Iran Focus
London, 30 May – In yet another example of the deep divides within the Iranian Regime, the Iranian Judiciary Chief has criticised President Hassan Rouhani for his campaign pledges to free political activists.
On the campaign trail, Rouhani promised that during his second term in office he would free opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who were put under house arrest in 2011, following the 2009 Green Movement protests that sprung up in response to the Regime’s election fraud.
Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani said: “Who are you to end the house arrest?”
He continued by saying that the only group with the power to end the house arrest, is the group that authorised it, the Supreme Council of National Security.
Broken Promises
Of course, Rouhani promised the same thing when running for his first term in 2013 and did not deliver on it, so there is no reason to believe that he would do any differently this time around. So why, as Rouhani had broken his promise during his first term, does Larijani criticise Rouhani, when he knows that the political prisoners will likely not be freed?
The Regime is currently dogged by allegations of voter fraud and petty squabbles between its leaders, none of which has anything to do with politics. The prisoners, who are unlikely to be freed whilst the Regime is in power, are little more than pawns in this power move.
The Regime knows that its power is waning; they are overstretched with foreign conflicts, disliked by the people of Iran, and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is dying from cancer. All of these factors make the Regime remarkably unstable and each man at the top is looking out for themselves; they want to align themselves with those they suspect will become the next Supreme Leader because that will lead to unrivalled money and unchecked power.
Hope
But there is still hope. The Iranian Regime is so busy attempting to put out fires that they started, that they could soon be overthrown in favour of an actual moderate government; the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
The NCRI, which serves as a government in exile, and its leader Maryam Rajavi have a ten-point plan to secure a secular, non-nuclear Iran that respects gender equality and human rights. Despite having no official place within Iran, due to the Regime’s policy of imprisoning, torturing, and executing political opponents, the NCRI is widely accepted as the legitimate alternative to the Regime by the Iranian people.
The majority of Iranians boycotted the sham election, rather than legitimise the Regime by casting a vote for a Regime puppet.
