Insiders who give some constructive advice, however, often do not cross the regime’s red line of calling out Khamenei for imposing an anti-US and anti-West foreign policy on the country. They do not say that without coming to terms with the United States, limiting its nuclear program and stripping it of military dimensions, promising not to intervene in the affairs of regional states and stopping ballistic missile development, Iran will have no future.
Individuals such as Javadi Amoli and Mohajeri, regardless of their goodwill, keep forgetting that there is no visible sign in Khamenei's remarks and other officials' statement to respect citizens’ rights. Instead, there are plenty of defiant and arrogant remarks in the daily news from Iran that show neither Khamenei nor any other official has the slightest inclination to respect civil right. Many analysts have noted that their behavior is similar to those who have occupied a country and are exerting pressure on its residents.
Regardless of the severity of Iranians' financial hardship in recent months, not even a single slogan has been chanted in four weeks of uprising calling for improvement in people's livelihood. Instead, nearly all of the slogans chanted point out that what Iranians want is an end to clerical rule and Khamenei's dictatorship.
The 83-year-old Supreme Leader in charge for 33 years called the uprising a "minor incident" although it has posed an unprecedented challenge to his rule and the very existence of the clerical regime.
Calling for harsh measures against the protesters as usual, Kahmenei charged that "Some of those in the streets these days are either the agents of the enemy or sympathize with the enemy. The Judiciary and security officials should fulfil their responsibility against these individuals. And there are still those who take to the streets because they have been provoked by others. The officials need to have some cultural plans for them."
A disconcerted Khamenei who as delivering a speech seemed to have lost his contact with reality, characterizing the uprising as "a reaction by the enemies to Iran's progress and the Iranian nation's innovations." Meanwhile he suggested that Iranian officials should resist the enemy’s plot and go about their "business as usual" regardless of "minor incidents."
While protests have been going on within less than a mile of his office like almost everywhere else in the country, Khamenei called them "scattered riots here and there." He insisted that "recent developments are not spontaneous" and blamed "the enemies’ propaganda" as the driving force of the protests. Khamenei one again charged that "foreign politicians in Europe, United States and elsewhere" have been instigating the uprising.
This comes while many Iranian officials and politicians as well as sociologists, economists and other academics have warned that the protests, ignited by the killing of a young woman in police custody last month, were fuelled by the government's broken promises and the people's accumulated demands and frustrations.
They have also warned that Khamenei and his regime are facing a new generation that does not care about the values imposed by the regime through morality police and other coercive institutions.
On the same day that Khamenei made the defiant remarks, Iranian reformist cleric and politician Mohammad Ali Abtahi acknowledged that "the world is listening to the voice of Iranians' protest and stressed that this voice should be also heard inside Iran."
He criticized the government for simply trying to cope with popular dissent when it manifests itself rather than trying to understand the cause of the protests. The government should have paved the way for political reforms and the creation of political parties. In the absence of political parties, the shocks created by dissidents will be directly pointed at the government, he said.
In another development, former Labor Minister Ali Rabiei warned that if the dissatisfactions are not addressed properly, dissent will remain active and sooner or later it will find its way into the streets. Rabiei who was a member of Iran's intelligence community for many years, said that crisis management is a science which should be used before, during and after every crisis.
Iranian analyst Morteza Kazemian wrote on Twitter: "Khamenei is not feeling well. He attributed the protests to the enemies, and called for confrontation with protesters." Another Twitter user, Ehsan Soltani said that "Khamenei's remarks had only one message: There will be no change. Like all dictators, he does not listen and will not correct his behavior. The only thing that can happen to them is that they can be toppled."
Former reformist MP Mahmoud Sadeghi wrote that "Khamenei's remarks destroyed any hope of a peaceful solution to the current crisis."