Scholars Say Hardliners Prevent Debate And Change In Iran
Former Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei says Iran's foreign policy cannot be changed without reforming its political system.
Former Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei says Iran's foreign policy cannot be changed without reforming its political system.
Although he did not elaborate on his argument that Iran’s foreign policy is an outcome of its internal politics, it was obvious that as a member of the former centrist government he was targeting hardliners, who have obstructed talks with the West.
Speaking at a conference on "the protests and media," which was sponsored by the Iranian Society of Cultural and Communication Studies this week, Rabiei reiterated the position of more moderate regime insiders, blaming diaspora Iranians for “misrepresenting” the message of protests in Iran while also attacking hardliners for refusing to pave the way for public discussion that can lead to a new form of policymaking in Iran.
"Physically, all movements might recede one day, but the people's mentality will not change,” Rabiei said.
Hadi Khaniki, the Society's chairman, said that "protesting is part of the nature of the Iranian society, but protests can have different forms. Institutions like ours should go to the lower depths of social issues and offer solutions when politicians seem to have deviated from the right course or have taken hasty measures. Critical views can get the Iranian society a step forward. "
Khaniki said that everyone agrees the protest movement in Iran has been widespread and that no other issue in Iran has attracted so much attention. He added that the protest movement has further politicized the Iranian society and even those who were reluctant to get involved in political discussions have become politically active. The media cannot remain indifferent to such a change, he said.
Khaniki argued that because of the weakness of civil institutions, the Iranian society's behavior often remains unknown or unpredictable. An issue such as the gas attacks on girls' schools grabs people's attention and gives rise to many concerns. Everybody sympathizes with the students and their parents, but it is not clear where the media should stand in a such a situation.
In fact, some media have reacted responsibly to the issue. Centrist daily Ham Mihan wrote in a commentary March 7, that despite the widespread attacks, "No particular medical treatment has been given to affected schoolchildren other than administering tranquilizers. There has been no chemical research about the nature of the gas used to poison the students. And all of that are signs of a deep-rooted mismanagement."
Ham Mihan observed that the absence of the right methodology to detect the truth, is indicative of inefficiency, lack of people's trust in the government, and lack of independent media that would reflect the truth.
Meanwhile, sociologist Taghi Azad Armaki said at the conference: "The essential problems of the Iranian society is one of lifestyle. Iranians wish to remain Iranian while as Mr. Rabiei said, there is a group in Iran that does not want Iranians to remain Iranian."
He said Iranians simply want to live, but the government and its pressure groups will do everything to prevent that. While the people think in terms of a cultural understanding of Iran, the government only recognizes its own political understanding of life in this country.
He said: Iranians are a nation that is constantly changing, but this change is non-violent. In the same way, Iranians have even changed Islam thanks to their adaptability and innovation. We are a nation that attaches importance to culture. We are a nation that wishes to bring about reforms. But those who have the wrong understanding of culture do not allow us to live.
As an example, Armaki pointed out the Iranian government's enmity with the middle class. "What has the middle class done that the government treats it as an enemy? The problem is a war between two cultures: The culture of life and the culture of totalitarianism."
The attacks that started three months ago have continued without any apparent effort by the government to seriously pursue the perpetrators or explain to terrified parents and students what was happening in so many schools.
In its statement, the ministry attributed some of the poisoning attacks to “pranks” by students using “foul smelling and harmless substances” in an attempt to get their classes dismissed.
“Among the detainees there are individuals with hostile motivations,” the statement said, adding that these individuals meant to cause fear and panic among the people to shut down schools and cast the blame on the regime.
“These individuals are under investigation to reveal their possible connection with terrorist organizations such as the monafeghin,” the statement said. Iranian authorities always refer to the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) as monafeghin (hypocrites).
The statement reveals very little about the arrests but two days earlier the local channel of the state television in Fars province aired the so-called ‘confessions’ of a man and his daughter arrested and accused of attacking schools with N2 gas canisters. The statement provided no names for those arrested or any other information.
Many ordinary Iranians have been suspicious of involvement of the regime itself, or religious extremists protected by the regime, in the school attacks and call the acts “state terrorism”.
“There is strong suspicion that the purpose of the attacks is quashing the Woman, Life, Freedom movement by instilling fear among girls and their families,” an umbrella teachers' association said while calling the attacks “bioterrorism” and demanding Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top religious figures to condemn the attacks expressly and decisively.
Diaspora Iranian held protests Saturday in 70 cities around the world to demand action to stop the school attacks.
The ministry said in its statement that there is a “considerable drop” in school poisoning attacks although seven more schools were affected on Saturday and tens of students had to be taken to hospital.
Attacks were reported in southwestern Khuzestan province where four schools were targeted. Tens of poisoned students had to be taken to hospitals also in southern Fars, western Kordestan and in northern Gilan provinces.
In a report Saturday, the judiciary claimed that “less than ten percent” of students reported poisoned so far had inhaled “an irritant gas which is not of weapons grade or deadly” and the remaining ninety percent were only affected by stress and other psychological factors.
In an article entitled “Casting Light On Psychological Operations Of Criminals In Student Poisoning Incidents” on Tuesday, the hardliner Mashregh news website accused a banned teachers’ association of using the attacks to wage psychological war against the Islamic Republic to revitalize the protest movement.
The article claimed that it was the MEK that described the school poisonings as ‘chemical attacks’ for the first time and alleged a connection between MEK and union activists who also referred to the incidents as chemical attacks on schools.
Earlier this month, the association urged its members and others to stage protests to demand urgent resolution to school attacks as well as teacher’s own problems including a wage increase for the next year that takes the factor of inflation into account.
In response to the association’s call, teachers and parents held rallies in dozens of cities and chanted slogans such as "death to the child-killing regime".
“Think-tanks of security and intelligence bodies are projecting their own responsibility over the poisoning of students and building new legal cases against union and civil activist,” Mohammad Habibi, spokesman of the Iran Teachers’ Trade Association, said in an Instagram post Saturday.
Habibi vowed that teachers would continue to defend “our children and their achievements [in the protest movement].” “Our message to them is clear: we will not withdraw [against pressures by the security forces].”
Diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh had been severed since January 2016 when pro-government vigilante groups attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad. Since then, many moderate state officials and media commentators were accusing the hardliners who are currently in control of the government of being behind the attacks.
Welcoming the idea of resumption of ties between the two neighbors, reformist politician Mohammad-Reza Javadi-Hesar told Etemad newspaper in Tehran on Saturday, that Iran has no way out of its current crises other than détente. He added that "Iran should welcome direct talks with the United States and Saudi Arabia."
Borrowing the expression West Asia (rather than Middle East) from Supreme Leader Khamenei, Javadi-Hesar said: "We in West Asia are holding talks withEast Asia. What is wrong with also holding talks with the power West of Europe" meaning the United States.
Sitting at the negotiating table with the United States and Saudi Arabia will prove that problems are not as big as we assumed them to be, he said. If the current Iranian government which has not been able to solve the country's economic problems does this, they can at least take credit for melting the ice of a 40-year-long impasse in Iran's foreign relations, Javadi-Hesar added.
Meanwhile, former diplomat Ghasem Mohebali, criticized Iran's Looking East policy and said in an interview with Entekhab website that "Our economic problem is the result of our relations with Europe and the United States, not our relations with China and Saudi Arabia!" Mohebali, who was referring to Western sanctions, further stressed that Tehran should strive to solve its problems with Washington. He added: "Iran cannot have permanent normal ties with any country without solving its problems with the United States."
Nonetheless, Mohebali said that "the recent agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia gives us reasons to be optimistic about other positive developments as a result of returning to diplomacy.”
In another development, Iran's former Foreign Minister and Nuclear Chief Ali Akbar Salehi also welcomed the agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, and said in an interview with Entekhab: "The agreement with Saudi Arabia was a relatively timely event that can take us out of a deadlock." However, he noted that "this could have taken place earlier and without the intervention of mediators. In that case we would have owed nothing to no one." Salehi further hoped that both sides will remain committed to the agreement.
The agreement over the idea of resuming ties between Riyadh and Tehran has also led to other discussions on social media. Gholamreza Nouriala the editor of proreform Naghd-e Hal newspaper, harshly criticized the hardline editor of Kayhan newspaper who had called relations with Saudi Arabia "a stigma for the Islamic Iran" in 2016 after the attack on the Saudi embassy. However, in its Saturday edition, Kayhan's editor praised the resumption of ties as a “hard blow to the United States and Israel.” Nouriala called Shariatmadari a hypocrite and readers who commented on his tweet, angrily lashed out at Shariamadari.
Several other social media users posted pictures of Ali Foroughi who led the vigilante groups during the attack on Saudi diplomatic buildings in 2016 and was subsequently appointed as the manager of Channel 3 of Iran's state television which operates under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. One user wrote that he got a big job for leading the arsonists and will once again get a bigger job for reflecting president Raisi's "big diplomatic victor."
Tens of other Twitter users also reminded that Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was also implicated for his role in the attack after one of the attack organizers, Hassan Kordmihan was revealed to be the chairman of his presidential election headquarters in 2017. On Friday, Ghalibaf praised the resumption of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran as an important step to enhance the region's security.
Speaking in an interview with Didban Iran [Iran Monitor] website, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad-Javad Alavi-Boroujerdi who teaches jurisprudence and principles of Shiism at the Qom Seminary, added that there are home-based churches in Qom for Muslims who have converted to Christianity.
Converting to another religion is forbidden in Islam and Iran's government does not allow or recognize conversion.
Presenting further evidence about Iranian youths abandoning Shiism, Boroujerdi said that some people in Qom are converting to Budhism. "The number of Wahabi Muslims in Iran is also on the rise. They have increased their activities and have their own Friday Prayer congregations," Said Boroujerdi.
He criticized Iranian hardliners for violent methods to make people stick to strict Shiite religious rules and said we cannot divide people into insiders and outsiders and then tell the outsiders to leave the country.
Boroujerdi warned that "some Iranians including the Bakhtiaris are separating from us, and that is a problem." He added: "These are the people who used to be with us. Let us be friends with the people and maintain our communication with them," he advised regime officials.
"I feel responsible for the youngsters who have left us and became Christian. He is a Shite boy and I must bring him back into the fold. I cannot let him go."
The scholar added that the 12th Imam of the Shiites went into the occult because a divide occurred among the people after the 11th Imam's death and the people at the time did not embrace the 12th Imam's leadership." Meanwhile, he stressed that "people including state officials who promise the hidden Imam's imminent return are liars. He will emerge only when Allah wants him to emerge from the occult."
Boroujerdi regretted that young clerics who start their career at the seminary in all honesty and modesty, gradually do away with these traits and may only try to return to them when they are too old. He asked: "What have we done to young Shiites who fought a war for us and are still enduring the sanctions?"
Other clerics and commentators have also said that Iranian youth have turned their back to Shiism. Conservative website Alef in Iran wrote last April that "the presence of religion as part of the government has led to a decline in religious beliefs."
The website added, "the experience of the Islamic Republic in Iran showed that political religion, i.e., clerics’ presence in political positions and in the government has led to a decline in the people's religious beliefs."
The report further added that Iranians were more religious under the Shah than in the Islamic Republic where clerics are holding political power. Iranian clerics' social status declined further during more than five months of street protests against the government, as people came out to demand a secular government with no clerics in key positions.
Reports on the Qom Seminary's own website indicate that clerics and government officials knew since more than ten years ago that Iranian youths have turned their backs to religion.
Meanwhile, media reports indicate that even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei knows that Iranians demand a secular government and that the youths are turning away from his religious government.
Nonetheless, some clerics and Muslim scholars maintain that young Iranians are only weary of the version of religion that treats them in a dogmatic and unilateral way. They are fed up with the paradoxes that we feed them. otherwise, they are not against the essence of religion."