Specter of Ahmadinejad Returns amid Mesbah-Rafsanjani Confrontation
(Mesbah Yazdi speaking for a group of followers, including former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Photo: Raja News)
Perhaps it is high time the Principlists had to resort to antagonizing Hashemi Rafsanjani to win an election, with the first race being a presidential poll that is expected to really start in a matter of seven or eight months.
The elimination of ayatollahs Mohammad Yazdi (current chairman) and Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah Yazi (an ardent supporter of Ahmadinejad) from the Assembly of Experts has given rise to a widening rift between high-ranking politicians in Iran.
In a speech addressed to the people of Varamin on the sidelines of a ceremony in commemoration for the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War Operation Kheibar, Ahmadinejad attacked the government and its nuclear deal. “They think everything is over if they … exchange stuff and pose as victors behind the tribunes,” he said. He also warned that the Iranian nation’s revolution is just at the beginning of a long path and goes on until oppression and tyranny is wiped off from the face of the earth.
Although most advocates of Principlism are trying to back Yazdi as much as Mesbah, the real controversy seems to be centered on the latter. Ayatollah Alamolhoda, a senior conservative cleric, who has just been named Supreme Leader's representative in Razavi Khorasan Province and serves as Mashhad's Friday Prayers leader, has also offered his own interpretation of the recent electoral defeat for Mesbah Yazdi. “In an ascent, our people wholeheartedly sacrifice whatever they have for the Supreme Leader. In a descent, the same people, motivated by some factors, discard those around the Supreme Leader,” he was quoted as saying on Friday, in what seems to be a blatant piece of value judgment on the popular votes in Tehran for the Assembly of Experts. “In the recent elections, my guru … was eliminated,” he lamented in a gesture of modesty, referring to Mesbah Yazdi's electoral failure.
This was immediately responded to on Hashemi Rafsanjani’s Twitter account with a photo featuring Ahmadinejad in the arms of Mesbah Yazdi, perhaps to remind the latter’s devoted support for the former. The caption of the photo is more pointedly directed, praising Morteza Motahhari, an early ideologue of the Islamic Republic whom Mesbah is compared to, since "never became a ladder for the ‘deviant faction’,’” (i.e. Ahmadinejad and his circle) reads the caption. On Saturday, highlights from Hashemi Rafsanjani’s interview with Arman daily, an unofficial mouthpiece of his family, surfaced online. In the interview, he has expressed unwillingness to run as the Assembly of Experts chairman, despite the fact that he has been handed the highest number of votes in Tehran. Hashemi has also dismissed popular belief that the list, composed of sixteen candidates running for chairs available in the Assembly of Experts from Tehran, aiming primarily to block the JYM trio (Jannati, Yazdi and Mesbah) was a work of his design. “In the election, the soldiers of a silent faction beat the generals of the opposing faction with an absolute majority,” he said, analyzing the electoral failure of key figures of the Principlist slate.
Earlier this week, Mesbah Yazdi had also offered his own share of thoughts on the election, emphasizing on foreign infiltration. “Some are ready to compromise the dignity of eighty million [Iranians] … to stick to their chairs [in power] for a mere few days,” he was quoted as saying by the hardliner Raja News on Tuesday, in a student gathering hosted by ex-nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Jalili, considered the closest 2013 presidential candidate to Ahmadinejad, was openly endorsed in his campaign by Mesbah Yazdi but the closest he came to the elected President Hassan Rouhani, backed by Hashemi Rafsanjani, was some more than 13 million behind.
The verbal fight between the two Ayatollahs became heated during Ahmadinejad’s tenure, but a personal confrontation of such scales in an election was unprecedented.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Leader commented on the unexpected elimination of Yazdi and Mesbah, in a rare occasion. “There are some great individuals whose personality is not affected by winning or losing polls, including Messrs Yazdi and Mesbah. Their presence in the assembly gives it weight while their absence is a loss,” Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated, the final say, perhaps in an attempt to tranquilize the losing party.