Iran Speaker Mired In Shopping Scandal Says People Face Hardship

Students of the University of Science and Technology held a gathering and a march at their campus to protest the atmosphere of fear, intimidation and interference of morality guards to force them to comply with Islamic dress and other codes.

The rally took place four days after a member of the Islamic Association of the university was beaten while distributing a statement against the newly enforced measures by morality guards and and supervisors at the women’s dormitories.

The students chanted slogans against the measures and the morality guards and university authorities such as "Girls' dormitory is a prison cell" and "We do not want police-style guards".

Iran international reported on Friday that some universities in the capital Tehran have tightened dress code restrictions as the students have started to attend in person after over two years of virtual classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an unprecedented move, morality guards of the University of Science and Technology and Amirkabir University began motorcycle patrols to force students comply with hijab and other Islamic regulations.

Other guards who are stationed at the gates of the university and its dormitories have also been unprecedently strict since universities reopened, students said, denying access to those whose appearance is not deemed "appropriate".

The university security is also tasked with watching over the social and political behavior of students and the new motorcycle patrols started to check if the students are always observing the hijab rules, and if male and female students sit and mingle together on the campus. If they saw anyone who didn’t comply with the regulations, they wrote down their student numbers, which means they could face more severe consequences if they repeat such behavior.

Similar measures have also been reported in other universities of the capital Tehran, with some students describing the unprecedented restrictions as similar to those imposed by the Taliban.

On Wednesday, students at the Iran University of Science and Technology wrote an open letter in protest to the new restrictions, saying “University is not a barracks, and the dormitory is not a prison”.

The Islamic Students Associations of the University of Tehran and Tehran University of Medical Science also wrote to the president of their universities in the past few days to criticize the new measures.

Students say after the re-opening of higher education institutions this year, the atmosphere has greatly changed. Authorities appointed after hardline President Ebrahim Raisi was elected, they say, are apparently finding it a good time to enforce an aggressive approach to Islamic discipline on students.

Since hijab became compulsory in Iran, within a couple of years from the Islamic Revolution of 1979, all government offices and universities have had special officers monitoring women's abidance by the rules of compulsory hijab and preventing those failing to meet their standards of modesty from entering the premises.

An Iranian journalist living in Turkey, Amirhossein Miresmaili, tweeted on April 21 that speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s wife, daughter and sone-in-law who had gone shopping in Istanbul bought two luxury apartments in a famous complex for a total price of 400 billion Iranian rials or $1.6 million.

Miresmaili told Iran International that three days after he revealed the real estate purchase, the Ghalibaf’s have not denied the report, although another journalist residing in Iran has repeated the allegation. He insisted that Iranians in Turkey had seen the family at the Sky Land high rises in Istanbul and the apartments were bought in someone else’s name.

The Ghalibaf family scandal broke when videos emerged that they were having arguments in Istanbul airport for overweight luggage, and it became clear that they had bought luxury items for a baby on the way for Ghalibaf’s daughter. Later a journalist in Iran who had first exposed the shopping trip said that Ghalibafs had returned with more than 20 pieces of luggage.

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The parliament speaker’s son and assistant went into damage control mode, expressing regret and Fars news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard tried to deny the shopping trip, but no one believed the denial and the attempt soon died down. Calls for Ghaliaf’s resignation rang out loud in Tehran, but the final arbiter of such issues, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has remained silent.

Ghalibaf has been involved in numerous financial corruption cases, especially during his tenure as Tehran mayor from 2005-2017. As a former Revolutionary Guard general, in many of his corruption cases there is a thread to other high ranking IRGC figures, including Qasem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Iran is in a four-day religious holiday and newspapers are not published while politicians and most journalist enjoy the free time probably on the Caspian seashore, far away from the capital. To what extent the apartment shopping allegation will gain traction once the holiday is over, is hard to say, but serious damage has been done to both Ghalibaf and the domestic image of the Islamic Republic, already mired by numerous previous cases of corruption and embezzlement by top officials and regime insiders.

One of the interesting public debates that ensued after the news about Ghalibaf’s scandal was a view expressed by political commentator Sadeq Zibakalam, a former revolutionary turned regime critic, who said luxury shopping abroad is not a crime in itself and many Iranians aspire to live a better life. The issue he said is with whose money such adventures are financed. Nevertheless, many on social media criticized Zibakalam for apparently defending Ghalibaf, which he subsequently denied, saying he simply did not want to kick him while he was down.

But apparently there are others who would not hesitate to stab Ghalibaf while he is wounded. Soon there will be a vote to elect a new parliament speaker and ‘revolutionary’ hardliners would be happy to steal the seat from Ghalibaf.

The former lawmaker said in a tweet on Saturday that Porto’s striker Mehdi Taremi breaking his fast in the middle of a sensitive match is a good advertisement for Islam.

He added that other Iranian players in Europe should be like this.

Motahari, whose father was a famous cleric, has been critical of political suppression in Iran in recent years, but he remains a religious conservative.

Motahari also referred to similar symbolic gestures such as a sajdah -- the act of kneeling and bowing to touches the ground with the forehead – by Egyptian footballer Mohamed Salah after scoring goals, and Real Madrid’s French player Karim Benzema breaking his fast only minutes before an important match against Chelsea.

His comment came as the Islamic Republic is trying to encourage people to observe Islamic traditions. Fewer people have been observing the Muslim fasting period in recent years but police arrest and fine anyone who breaks the rules in public.

As the fasting month of Ramadan started, Iran’s prosecutor-general called on the police to confront those eating and drinking in their cars during daylight.

Every year police enforce a national plan to deal with those who break Ramadan rules in public, and transgressors are sometimes sentenced to months of detention and lashes.

The head of Iran’s canoeing and rowing federation, Alireza Sohrabian, said on Saturday that Nasiri wanted to be employed by the federation, but it didn’t happen, making him leave the team.

He had left Iran before but returned to the country following promises by authorities.

Nasiri had pocketed a gold medal for the Islamic Republic in men’s single scull and a bronze in quad sculls category at the 2019 Asian Rowing Cup.

It is not yet clear whether he will be representing Azerbaijan in international competitions.

About 30 Iranian athletes in recent years have defected from Iranian national teams and sought asylum in other countries, including Judo champion Saeid Mollaei, Greco-Roman national team wrestler Ali Arsalan, and many others, due to a lack of attention, threats and corruption in their federations as well as Iran’s policy of not allowing athlete to compete against Israel. For women mandatory hijab is also an issue.

Also on Saturday, judoka Mohammad Rashnonezhad, another Iranian judo champion who left the country, played against an Israeli opponent as a member of the refugees’ team of International Judo Federation, something he couldn’t do as an Iranian athlete.

Last week, karate champion Sajjad Ganjzadeh criticized the Islamic Republic for not allowing athletes to play matches against Israeli competitors, saying, "We cannot tolerate this anymore. Not competing is more difficult than competing”.

A fake news began circulating Friday that the speaker had resigned, quoting Tasnim news agency, which prompted a quick denial by the agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.

Overall, by Saturday the scandal showed signs of dying down, specially with a long religious holiday, when newspapers shut down and news websites focus on urgent news.

In a long series of tweets Thursday, Mahmoud Razavi, an advisor to the Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, claimed that he had fallen victims to a plot by political rivals in intelligence and security bodies.

Razavi alleged that certain "political-security circles whose interests are in danger" were behind the circulation of a photo of Ghalibaf's family upon returning from Turkey which sparked a scandal quickly dubbed as "Layette-Gate" and that they used the whistleblower, journalist Vahid Ashtari, to carry out their plot against Ghalibaf.

On Tuesday, the photo of a family circulated on social, apparently after an alleged argument with airline staff over unauthorized extra luggage at Istanbul airport. The family who arrived in Tehran with apparently a large layette set they bought in Turkey were quickly identified as Ghalibaf's wife, daughter and son-in-law who are expecting a baby.

The revelation caused a barrage of criticism and resurfacing of other alleged corruption cases against the family.

Razavi said taking the trip, as Ghalibaf's son said in a statement after the revelation, was an "unforgivable mistake". But he argued that passengers on the flight could not have recognized the speaker's family members who were wearing covid masks, nobody knew of Ghalibaf's daughter's pregnancy, there had been no argument over extra luggage, and that airline officials would not give passengers' details to anyone so the journalist who blew the whistle must have been fed information by people with influence in intelligence bodies.

"Are the country's security and justice bodies, the intelligence ministry, and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Intelligence Organization going to sit and watch, like previous instances, as political-security circles damage the country and disturb public's mind in order to eliminate their political rivals?" he wrote.

Another Ghalibaf supporter, former political editor of hardline Mashregh News website, also claimed the involvement of security and intelligence bodies. It's naïve to see one person, the whistle-blower, behind the plan to destroy Ghalibaf's reputation, Ali-Akbar Gholami said Thursday. "It seems that a security team was monitoring the family's departure and return," he said.

Arguing that the whistle-blower, Ashtari, is a known hardliner and that he has ties with former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, some hardliners claim that Jalili and the ultra-hardliner Paydari Front were behind the scandal. They also say that these political rivals want to oust the speaker and takeover the Parliament's presidium.

Political commentator Sadegh Zibakalam told Iranian media that the incident is a symptom of the post-revolution generation forsaking their fathers’ slogans of a revolutionary lifestyle and want to live a normal life. He explained that the younger generation wants to live in comfort, travel, get a good education and enjoy life. But when it comes to the children of Islamic Republic officials, this creates a strong contradiction between what fathers are preaching and what their children seek.