Iran Lawmakers, Former President Criticize Government's Performance
An Iranian lawmaker says the recent changes in the Raisi administration will not lead to any positive result as the president has not changed his approach.
An Iranian lawmaker says the recent changes in the Raisi administration will not lead to any positive result as the president has not changed his approach.
Gholamreza Nouri Ghezeljeh added in an interview with Khabar Online in Tehran that although the highlight of the reshuffling was the removal of Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatinejad, several other ministers who needed to be replaced are still in the government because of problems in the dynamics between the parliament and the government.
Apart from changing some cabinet ministers, President Ebrahim Raisi also needs to remove some of the local officials and replace them with efficient executives, the lawmaker said. He charged that inefficiency is a shared characteristic by the parliament and the government – both dominated by hardliners loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Ghezeljeh further added that the administration has a limited vision marked by factional interests, which prevents it from seeing the bigger picture and realizing the gravity of Iran's problems.
Ghezeljeh pointed out that there are many capable political figures within the conservative camp, but the government has limited its choices to a few individuals. He insisted that the country's executive management has many problems and change is badly needed in the cabinet.
Apart from the economic crisis that is the government's biggest problem, the Raisi administration is facing another major issue which is holding parliamentary elections next March while ensuring a good turnout. Media reports and opinions say voters are deeply disappointed with the regime’s engineered elections and might see no point in turning out to vote.
Although Iranian media have interpreted a statement by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei about the need for cooperation among the heads of the three branches of the government as an order to stop the impeachment motion to replace Industry Minister Reza Fatemi Amin, some of the members of the parliament have told Rouydad24 website that the impeachment will go ahead as planned.
The impeachment was called for by at least 40 lawmakers. Although lawmaker Kamal Hosseinpour told reporters that the motion has been stopped, others including Lotfollah Siahkali insist that the motion will go ahead, while 15 of those who had signed the motion have taken back their support for the impeachment.
Meanwhile, another lawmaker, Ahmad Rasoulijead told Rouiydad24 that according to regulations, lawmakers cannot take back their signature once an impeachment motion is handed over to the presidium. In another development as the spokesman for the Ministry of Industry has charged that some lawmakers had personal demands from the minister, Rasoulinejad called on Fatemi Amin to name those lawmakers.
Criticism of the government among the members of the parliament is not simply about impeachments and the ministers of Industry and agriculture. Jalal Mahmoudzadeh has harshly criticized the performance of Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and said with a minister like him, “we cannot maintain ties even with small countries” that have less than one million population. He also criticized the Raisi administration for dividing the nation as insiders and outsiders, with regime insiders winning the lion's share of all the privileges the government can offer.
Meanwhile, mysteriously a two-year old video of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged last week in which he criticizes compulsory hijab. He also criticizes hardliners who charged unveiled women advocate nudity and called for respect for women's choice of what the wear.
However, many social media users have dismissed Ahmadinejad's comment as one of his tactics to grab attention, citing his policies during his presidency. Although Ahmadinejad had since 2005 spoken in support of young Iranians choice of lifestyle and dress code, he never stopped hardliners and vigilante groups from attacking women when he was president.
In an interview with the IRGC-linked Fars news agency, Ali Khanmohammadi, the spokesman for the Headquarters To Promote Virtues and Prohibit Vice, the jargon for the morality police, called hijab defiance "a worrying situation and an onslaught on Islamic rules." He called on government institutions, meaning the police and the IRGC, to stop the behavior.
Khanmohammadi further warned that if the compulsory hijab rules are undermined, soon respect for other laws will also disappear.
The clerical regime has made hijab an existential issue for itself, trying to enforce it almost at any cost, including running the risk of renewed protests.
Former Deputy Judiciary Chief Mohammad Javad Larijani said recently that "the presence of a few unveiled women is not the social reality in Iran." Meanwhile he called the behavior of women who remove their headscarves "sedition," an offence that entails punishments as harsh as the death sentence in an Islamic society.
On the other hand, a prominent reformist cleric told Rouiydad24 website that the country's officials have given up dealing with major problems and all they do is intervention in the people's lifestyle and invading their privacy.
This comes while ultraconservative lawmaker Javad Karimi Qoddusi said on Sunday, that forceful methods that the morality police uses no longer work in Iran because people have become emboldened because of recent protests.
Critics say that some clerics including the Friday Imam of Qeshm island have gone out of their way and shut down people's shops for allowing unveiled women to shop. He said this is strictly against the religion and the law. He characterized such behavior as radical and a disgrace to the religion.
A few clerics have told the media that trying to force people to accept religious rules will discourage even the pious from following the religion. They warn that radical behaviors against unveiled women can lead to public insecurity while the government's main responsibility is to keep society and people secure.
Although many Iranians have seen videos that show the Friday Imam of Qeshm shutting down shops and harassing shopkeepers and shoppers in the island's malls, Gholamreza Hajebi has denied doing what is seen in videos, and accused his critics of distorting reality.
Iranian lawyer Nemat Ahmadi has likened the cleric's behavior of medieval Muslim rulers who did not have any respect for justice and punished whoever they did not like on the spot without asking questions first. He added that the least the Friday Imam of Qeshm can be charged with is undermining the principle of separation of the executive, legislative and judiciary bodies. However, the cleric cannot be associated with any one of the three bodies of the government.
Meanwhile, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has spoken differently about the government's reaction to the resistance against hijab in his speeches. While at times insisting on the enforcement of hijab, at other times he has said that even those who do not cover their hair are his daughters. However, security forces and their vigilante agents are under Khamenei’s control.
While many have warned that strict measures against women might lead to confrontation between various groups, in his latest Eid al-Fitr sermon on Saturday, Khamenei advised government officials to avoid creating confrontations between citizens.
Some have interpreted this as Khamenei’s signal to relax hijab rule, but so far all the signs point at the opposite direction.
Following increasing attacks in the past two weeks, photos emerged on social media of parents standing guard outside their daughters’ schools.
Moreover, the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers' Trade Associations issued a statement on Monday, stressing the necessity of forming grassroot groups to protect students. The council also called for the formation of a "human chain around schools.”
Earlier on Monday, several schools in the Kurdish-majority city of Sanandaj were attacked by the mysterious gas for the second time in the past two weeks.
Also on Monday, schools were attacked in the cities of Hamedan, Mehrshahr and Karaj, among others. An unknown number of girls were taken to hospital following these attacks.
The council also said that two teachers were also hospitalized in the intensive care unit after one of the attacks in Karaj, near the capital Tehran.
In the statement, the Council pointed out that the poisonings have been happening for over six months and despite haphazard denunciations authorities have taken no action to stop them.
"While we are witnessing the continuation of these crimes, the suspicion of the government's support and orchestration of the attacks have become evident,” read the statement.
“The country's police force is unable to ensure the safety of the children, but at the same time, it has devoted its efforts to threatening freedom-loving women, who resist pressure so as to have a choice on choosing their clothing," the council added.
Urging students, their families, and teachers to join hands and set up groups to protect the schoolgirls, the council said, If the perpetrators of these catastrophic crimes are not identified, tried and punished, the teachers will inevitably hold classes in the street to save the lives of the students and will ask the popular groups to protect them with a human chain."
In the past few days, families of students staged several rounds of protest rallies urging officials to hold classes virtually rather than at schools to protect children from further attacks that began in November.
Critics of the regime say the attacks are part of a crackdown on protests, a claim denied by officials who have claimed the symptoms are the result of mass hysteria. Every now and then in the past six months, state media reported the arrest of perpetrators but never has the regime announced the identities of the detainees, or provided information about their motives, date of trial and the investigation.
The only people whose arrests became certain were the people who released videos of the aftermath of the attacks. The Ministry of Islamic Guidance has sent a notice to the local media to censor the news related to the attacks.
Close to 300 schools were targeted in the past Iranian year ending on March 20 without any apparent serious effort by the government to identify and pursue the perpetrators, nor to explain to terrified parents and students what was happening.
Thousands of students have been affected, mostly girls, with hundreds hospitalized with symptoms including respiratory distress, numbness in their limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.