Smaller Conservative Groups Emerge In Iran With An Eye On Power

"Those who have seen the 21-minute footage released by Ria Novosti know how Putin looks stressed during the meeting, tidying his tie twice, moving his legs and shoulders. Why? Because he feels this is a very important political meeting that is vital for his country," a seven-minute-long video-commentary by media researcher Mohammad Lesani claimed.

The video-commentary entitled "Historical Arrangement, Iranian Power and Authority" which was published Friday by Fars news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) was widely circulated by other government-controlled media outlets.

"On the other hand, you see Mr. Raisi's serenity who is speaking calmly without moving his hands and legs," the video went on to say.

Many Iranian social media users have interpreted the placement of a massive table to separate the two presidents in the meeting as an intentional act to imply "distance" and said it was a sign of disrespect that Putin was chewing gum while Raisi was speaking. They have also pointed out that unlike most official meetings, the flags of the two countries were nowhere to be seen in the hall.

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While showing a photo of Putin's meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nicol Pashinyan at the same table sitting a closer and facing the Russian president, the narrator said Putin had a "haughty" and "emperor-like" demeanor while Aliyev and Pashinyan looked as if they were being "politically humiliated".

The Fars video went to great lengths to justify the mise-en-scene in the room. Showing photos of Putin's meetings with other foreign dignitaries in the same hall, including his meetings with the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, the narrator said Putin meets foreign dignitaries in the same hall and "his important working meetings" at the same table.

"But the arrangement this time was a historical and unprecedented arrangement… Two political leaders are sitting at the two ends sides of the table…[resembling] balanced plates of a weighing scale," the video said.

"I wanted to make a response to those people who beat the drums of despair and think that the strategic agreements of our country with Russia, China, and other countries of the East …are supposedly equal to destroying our nation, identity, and Iran's power and authority," the narrator said in the video.

The publication of a photo of President Raisi praying at the same hall has also raised much controversy in social media. State media and hardliners say Raisi broke his meeting with the Russian president not to miss the noontime prayer and to display spirituality at a place where once atheists ruled.

Several Friday imams eulogized Raisi's move to stand to prayer at the Kremlin as a gesture of great significance. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative in Alborz province, Mohammad-Mehdi Hosseini-Hamedani, in his Friday sermon also predicted that Raisi may stand to prayer at the White House someday because his act of praying at the Kremlin "bore important messages".

Mohammad-Mehdi Hosseini-Hamedani, a cleric, said in his Friday Prayer that Raisi’s prayers at Kremlin conveyed a very important message.

A photo of Raisi praying at the Kremlin during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advertised by many officials and followers of the Iranian president, including his wife that described it as a revelation of spirituality.

The photo has been used extensively in what appears to be a publicity campaign for Raisi amid public criticism of his government's efforts to expand relations with Russia and China. Among Iranians the names of both countries are associated with communism and atheism.

During their Friday Prayer sermons, representatives of Khamenei all over the country praised the image, calling it an important event.

Mohammad Ali Nekounam, the Friday Prayer leader of Shahrekord, described Raisi’s prayers at Kremlin as a “conquest” and the Friday Imam of Esfahan said it showed that “We only rely on God”.

The contents of Friday Prayer sermons delivered by Khamenei's local representative in various cities are dictated by two state bodies close to Khamenei's office, officially known as "The Policy-making Council for Friday Prayer Imams" and the "Friday Prayer Headquarters," both dominated by hardliner clerics.

During his Friday Prayer sermon, Alamolhoda – Ali Khamenei’s representative in Mashhad and father-in-law of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi – said that women with loose hijab should feel the hatred, stressing that “expressing hatred and disgust for a woman without hijab is a divine duty”.

“People should solve the problem, not the police”, he said. His remark could be seen as a green light for religious zealots to confront women in the streets and cause harm.

Similar calls for crackdown on those who fail to comply with compulsory hijab by other hardliners sparked a series of acid attacks on women in Esfahan in 2014.

He also talked about an official ban on women not to enter soccer stadiums, saying, “Stadiums are a place of excitement”, stating that women should not be excited in the presence of men.

His comments came less than a month after hundreds of Iranian social media users protested to compulsory hijab and the ideology the government is imposing on them, trending the hashtag #LetUsTalk.

A report by the parliament's research center in 2018 said the number of Iranians who believed in mandatory hijab had waned. According to the report those who considered the hijab a value that could be stipulated in law had fallen from 85 percent in the early 1980s to around 35 percent.

"The President's conduct at Kremlin Palace revealed the meaning of spirituality. His prayer highlights his government's spiritual dialogue," Jamileh Alamolhoda told female seminary students at Al-Zahra University of the religious city of Qom. She added that the Iranian media should "properly elucidate such moves".

Iranian media Wednesday published a photo showing President Ebrahim Raisi standing to prayer on his own in the Kremlin where he was meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently during their three-hour meeting.

The photo has been used extensively in what appears to be a publicity campaign for Raisi amid public criticism of his government's efforts to expand relations with Russia and China. Among Iranians the names of both countries are associated with communism and atheism.

Critics who have been saying that the Islamic Republic is ready “to sell Iran” to Russia and China just to ensure its survival, attacked Raisi’s prayer as a political show, while he went to Moscow “to beg for help.”

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Raisi on Thursday also met with head of the Council of Russian Muftis, Ravil Einoddin, officially representing Russia’s Muslims in Moscow. According to Iranian media, Einoddin referred to the picture showing Raisi praying at the Kremlin and hailed his prayer as "super symbolic and outstanding".

According to the website of Iran's President, Einoddin told Raisi that someone from Finland sent him a message about the picture showing Raisi's prayer. "The Iranian president’s prayer 'brought blessings to the Kremlin'," the presidential website quoted Einoddin as saying.

The quotes from Einoddin have been widely circulated by Raisi supporters on social media, who called his act "a very important political and diplomatic message". They have also mentioned the "first prayer" at the Kremlin by the former Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Qods Force commander Ghasem Soleimani during one of his visits to Moscow, which they say paved the way for Raisi's feat.

Quoting several social media post exalting Raisi's display of faith at the Kremlin, Iran's state-run television IRIB in a report Thursday said Raisi's religious gesture in the middle of his meeting with the Russian president has sparked "tens of political analyses".

Yet others have mentioned a letter in 1989 that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, sent to then-Soviet-leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In the letter he advised the Russian leader to study Islam and predicted the end of communism.

"None of the former Soviet leaders could imagine the representative of the most important religious ideology [in the world] would one day stand to prayer in the Kremlin Palace and to flaunt "political Islam" to the world," Mehdi Andarziyan, an "America and Zionism researcher" according to his profile, tweeted.

Publisher Farhad Fallah shared a photo of Raisi's prayer and an image in a Spanish language book that depicts Soleimani's prayer at the Kremlin. "Soleimani's prayer at the Kremlin is now a model for children in Latin America. These scenes may be ordinary to us but for others they are educational," he wrote.

Another Raisi supporter said on Twitter that the publication of the photo by Iranian authorities bore the message that "the thinking once formed on the basis of atheism" has been defeated. "God willing, after the annihilation of liberalism, some day soon, we will hold Friday prayers at the White House," he promised.

In a Telegram post Thursday, conservative journalist Mohammad Mohajeri said finding fault with performing religious duties is wrong, but the publication of the photo was "a sign of inexperience and maladroitness of the government media team and "very novice-like".

The network used fake accounts to pose as locals in England and Scotland, posting photos and memes about current events and criticism of the United Kingdom's government, Meta said.

The accounts organized their content around common hashtags promoting the cause, though they at times misspelled them, the company said.

In a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, Scots voted 55%-45% to remain in the United Kingdom, but both Brexit and the British government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis have bolstered support for independence among Scots and demands for a second vote.

Meta said its investigation found links to individuals in Iran, including people with a background in teaching English as a foreign language.

It said the operation had some connections with a small Iran-based network it previously removed in December 2020, but did not provide further details on who might be behind the activity.

"We've seen a range of operations coming from Iran over the last few years," said Ben Nimmo, Meta's global threat intelligence lead for influence operations, in a press briefing. "It's not a monolithic environment."

The social media company said it had removed eight Facebook accounts and 126 Instagram accounts as part of this latest network in December for violating its rules against coordinated inauthentic behavior.