Dissident under House Arrest Calls for Trial in Letter to President Rouhani

Hessam Emami

Written in a scarcely modulated tone, Mahdi Karroubi’s recent relatively long letter seems to be an enraged response to recent remarks by establishment leaders calling ignoble the dissident aspirants of the 2009 presidential race. The tall tale of protests led by Karroubi and runner-up Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the following events that ended up with the two’s house arrests became the last straw in an already widened rift between the two major political factions, namely the principlist and reformist camps. The outlook of an end to the house arrests has gradually come out of focus in the past six years as they are even transformed into leverages for every election.  From the very beginning, there has never been a consensus on the deadlock, too. While some hardliners avidly wait for executions, reformists and moderates go one step forward and call for an impartial trial of Karroubi, Mousavi and ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who they assume as the man who opened the Pandora’s box of the so-called sedition.

Jahan News, a website closely associated with principlists, interpreted the letter as demanding death by rejecting 'Islamic compassion'. An article penned by Abdolreza Soltani published by Ghatreh also severely condemns the letter as a plot by those who want to sacrifice the 'feeble-minded sheikh' in the interest of the sedition. "Possible responses to the letter would be either an acceptance or rejection; they know if the request is put down, it could be used as a pretext to the righteousness of the sheikh. If accepted, the atmosphere that follows would have every potential for radicalization," writes Soltani.

Karroubi's previous claims little reworded in the letter now include fraud in the 2005 presidential race and vote rigging in the 2009 election, with the two allegations exchanging dates. According to the official tallies in 2009, Karroubi earned less ballots than those declared null and void which has been mocked throughout these years by his critics. Karroubi has also vowed to prove with evidence alleged mistreatments of the “country’s children” in legal and illegal detention facilities.

While Karroubi’s harsh accusations of the establishment and his standing tall stressing all his previous claims will be met with acclaim from Iranian diaspora, many in Iran believe this could be a final nail in the coffin of reforms.

The letter opens with Karroubi’s gratitude expressed to the President’s colleagues, naming Healthcare Minister Hashemi and President Rouhani’s brother Hossein Fereydoun.

The letter goes on to outline his background as one of the country’s highest-ranking officials until it comes to his candidacies for the two presidential races in 2005 and 2009. “Unfortunately, in both elections, the rights of the proud nation of Iran and mine were violated by intervention from a part of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij [IRGC’s voluntary arm] and the Intelligence Ministry, to impose on the nation and country a trickster and liar who blasphemed the Shiite faith and the sanctities, bringing to life the most corrupted administration since the Constitutional Movement in the name of the Islamic Revolution,” he added, in his characteristically bitter criticism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This has been interpreted by principlist figures as a desperate attempt to block what has been seen as Ahmadinejad's bid to run for president in the coming year’s race. Abdollah Ganji, the director of Javan daily, says the letter is in line with the reformists' anxiety about Ahmadinejad's reentry into elections. "Ahmadinejad's visit to a city in Mazandaran was welcomed by a crowd more than that of the President's provincial visit and those who were manipulating house arrests for their own 'fruit-picking' in the social sphere now not only fail to sense any social capital but also feel socially perished," he wrote in his Telegram channel.

Elsewhere in the letter, while slamming the Guardian Council as a means in the hands of the establishment, Karroubi implicitly hints at a Trojan horse, deliberately qualified by the Council to trigger a divide in the reformist camp. When he later adds that the nominee in question has recently been disqualified to run for a parliamentary seat, we know that he is referring to Mohsen Mehralizadeh who finished little better than invalidated ballots at 1.2 million (4.2 percent of the total number of ballots), compared to Karroubi who came third collecting 5.07 million votes, behind Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who competed in the runoff. The dissident leader seems to be kept updated as he slams the Guardian Council’s recently finalized decision to disqualify elected Majlis aspirant, Minoo Khaleqi, after the election. He calls the move a dangerous, illegal heresy that should not be accepted by the administration and Majlis.

The letter, replete with things interpreted at best as confabulations by the radical principlists but ringing as the story of life to the reformists, calls for an open trial that could leave the final judgment to the public.

“The outcome of the trial will determine what side of the 2009 election dispute is ignoble, betraying the Revolution and what side is noble and sticking to the Revolution … I stress that I will welcome wholeheartedly any verdicts issued by the trial without the right to appeal … there is no arbitrator better than God and the people,” reads the last paragraph of the letter.

Mahdi Mohammadi, another principlist commentator, mockingly agrees with the idea of an open trial as an opportunity to adjudicate on the sedition driven by Karroubi's melancholic illusions and fresh, unique comedies formed by his extraordinary skills in putting forward complicated arguments to mesmerize public opinions.