Iran International
Critics of President Ebrahim Raisi are asking for evidence of economic achievements that state media repeatedly claim amid continued unrest in the country.
“Do pro-government media aim to reassure the public with such coordinated news dissemination?” a commentary in Jomhouri Eslami (Islamic Republic) daily asked Thursday.
“If so, they are badly mistaken,” the commentary said arguing that the current minimum living conditions fails to meet the standards of living before the current administration took power.
Amid protests that have engulfed the country in the past two months, the state and pro-Raisi media including the state broadcaster (IRIB) are constantly claiming that the government has succeeded in bypassing US sanctions, is selling more oil, has improved the economy, has better relations with neighboring countries, and is making greater scientific and military strides.
“The discrepancy between the real situation with what government officials say is totally tangible … Quasi-state media’s disregard of this fact can cause social breakdown,” the commentary said.
The paper went on to demand answers for a host of questions pertaining to such achievements including claims about a drop in the inflation rate and success in thwarting the effects of US sanctions through membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which Raisi has repeatedly called one of his government’s achievements.
“What’s the reason for the hike in the price of staples and other essential commodities given that pro-government newspapers constantly run headlines about inflation dropping?” the article asked.
Jomhouri Eslami is one of the oldest newspapers in the Islamic Republic and like the ultra-hardliner Kayhan daily receives funding from the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office.
However, unlike the firebrand editor of Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Jomhouri Eslami, Masih Mohajeri, has maintained a degree of political independence over the years and often criticizes hardliners. In May, he called on Raisi to resign for failing to deliver on promises of improving the lives of Iranians.
The list of Raisi’s unfulfilled campaign promises seems quite long. He pledged to build one million affordable housing units for sale during each year of his term in office, bring down inflation, provide fast internet and unrestricted social media, and mend relations with neighboring countries including old-time rival Saudi Arabia.
Raisi blames foreign powers and “enemies” for thwarting his plans, but this does not seem to convince anyone apart from his allies.
“Thank you for delivering on your promises of bridling the inflation and strengthening the national currency! Never mind the promises of [affordable] housing …,” the former governor of the Central Bank of Iran and election rival Abdolnaser Hemmati told Raisi in a tweet Tuesday.
As evidence of Raisi’s failure, Hemmati said point-to-point inflation has risen from 34.7 percent in the beginning of the Iranian calendar year [March 21] to 48.1 percent, the rial has dropped in value against the dollar from 262,000 rials to the dollar to 354,000 and printing money has increased by 3.2 percent only from September 23 to October 22.
Even many conservatives admit that the Raisi government is just inept and cannot organize any project, but few can say that continuing US sanctions on Iran is the main reason for so much economic failures. That would mean criticizing the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who is responsible for all major foreign policy decisions.
Signs of the apparently incurable impasse have appeared in bitter comments by Iranian academics and political activists such as Mohsen Renani who has said in a note published on social media that "the government is trying to stop a flood by shooting at it, thinking that bullets can stop the deadly torrent. At the same time, intellectuals are standing behind the flood and trying to direct it."
Renani said that in the current revolt "the younger generation of Iranians is throwing up the remnants of an old and outdated government. They also do not want us intellectuals who kept silent for a long time in the face of discrimination, narrowmindedness and foolishness."He added that both the government and the intellectuals lag behind the new generation. The flood is raging on and what the government can do to stop it?"
As reports indicate in recent days, the government's last resort has been seeking help from reformists it neglected, suppressed and humiliated at least since 2020 if not long before that.
Referring to her meetings with Judiciary Chief Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejei and Security Chief Ali Shamkhani, Fatemeh Rakei, the deputy chairperson of the Reform Front has said: "It may be too late for reconciliation, but we still have time to stop bloodshed and violence." She said in those meetings she called on the government to stop violence against protesters and begin to listen to them instead. She also reminded officials that real tolerance and reconciliation should mean that everyone will be entitled to voice their views and demands.
Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's daughter Fatemeh has admitted she met with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's son Mojtaba but has said Mojtaba told her he has been left out of top-level decision making and has been "just nobody" since last year. In that case, it is not clear why he met Rafsanjani's daughter. Earlier, Security Chief Ali Shamkhani was quoted as having said that Rafsanjani and former leader Khomeini's family members have been called on to ask the protesters to stop their rallies.
Hundreds of Iranian social media users slammed the meetings with reform figures and the members of the two clans. Several social media users opined that the meeting with Mojtaba might be an indication that plans are underway to depose Khamenei and replace him with Mojtaba. Others said this was an indication that Khamenei must leave."
Outside Iran, Iranian political commentator Reza Taghizadeh said in a tweet: "They shamelessly took Taliban II to Kabul based on an inauspicious plot and once again made the reactionaries the rulers of Afghanistan. Bringing Islamic Republic II to power in Iran using government-backed reformists in partnership with leftists is a more dangerous plot."
Meanwhile, Iranian reformist political activist Gholam Ali Rajaei pointed out that serious change is not likely to be easy as "Clerics cannot tolerate not being in power." In another statement Rajaei said that as a first step the government needs to "shut off the annoying loudspeaker in Mashhad." Earlier Rajaei and other Iranian commentators had pointed out that Mashhad's Friday Prayer Imam Ahmad Alamolhoda and the editor of Kayhan newspaper Hossein Shariatmadari constantly pump out hate-speak, annoying key groups of politically active Iranians such as filmmakers, athletes, youths and women.
Blaming these radicals for recent attacks on clerics in public places, Rajaei said in his interview with Rouydad24: "Decision-makers should silence these individuals." His advice must have been already taken on board as Khamenei's office cautioned Alamolhoda to be mindful of what he says. However, there has been no indication of any attempt to silence Shariatmadari.
In a commentary entitled “Good But Not Enough”, the Revolutionary Guards’ Sobh-e Sadegh weekly has also adopted a surprisingly mild and somehow positive tone in discussing former reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s recent remarks about the protest movement.
The weekly is published by the political bureau of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and its content is meant to set the standard for the guards and the hardliner political establishment in current affairs.
“Khatami who has a special status among reformists can prepare the grounds for dialogue [between protesters and the government] through uniting all across the reformist spectrum and reinforcing the divide with the enemies of the Iranian people,” Sobh-e Sadegh wrote.
Khatami said in a speech last week that regime change was “neither possible, nor desirable” while also warning the hardliner establishment over continuing the status quo which he said would only deepen the prospects of “societal collapse”. He proposed reforms in the system as the “least costly and most useful” way out of the current quagmire the regime has gotten itself into.
“The first step is to not only acknowledging [people’s] right to protest, but also to welcome it,” he said while criticizing the authorities’ characterization of any protest action as “rioting” to justify harsh suppression.
The weekly admitting that the former president is “still the most pre-eminent and popular figure among reformists” sounds like praise, while in recent past hardliners labeled him as “one of the leaders of the [2009] sedition” and made it clear there was no room for him, and those like him, in the country’s power structure.
Informed sources in Iran told Iran International over two weeks ago that authorities had approached some reformist and moderate figures to beseech their help in quelling the unrest that has engulfed the country, but to no avail.
Strongly worded slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and slogans such as, “This is not a protest, it’s a revolution!” and “This is the last message, our aim is [toppling] the system!” chanted by protesters leave no doubt that they will not be satisfied with anything other than regime change.
Accordingly, not even Khatami, whose popularity once surpassed any other Iranian official including the Supreme Leader by a mile, has significantly lost his clout among protesters who view him as ultimately a man of the system and irrelevant in the current circumstances.
The Wall Street Journal also said in an article Wednesday that the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani recently approached the families of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, and the former moderate president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani in a bid to use their influence to calm the unrest. People close to the two families told the WSJ that both families declined to cooperate.
Shamkhani, a Khamenei loyalist, has kept a very low profile since protests began over two months ago. Ultra-hardliners of the Paydari Front blame Shamkhani for not crushing the protests in the bud and even accuse him of complicity with Khatami under whom he served as defense minister in between 1997 and 2005.
Khamenei’s hardliner devotees made sure long ago that members of both families were barred from any positions of power and even allowed vigilantes to freely attack and insult Khomeini’s grandson Hassan in public and jail two of Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s children, the outspoken daughter Faezeh and son Mehdi who is still serving a prison sentence on security-related and corruption charges.
How to deal with the protests and solve the biggest crisis in the clerical regime’s 43-year history is one of the main subjects that divides Iran's conservatives who have already lost the nation's trust. They have been controlling all three branches of government for more than a year, with disastrous economic consequences.
Although Iran's situation is currently more serious to allow any room for factional infighting, the hardline conservatives who have refused any reforms during the past four decades, and the neo-cons who want to appear open to some changes, are currently at loggerheads.
Hardliner conservatives refuse to accept any suggestion of reforming the political system in the face of an uprising, while the neo-cons have made vague references to better governance.
According to Rouydad24 website, the difference over the approach to the protests could be the starting point of delineations among various parts of Iran's conservative camp. One of the signs of emerging differences occurred when an influential member of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's office, Mehdi Fazaeli, cautioned Mashhad’s firebrand Friday Prayer Imam Ahmad Alamolhoda earlier this week over his insulting comments about Iranian women.
This, at the same time, could mean that the Islamic Republic can shrewdly expel insiders when the regime's survival is at stake. Although Alamolhoda has been criticized on many occasions for his radical fundamentalist comments, this was the first time he got a serious slap in the mouth in public by someone he cannot respond to.
On the other hands neo-cons such as Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Tourism Minister Ezzatollah Zarghami have called for "a change in governance" in the interest of some open-mindedness that would appease and calm angry protesters. Khabar Online wrote that the duo do not want to tie their political future to the fate of an inefficient president and that this is part of their attempt to rebrand themselves for the 2025 Majles elections and 2025 presidential race.
At the same time, ultraconservative Raja News has likened the neo-cons to "flags in the wind" and accused them of lacking steadfastness and compromising conservative values such as compulsory hijab.
The two sides' media outlets are also fiercely fighting over a vacancy in Raisi's cabinet afterf Roads Minister Rostam Ghassemi resigned. The IRGC's weekly newspaper Sobh-e Sadeq has also harshly criticized Ghalibaf, who is still an IRGC general, for his idea of "reforming governance," nonetheless, the IRGC's weekly newspaper elsewhere admitted that "The country's governance needs essential changes," probably meaning that change is needed but it should not be made by Ghalibaf.
A statement by lawmaker Jalil Rahimi Jahanabadi in an interview on November 23, revealed that the infighting is deeper and wider than quarrels between two politicians or their media outlets. Jahanabadi who is a member of the National Security Committee of the Iranian Parliament said: "The heads of the three powers of the Iranian government, i.e., President Raisi, Judiciary Chief Ejei and Parliamentary Speaker Ghalibaf, are constantly swearing at West and East instead of trying to solve the country's problems."Meanwhile, he pointed out that the "violent security approach" to protests cannot solve Iran's problems.
Although for the first time a politician has taken criticism of the government to a higher level, still, like all Iranian politicians, Jahanabadi was too intimidated to name Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the man responsible for Iran's problems.
"The pressures by the enemies, the sanctions, the system's inefficiency and the government's weakness have left the political system in a situation that it cannot meet the people's demands," said Jahanabadi who also pointed out that views of officials are in sharp contrast to what people think. Meanwhile, he harshly criticized "non-elected" conservative individuals such as the editor of Kayhan newspaper who constantly invade people's privacy and speak for the people without having any credentials.
The infighting among Iran's unwanted conservatives is reminiscent of a Persian saying: "Two guests hate each other, but the host hates both."