The Referendum On the Islamic Republic Has Expired
Forty-five years ago, on March 30, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led a referendum with a single question: “Do you want an Islamic Republic?”.
Forty-five years ago, on March 30, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led a referendum with a single question: “Do you want an Islamic Republic?”.
During the referendum days, I was a 19-year-old youth serving as a poll worker at a rural polling station near Shiraz. The Islamic Republic’s regime has been the subject of my constant study from that point onwards.
On March 30th and 31st, 1979, villagers showed up at the polls enthusiastically wishing the new regime would pay attention to their demands and problems. Most of them had believed the promises of the new leaders with unwavering simplicity. In that village, the voting result fell approximately 5% below the final national tally – with a dozen blank ballots and votes cast for Iranian singing divas Googoosh and Hayedeh. Invalid votes were an occurrence that started from the very first election conducted under the Islamic Republic’s regime.
Today, the young generation that has experienced the Islamist regime’s policies first-hand have five questions in regards to the 1979 referendum. And, they have the right to question the 1979 generation’s actions – and they deserve answers based on facts on the ground, documents, and memoires.
Here are some of the new generation’s questions:
1. Are the results of that referendum reliable?
The reported 97% "yes" vote from 99% of Iranian voters in the referendum couldn't be verified, because independent and international observers were not invited to monitor it and there was no transparency.
It is a fact that a significant number of people participated in that referendum; however, giving a firm opinion about the percentage is impossible, much like in all types of elections in the Islamic Republic.
It is also a fact that Khomeini deceived the Iranian people about the future of their country by posing the question of whether they wanted an Islamic Republic (“yes” or “no”) with maximum ambiguity. This is because he simultaneously advocated for the totalitarian system of the Guardian Jurist (Supreme Leader) in his lectures in Najaf, while confirming his support for the French Republic during his stay in Neauphle-le-Château.
In this referendum, people voted based on their understanding of the terms "Islamic Republic" without knowledge of Khomeini's lectures, or how his aides, Ebrahim Yazdi and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh engineered Khomeini's words and conveyed them to the Western media. One notable and infamous moment happened when a reporter on the plane carrying Khomeini from Paris to Tehran, asked the cleric how he felt on the day of his return to Iran, and Khomeini replied "heech" in Persian, meaning "nothing".
Sadegh Ghotbzadeh used the phrase "no comment" instead of the English equivalent "nothing," which has an entirely different meaning.
2. Why did Khomeini hold a referendum less than two months after the revolution, and during Norouz?
Khomeini was familiar with the psychology of the Iranian masses. He knew he had to strike while the iron was hot.
During Norouz vacation, which began two weeks prior to the referendum, all newspapers in the country were closed.
He also knew that he could sell the new regime, born out of terrorism and bombing and lacking any governance experience, to the general public, only by relying solely on emotions and ignorance.
The people who considered themselves victorious in overthrowing the royal system were proud of this achievement. They lived in the empty dreams spun by revolutionaries, such as the promise of free water, electricity, and public buses, alongside ideals of spirituality and justice; they could have woken up after one or two years and Khomeini's picture would have no longer been visible on the moon – as was claimed by many in the early days of the revolution.
For this reason, it was necessary to drag the masses to the voting booths with stereotyped questions – and without wasting any time.
3. How did the different political groups react to this referendum?
Most political groups participated in the referendum and voted “yes”.
The Islamist groups fully participated in the referendum without any conditions and voted “yes”. Nationalist forces also participated and voted positively.
The vote of Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) was positive but conditional. The Tudeh Party of Iran and other older communists voted “yes”, but the People's Fada’iyan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party boycotted the referendum.
Political groups enjoyed freedom of speech and press in the early months of the regime, before it had fully consolidated its power.
4. Was there any talk about the form of the new regime in the public sphere in the days preceding the referendum?
If you examine the press, news programs, and conversations in Iran before the referendum, you'll find no mention of guardianship of the jurist, Islamization, elimination of dissent, or compulsory hijab by the members of the Revolutionary Council, most of whom were clerics.
All of these discussions began during the drafting of the new constitution and the meetings of the Assembly of Experts to revise the draft.
The Iranian people were completely in the dark about what would happen to the governance system from February 11, 1979, to March 31, 1979.
5. Are the results of that referendum valid today?
In a system where only three referendums have been held in 45 years—namely, one referendum for creating the system and two referendums for the vote on the constitution (with a 99% positive vote and 85% participation in 1979) and its revision (with a 99% positive vote and 54% participation in 1989)—one cannot rely solely on the referendum for the legitimacy of a political system.
No referendum has been held for 35 years. Today, only less than ten percent of the country's population is over 63 years old, who were over 18 years old in 1979 and could vote then.
Today, the result of the referendum on the Islamic Republic has simply expired – even if it was reliable.
Dermer, a key advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former ambassador of Israel to the United States, personally reached out to Zeraati on Monday morning to convey his wishes for a swift recovery.
In the phone call, Dermer condemned the attack, suspected by many to have been carried out by covert Iranian regime security agents.
Dermer and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were both interviewed by Zeraati on his program, “Final Word”, last year.
This is believed to have further fueled Tehran's anger, leading to a crackdown on journalists expressing critical opinions of authorities, both domestically and internationally since the nationwide anti-regime 2022 uprising.
Several Iran International journalists have faced death threats and foiled assassination attempts orchestrated by Iranian regime security forces on British territory, prompting the temporary relocation of the broadcaster’s London offices to Washington last year.
The attack on Zeraati comes shortly after the disclosure of leaked top-secret intelligence documents, revealing Tehran's targeting of several UK-based personnel of Iran International TV. These threats extended to their family members based in Iran, with the imposition of financial sanctions amidst the nationwide protests in 2019.
The broadcast network says it was aware of the intimidation tactics at the time, but the documents, obtained by Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice) hackers, offered indisputable proof that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and judicial officials were coordinating the harassment efforts.
Additionally, ITV reported exclusively last December, that the regime plotted to assassinate two of Iran International’s TV anchors in London.
Iranian spies offered a people-smuggler $200,000 to assassinate Fardad Farahzad and Sima Sabet – codenamed “the bride and the groom” – outside their London studio.
The plot, which was foiled by a double-agent, was meant to show critics of the regime they “could do harm to them at any time”.
In December, a UK court convicted Chechen national Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev of gathering information on Iran International's London headquarters for a potential terror attack.
Prior to that, in November 2022, Volant Media, the parent company of Iran International, stated that two of its journalists had been informed by the Metropolitan Police of direct threats, posing an imminent, credible, and significant risk to their lives and those of their families. The network decided to move its broadcast operation to Washington DC temporarily in early 2023. Broadcasting was resumed from London last September.
Iran's Islamic regime has conducted hundreds of attacks against dissidents and journalists outside the country over the past 45 years.
At least 144 people were killed in the attack claimed by Islamic State, which saw gunmen open fire at the Crocus City Hall.
Days before the shootings in the Russian capital, Tehran had allegedly sent warnings to Moscow, through intelligence gleaned from interviews with Islamic State terrorists connected to the deadly twin bombings in Iran in January.
After the terror attacks that killed around 100 in Kerman, Iran claimed to have arrested 35 people, including a commander of Islamic State's Afghanistan-based branch ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), which claimed responsibility for the Iran attacks, the worst since the founding of the Islamic Republic.
Another source told Reuters that Tehran had failed to provide specific intelligence to Moscow such as the location and timing of the attack, though warned that members of ISIS-K had already travelled to Russia, failing to foil the deadly shootings.
However, both Iran and Russia, vehement foes of the US had ignored warnings from Washington of the imminent terror attacks. Moscow was warned three days before the Friday night massacre and Iran more than a week before the Kerman attacks.
Relations between Iran and Russia have deepened since the war in Ukraine, in which Iran has provided drones used in Russia’s offensives. The two sanctioned nations have also become key financial allies as they skirt global crackdowns.
Security and intelligence ties continue to deepen between the two pariah states. In July, Iran and Russia signed a new cooperation agreement to expand bilateral security and law enforcement cooperation, inked between Iran’s police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, and the head of Russia’s national guard, Viktor Zolotov.
Then in December, Iran's parliament approved a bill aimed at fostering cooperation with Russia in the realm of information security. Comprising nine articles, the bill focuses on combating cyber threats, fortifying information security measures, and fostering collaboration between Iran and Russia. A key clause in the legislation addresses the exchange of information and cooperation in prosecuting criminal offenses between the two nations. Military drills between the two nations and their ally China have also been happening with increasing frequency.
The attack was a huge blow to the Kremlin, known for its high-level network of intelligence at home and abroad. Both the attacks in Iran’s Kerman and Moscow involved Tajik nationals, ISIS-K having aggressively recruited from the impoverished former Soviet republic of in recent years. While Islamic State has been largely defeated in Iraq and Syria, ISIS-K remains strong, covering Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
Reuters also claims that the issue has been discussed between Iran and Tajikistan in a bid to halt the militant activities against Iran’s Shi’ites, hated by Islamic State’s Sunni-following Islamists.
While in 2022 Islamic State claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a Shi'ite shrine in Iran that killed 13 people, also carried out by a Tajik national, the Moscow attack came as a shock. Islamic State also carried out twin bombings in 2017 that targeted Iran's parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Iran's foreign ministry and the Kremlin did not reply to a request for comment on the latest revelations in the Reuters story and Russia has instead continued to blame Ukraine for the attack in spite of the admission by ISIS-K.