Parliament Getting Impatient With Iran’s President, Demands Changes

Reformist activist Davoud Soleimani wrote in a commentary in Etemad newspaper that "the collapse of the Metropol Tower is a miniature symbol of the dynamics prevailing in Iran's government." This is an utterly polite way of saying that the way local and national governments as well as security forces are handling the people's reactions following the catastrophe is shambolic.

Soleimani warned the government that "some of the country's problems cannot be solved simply through the use of force."

He attributed some of the shortcomings in Abadan, where the incident happened, to the government's faulty structures, which in turn gave way to the corruption that led to sloppy construction methods, ultimately killing more than 30 people.

However, Soleimani pointed out that Iran has fairly good laws about regulating construction work and safety, but influential individuals at the municipality and elsewhere in the country's management can always circumvent the laws.

He added that the government should remember the lessons learned from the incident and prevent disregard of safety regulations by influential individuals. Soleimani further pointed out that it is bad when a reporter who had warned about the possibility of a collapse was threatened and silenced by the authorities.

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Meanwhile, former lawmaker Davoud Yousefian Molla told Etemad Online in Tehran about the ambiguities surrounding the event. "It is still not known why the search and rescue mission is taking so long. Also, we still do not know who is responsible for compensating the losses sustained," he said, adding that because of widespread distrust, many still do not believe the owner of the building was killed under the debris as the government says.

"The government is working hard to secure the people's trust, but the situation is not good, and the chaotic performance of the authorities leave little room for trust," said Yousefian.He added: "The Interior Minister, the Red Crescent Society and the local governor are at the site of the collapse, but their presence makes no difference as there is no proper search, rescue and relief plan in place."

Yousefian further said, "The fact that we still do not know the identity of those buried under the debris and do not know who is responsible for what happened and who is in charge of search and rescue operations adds to the sense of distrust among the people." He added that this distrust has accumulated over time and is not solely related to this particular event."

Yousefian charged that Iranian officials have been lying to the people since former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency. "People used to call former President Hassan Rouhani a liar even before he began to speak. The reason for this is the lack of trust among the people," he said.

In another article in the reformist Shargh newspaper, Iranian commentator Amir Nazemi wrote that "protesters in Abadan know that the dead cannot be brought back to life. What they protest against are corruption, lawbreaking and ignoring the value of life." He added that no concession can calm down the protests but what can relieve the situation is creating an atmosphere for reviewing and correcting the process of decision-making in Iran."

Nazemi called for the government's confrontation with corruption, empowering supervisory bodies and facilitating "e-petitions" and whistleblowing and making sure that those who sign petitions and blow whistles live without fear of judiciary’s reprisal.

In an interview with Ensaf News on Monday, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani said that the list had been available since at least 2020 but security authorities pushed to bury the list of high-risk buildings in Tehran. Ensaf News last week published the list, citing the fire department.

Ghodratollah Mohammadi, the new head of Tehran Fire Department, who said on Sunday that "we will definitely publish the list of 129 high-risk buildings in Tehran with the coordination of the prosecutor's office," rejected the validity of the list on Monday. "It is invalid and has nothing to do with the Tehran fire department," he said.

He had said on Sunday that there are more than three thousand cases of such buildings in the capital.

The issue of unsafe buildings has become hot as protests began last Monday, when a 10-story building collapsed in Abadan, leaving 34 people dead and an equal number missing. It quickly became apparent that the owner was a powerful and well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, being backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.

Anti-government protests continue in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province as large number of security forces have been mobilized to crack down.

The rial has been sliding since mid-March when year-long multi-lateral talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement known as JCPOA came to an abrupt halt. Washington and Tehran apparently were too far apart on some issues, including Iran’s demand that its Revolutionary Guard should be removed from the US list of terrorist organizations.

The rial slid to 310,000 to the US dollar on Monday, while in 2017, before the Trump administration decided to withdraw from the JCPOA it traded at 34,000 to the US dollar, ninefold decline. This was the currency’s lowest point so far in 2022.

The continuing decline of the currency is bad news for the rulers of the Islamic Republic as they already face runaway inflation at above 40 percent. Every percentage point the rial loses in value it translates into higher food prices, because at least half of Iran’s wheat and a large amount of animal feed is imported.

The government’s decision in early May to stop multi-billion-dollar subsidies for food impots resulted in a price shock for ordinary people, with experts predicting even higher inflation.

A report in the Iranian media on Monday said that even bottled drinking water is too expensive for people living on ordinary salaries.

The Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) just last week released its report on prices for the 30-day period of April 21-May 20.

Prices for pasta, which has become a relatively cheap source of calories for wage earners, jumped by 49 percent in one month, and cooking oil by 22.3 percent.

When it comes to chicken, eggs and other food items, what people and media report is astonishing. Chicken prices have doubled in recent weeks and sales declined by 30 percent. The government was forced to lift export restrictions to help producers stay financially solvent, but most have cut back on production, reportedly killing and dumping newly hatched chicks.

SCI reports that price of lemons has risen 11 percent and watermelon by 12.8 percent in one month.

As the government lifted food import subsidies, protests began in dozens of small towns, as large cities, notably the capital Tehran remained mostly quiet. But on May 22, an unexpected disaster sparked new protests.

A 10-story building in the south-Western city of Abadan in the oil-rich |Khuzestan province collapsed, killing more than 30 people and leaving an equal number under the debris. Quickly it became apparent that the newly built building was mired in corruption, as repeated warnings by inspectors were ignored by its well-connected owner. He even received permission to add a few floors to the building.

Iranians on social media often talk of a crisis of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic. Many people have lost all confidence that the authorities can govern even at a minimally acceptable standard.

This, than any particular incident or inflation is the deep rooted cause of protests. A building collapse, such as the incident in Abadan, simply comes to remind citizens that the authoritarian system is corrupt at all levels, and there is no hope for any tangible improvement.

A former deputy minister and political activist Mostafa Tajzadeh tweeted Monday that the government claims to be able to circumvent US sanctions and export oil, yet there is no positive impact on the economy and people continue to suffer.

Gholasmali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi, a staunch critic of Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and his self-proclaimed “revolutionary” parliament said in an interview with moderate news website Rouydad24 that new legislations are needed to define the word “revolutionary” so that lawmakers who are not revolutionaries could be dealt with.

A few weeks ago, the representatives of university students asked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei not to label the Majles “revolutionary” following the scandal of Ghalibaf’s family taking a controversial luxury shopping trip to Turkey in April.

In a speech during another meeting with Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday, Khamenei said that although they chanted revolutionary slogans during their election campaigns, what is important is continuing to remain a revolutionary rather than claiming to be one.

Earlier this week, an IRGC general who spoke on Iranian state television also questioned officials’ claim of being revolutionaries, charging that some 4,000 children of senior officials are living a luxurious life in other countries, mainly in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Referring to the argument of some officials saying that their children are “independent,” Imanabadi said that if there were conflict-of-interest laws, officials could no longer claim that their private life was separate from their revolutionary facade.

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He said that lawmakers should not try to complicate the conflict-of-interest issue, prolonging the legislative process and evading their responsibility. He referred to Khamenei’s remarks and said “we need a law to restrict their activities” in cases of conflict of interest.

“This means a lawmaker cannot use government properties for personal use. A lawmaker should not accumulate wealth in illegitimate ways. Lawmakers should not have business interests, and their close relatives cannot shop for their babies abroad, or buy houses in a foreign country,” Imanabadi said in a clear reference to Ghalibaf’s case.

During the past years many Iranian officials were said to have sent their family members abroad where they live a luxurious life at a time when people in Iran are facing a more than 40-percent inflation rate and rising poverty.

Among these officials, it was only Seyyed Morteza Saqqaian Nelda the Mayor of Qom who acknowledged that six of his children are living in the United States. As photos on social media showed them in typical Western recreational activities last year, the mayor said that his children are living abroad to propagate the ideology of the Islamic Republic.

Mehr news agency reporting about the mayor’s children in America teased the mayor by saying that he should be the mayor of Washington DC rather than the mayor of Qom.

Imanabadi further said in the interview, “The people believe officials have a good life and that they do not understand their difficult economic situation.”

He further argued that if there were laws about conflict of interest, lawmakers could no longer own big companies given to them by the state at low prices, “they could no longer take hefty loans [from government banks] to buy luxurious homes and they would know that they cannot have salaries higher than a cabinet level official, and they cannot give good jobs to their relatives or take them on luxury trips to other countries.”

Also mentioning the case of a former lawmaker, who got an extremely well-paid job at the oil ministry at the end of his four-year term, although he was previously a teacher, Imanabadi said that members of parliament are not entitled to such tailored-made jobs. He stressed: “Serving as a lawmaker is not an investment!”

One major factor is the Iranian government's haphazard implementation of a policy eliminating food subsidies in a bid to deal with a 50-percent budget deficit. The population pressed by years of hardship took the measure as the ultimate insult and government inability to run the country.

Protests that followed a sudden jump in food prices were dealt with using force, further alienating many people. The last incident portraying the government as corrupt and inept was the collapse of a high-rise building in Abadan that was built by a well-connected insider who ignored construction regulations and mysteriously disappeared after the incident.

Wednesday evening hundreds of Abadan resident came into streets to mourn the victims of the incident but soon began chanting anti-government slogans.

Mehr news agency, which belongs to the Islamic Propagation Organization, a seminary-affiliated office under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's direct supervision, pulled a controversial commentary on Thursday, May 26, that said eliminating subsidies, rising prices and "the dissemination of news about widespread corruption even among the Leader's inner circle" have prompted even family members of military and security forces to stand against the government.

Mehr pulled the story after several social media users including prominent journalists such as Reza Haghighatnejad wrote about it in a series of tweets. For a few hours, although the story was pulled, readers could still find it by using search engines and keywords from social media posts. But finally, Mehr, changed the story in a way that all links to the commentary directed readers to an irrelevant story about the availability of wheat.

The commentary said that "the poorly planned and hastily implemented policy of changing the subsidy system has even brought the miliary and police forces among the ranks of dissidents."

The commentary added that "The pilot plan for distribution of subsidized bread has failed because of lack of preparedness and technical capability on the part of the government." The commentary added that "This comes while, the subsidy, which was allocated to bakers has not reached them. At the same time, some officials are demanding that the decision should be reversed."

Mehr added that "Initial estimates indicated the new policy might lead to a 20-60 percent rise in bread prices, but in practice, the price of bread and other goods rose four to six-fold. Some items are even being sold at ten times of their previous price."

The commentary concluded that as a result of the rise in dissent, the regime is getting closer to the abyss on a daily basis." The commentary further suggested that those who have been ruling for more than thirty years should leave the government to others.”

In the Iranian political jargon, any reference to 40 years means from the start of the Islamic revolution in 1979, but references to 30 years, indicate that the author is talking about Khamenei's role as Supreme leader. So, the commentary could be taken as opposition to Khamenei's rule in the circle of Seminarians.

Later on Thursday, Mehr finally acknowledged that the story was on its website and was pulled later, because its website was “hacked by counter-revolutionaries.”