Larijani landslide questioned by... his own side?

I originally wrote this article for Tehran Bureau, which published it on November 23, 2010.

Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani's recent election as chairman of the majority faction has highlighted the cracks in the pro-regime Principlist camp and the ambiguous nature of democracy in the Islamic Republic.

IRNA: 25 votes

The central council of the legislature's Principlist faction voted to choose its leader on Sunday, November 7, and depending on the source, Larijani either garnered 44 of 47 votes as the sole candidate or squeaked by with 25 ballots to 20 in a tightly contested race with his rival, Tehran representative and Second Deputy Speaker Shahabeddine Sadr.

Khabar Online: 44 votes

The election took place amidst rising tension within the conservative camp. While Larijani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been direct rivals since 2005 when both men ran for president, it would be an over-simplification to describe the animosity among Principlists solely as a power struggle between the two political figures.

A review of news reports, interviews, and official blogs indicates that Larijani obtained only 25 votes, but that creative electioneering allowed his supporters to advance the figure of 44, under the pretense of presenting a picture of unity to the general public.

ILNA: 44 votes

The Islamic Republic News Agency, run by Ahmadinejad's former media adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr, reported the correct number of ballots for Larijani, but the misleading figure of 44 was disseminated by a much greater number of outlets, including the '20:30' television news program. This was initially a public relations victory for Larijani supporters, but their subsequent attempts to explain the discrepancy has taken some of the luster off the conceit that the Majlis Speaker is an uncontested leader.

Mehr: 44 votes

Tension, dissension, and all-out conflict are not new in the Principlist camp. The impeachment of Interior Minister Ali Kordan for having a bogus doctorate -- a move initiated by fellow Principlist and Majlis representative Ahmad Tavakoli during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first term is only one example -- but the events following the disputed election of June 2009 have made the fault lines between conservatives even more brittle.

ISNA: 44 votes

Just in the past nine months, Elias Naderan, representative of Tehran, accused First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi of corruption and called for his arrest in an open session of the legislature; Morteza Nabavi of the Islamic Society of Engineers warned of the ascension of 'deviant Principlists;' Pro-Ahmadinejad goons besieged the parliament building after a majority of representatives voted down the government's attempts to appropriate Azad University assets; and the Majlis voted to remove Ahmadinejad from the chairmanship of the Central Bank's general assembly.

Press TV: 25 votes

It was within this vitriolic context that the Principlists set about to elect the leader of their Majlis faction, a post that Larijani has filled in addition to that of Speaker for the past two years. The vote had originally been scheduled for Tuesday, November 2, at 6 PM after the evening prayer, Vali Esmaili (representative of Germi, Ardabil province) told Aftab daily. But by Tuesday afternoon, Shargh daily reported that the meeting had been postponed. 'It has become clear that 37 of the central council's 44 members are critics of Larijani's stewardship. [...],' wrote the paper. 'Consequently, Larijani's supporters have again postponed the meeting of the Principlist faction's central council which was to have elected its board.'

Sadr et al

The Islamic Revolution faction, a sub-group of the Principlist faction, had yet to decide whether to field a candidate against Larijani. The Islamic Revolution faction was created in early 2009 with one primary message, 'Ahmadinejad is the best presidential nominee for the Principlists,' and as such, their candidate may have had a polarizing effect on the proceedings. They finally threw their support behind Shahabeddine Sadr, who, while not a member of their group, was a conservative with impeccable credentials and an independent streak. Sadr also had close relations with some of Ahmadinejad's key ministers. (The photo to the right shows, from left to right, Sadr, Islamic Guidance Minister Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, and Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi)

Principlists for Mousavi

Sadr, a physician and university professor, had been one of ten presidential candidates in the 2001 race which brought Mohammad Khatami to a second term (Sadr came in 7th place in the first round). While a Majlis representative, he was elected chairman of the national medical association in 2008.

As the deputy chief of the Front for Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader, an umbrella organization comprising over a dozen Principlist groups, he was approached by the Society of Combatant Clergy and the Islamic Coalition Party to make another run for the presidency in 2009. He turned down the offer, but made some surprisingly positive remarks about another candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who would go on to become one of the main leaders of the Green movement. 'He believed that Mousavi was a known individual with administrative experience and that he was respected by all,' wrote Khabar Online, which is incidentally close to Larijani. '[He believed that Mousavi] was loyal to the principles of the regime and the revolution, and that his red lines were the Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini], the constitution, and the velayateh faghih ('Rule of the jurisprudent,' principle from which Khamenei derives his power).' It was not unusual at the time for some conservatives to endorse Mousavi and indeed they formed an official organization called Principlist Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Sadr was not a member of that group and gave his endorsement to Ahmadinejad. Following the disputed election and in the past year, he has generally refrained from making speeches or appearing on television programs, although he did extend his congratulations to Ahmadinejad and the nation. In May, he was chosen by his peers as the Second Deputy Speaker of the Majlis. Larijani ran unchallenged for the post of Speaker in the same election.


In the central council meeting of November 7, Sadr accepted to run against Larijani for chairman of the Principlist faction of the legislature. There were 47 participants in the meeting -- the 44 members of the central council and the 3 members of the faction's arbitration committee -- and all had the right to vote, according to the statutes of the faction. Per two reports, one arbitrator and one member of the council were absent.

Esmail Kowsari (representative of Tehran), attempted to start the meeting with a few words about the Speaker's record, but was not given the floor. Ballots were distributed and Larijani won 25 votes to Sadr's 20. There were two blank votes.

Hamid Rasai

Here the accounts diverge. 'Upon the suggestion of Mr. [Hossein] Nejabat, after the official vote, an oral vote was carried out by uttering a salavat prayer. A few individuals disagreed with this and the rest said a salavat meaning, Yes, Larijani is the leader,' wrote Principlist representative Hamid Rasai in his blog. 'Immediately, Mr. Larijani's office mobilized and put pressure on various outlets, asking them to report 44 out of 47 votes for Larijani. [...] Some outlets contacted us and said that Larijani's office was insisting that this news be reported.'

Hossein Nejabat

Hossein Nejabat is one of Tehran's representatives, even though he is said to live mostly in Ghom (Larijani is one of Ghom's representatives), and is a member of the Society of Devotees of the Islamic Revolution (Jamiyateh isargaraneh jomhouriyeh eslami), which supported Tehran mayor and Ahmadinejad rival Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in the 2005 presidential election. Nejabat obtained a doctorate in nuclear physics from Durham University in England. 


Larijani's supporters countered with their own version, which was not much more convincing. 'Before the [official] vote, Mr.Nejabat suggested that the vote with paper ballots be considered an exploratory vote (raygiriyeh estemzaji) and that whichever candidate obtained the favor of the majority, he should become the unique candidate of the faction and all of us should vote for him, so that the unity and homogeneity of the Principlists could be shown to the people,' explained Seyed Hossein Naghvi Hosseini (representative of Varamin) to Khabar Online.

What about the salavat prayer? 'The salavat was uttered when Mr. Nejabat made his suggestion and it was asked that those who favored the suggestion should say a salavat,' added Hosseini. Asked why so many central council members were complaining, Hosseini said, 'In any case, this drum of opposition in the central council of the Principlists is nothing new. In my opinion, the opposition of some of our colleagues to Mr. Larijani is entering the sphere of Principlism.'

While the drumbeat of opposition to Larijani is nothing new, neither are irregularities in his election to the chairmanship of the Principlist faction. Last year, when he ran against Morteza Agha Tehrani, 'Larijani's supporters were told that the meeting was at 4 PM and his critics were told that the meeting would start at 4:30 PM,' according to Rasai. 'Twelve of the 44 members of the central council arrived late, after the election had already taken place.'

But, of course, last year, the country was contending with another disputed election.

Sanandaj, Iran: Video of deadly gunfight emerges

Two gunmen at the right of the image

Footage recently posted on the Internet shows last week's gunfight in front of a police station in Sanandaj, Iran, on Thursday, October 7, 2010.

The deadly battle left four security agents and a civilian dead, according to news sites. Five police officers and four civilians were injured in the attack, said Colonel Kazeminejad, deputy police chief of Kurdistan province.

The attack took place in front of the police station situated at the north end of Sanandaj's Azadi Square, formerly known as Eghbal Square:

View Azadi Square - Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, Iran in a larger map

The police station, a prominent concrete and glass structure, can be seen from another angle in the image to the the right. The cameraman was most likely in the brown building to the east of the police station.

Two individuals opened fire on police officers outside the building late in the afternoon, the spokesman for the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization, Ejlal Ghavami, told BBC Persian, citing eyewitnesses. The gunmen can be seen clearly in the video posted on Unity4Iran's YouTube channel:


Northwestern Iran has been wracked with violence in the past weeks. A bomb blast killed 12 people during a military parade in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province, on September 22. A security officer and a 4-year-old boy died in a gun battle on the streets of Saghez, Kurdistan province, on September 20.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack. Some opposition groups have pointed the finger of blame at the regime's security forces, accusing them of trying to unite the people against 'counter-revolutionaries' and attempting to justify the current crackdown in the country.

Breaking news: Bomb kills 11 during military parade

Official pointing to explosion

At least eleven people were killed in a bomb blast during a military parade in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province, on Wednesday morning, 22 September 2010, according to various state and opposition news outlets. The Arabic-language Al Alam news channel, a subsidiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, was one of the first sources to break the news and reported that the blast had occurred at 10:30 AM, local time.

The photo above shows spectators on the official parade stand looking and pointing to the right, where the explosion took place a second before.

Vahid Jalalzadeh

Immediately after the blast, Vahid Jalalzadeh, the provincial governor, told Mehr News by telephone that since the event had occurred only an hour earlier he had no exact figures on casualties or the manner in which the attack had occurred. He added, however, 'This incident was carried out by counter-revolutionaries in the women's section during the armed forces parade.' On this date, the regime's armed forces participate in annual ceremonies marking the start of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.

Footage broadcast by IRIB's Channel 1 showed troops marching at the moment of the explosion -- though not the blast itself -- and the immediate aftermath.

In later interviews, Jalalzadeh said that the explosion had taken place 50 meters from the official stand at the parade. He set the provisional toll at 10 dead and 20 injured, four of them in critical condition.The numbers have since been revised by Issa Ghanbari, the province's deputy governor in charge of security and military affairs, to 11 dead and 32 injured. Ghanbari told the Islamic Students' News Agency that the bomb was placed in a handbag, but other news sources have reported that the device was hanging from a tree next to the sidewalk.

Women constituted most of the casualties, according to Jalalzadeh, who said that the injured were being transferred to hospitals. 'None of the troops attending the ceremony were harmed,' he said.

According to General Nosrati, West Azerbaijan's military commander, the explosion took place among female spectators who had come to watch the parade. Jalalzadeh later added that two of the dead were the wives of senior military commanders.

Jalalzadeh told Fars News, close to the Revolutionary Guards, that the operation was a form of revenge exacted on the people. 'Last week, the ever-present people of Mahabad, through their spontaneous demonstration, condemned the insult to the sacred Koran,' he said in reference to a government-sponsored rally protesting a small US church's plans to burn the Koran. 'This bomb explosion shows that the enemy is enraged.' In the Channel 1 footage posted above, Jalalzadeh blamed the US and other foreign governments of being behind the terrorist attack, at least by virtue of their aid to Kurdish armed groups and the Mujahedin Khalgh Organization.

In line with Governor Jalalzadeh, other officials and pro-regime news sites have been quick to point the finger of blame on a broad spectrum of the usual, and sometimes contradictory, suspects.

Raja News, close to the Ahmadinejad government, quoted Deputy Governor Fakhrali Nikbakht as saying that the operation was a suicide attack. Raja based itself on a Fars News interview which did not make any such claim.

Fars News has been minimizing the news and does not feature it on its front page, although it has been attributing the attack to 'enemies of the Iranian people,' counter-revolutionaries, terrorists, and 'groupuscules.' Armed Kurdish groups, particularly Pejak, are active in the area, though, as far as this blog has been able to ascertain, they have never organized a bomb attack on civilians. Mahabad has a large Kurdish and Sunni population.

Security officer and 4-year-old killed in gun battle, says Kurdistan province news source

A battle between five unidentified gunmen and the regime's security forces in the streets of Saghez, Kurdistan province on September 20, 2010, left a 4-year-old boy and a member of the security detail dead, according to Rawa News.

Rawa, a site dedicated to news from Kurdistan province, reported that the skirmish occurred on Tuesday morning in Ostad Shirazi Street, on the fringes of Saghez, a town in northwestern Iran with a population of 150,000. The young boy was identified as Matin Ebrahimi, son of Ata.


View Saghez, Kurdistan province, Iran - 20 September 2010 in a larger map

Video posted on YouTube claimed to show the aftermath of the gunfight and the covered body of the child.


Another graphic video showed what appeared to be a lifeless body under a different sheet, though neither the age, nor the gender of the individual can be determined from the grainy footage. The language spoken in both videos is Kurdish.


The protracted gun battle raged for an hour after the unidentified men were surrounded by security forces, according to witnesses. Rawa News wrote that several regime troops were also injured, but that no other details of casualties were available.

Saghez is currently under a security blanket, per news sources.

Up to 600 national publications continuously attack government, complains regime's Deputy Islamic Guidance Minister

Mohammad Ali Ramin

A senior official in the Ahmadinejad cabinet strongly denounced what he described as the 'undesirable situation of the press' in the Islamic Republic during a controversial speech to students at Qazvin's Imam Khomeini International University on Wednesday night, July 28, 2010.

Was he referring to the dozens of imprisoned journalists and banned newspapers? Think again.

'The government is criticized and even disparaged on a daily and weekly basis by at least 500 to 600 publications in the country in the strongest, sometimes insulting, terms,' complained Mohammad Ali Ramin, Deputy Islamic Guidance Minister in charge of the press, who is directly responsible for banning publications, towards the end of his question-and-answer session with the students, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Ramin also deplored the fact that there are too many publications in the country. 'In the period before me, the supervisory committee would issue 60 licenses during a one-hour meeting,' he said. 'We are now facing problems and some people have licenses over which there is no supervision. [...] Some of these publications which have obtained licenses are in the hands of individuals with no money and they become dependent on investors. The government must help them become absorbed into parties and organizations.'

Ramin, 56, was fairly unknown on the national stage until Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first term, when he became a presidential adviser. He allegedly contributed to Ahmadinejad's questionable positions about Israel and the Holocaust, and was the prime initiator of the infamous 2006 Holocaust conference held in Tehran, which was attended by such luminaries as Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. He headed Tehran's International Holocaust Foundation and was named deputy Islamic guidance minister last year.

Ramin lived in Germany from 1971 until 1994, when he was expelled from the country for unknown reasons, though some sources cite his activities in Islamist and neo-Nazi circles as the cause. He was jailed for a short period in 1982, again for reasons that have not been made public. He obtained degrees in engineering from Karlsruhe University and the Technical University of Clausthal, where he founded the Islamische Gemeinschaft in Clausthal (Islamic Community of Clausthal). It is said that during his time in Germany he forged close relations with neo-Nazi and extreme-right figures, including Benedikt Frings of the NPD (National Democratic Party), who was also a guest at the Holocaust conference.

For an individual whose devotion to the Islamic Republic and its principles was only exercised through a long-distance relationship for over 20 years, he has become quite a die-hard devotee of the concept of velayateh faghih (rule of the Islamic jurisprudent) and its embodiment Leader Ali Khamenei. 'The [Leader] has the position of surrogate of the Imam Zaman (NB The Mahdi or messiah of Shiites) and on his behalf must manage the world, in other words the imposition of God's proof upon humanity during the time of absence [of Imam Zaman],' Ramin said at the beginning of his address in Qazvin.

'We must find a way for the velayateh faghih system to manage the world,' Ramin told the students a bit later, obviously still enamored of the idea of world dominance with which he flirted in his younger days.