With Ebrahim Raisi occupying the post of Iran’s presidency, the supreme leader’s dream has become a reality, and the regime is now contracted. There is no more so-called reformist faction in the main positions of the government, therefore Ali Khamenei has lost his card of having an opposition inside the country and announcing them as the main culprit of all the people’s miserable situation to covering him and his corrupted institutions.
From now on the huge waves of the people’s protests will directly hit Khamenei’s palace.
Raisi complained about the coronavirus during the inauguration ceremony, not because it is taking between 700-800 honorable lives from the Iranian people every day, because he failed to kiss Khamenei’s hand.
With this eloquence, he showed that he had come for being loyal to the regime’s supreme leader and that he had no further mission than to spread repression and respond to discontent with bullets and tear gas, torture, and imprisonment.
But the truth is that Raisi is not an opportunity, he is an anti-opportunity. He is the latest card that Khamenei put on the table. According to Fereydoun Majlesi, a former diplomat of the regime, the government cannot afford to make the slightest mistake. He said this before Raisi took the power.
“The synergy of internal crises has given the government the warning that society has no patience to endure this situation and the threshold of people’s patience has reached its most fragile state. Therefore, there is no more chance and opportunity for adventure. This view of the thirteenth government will certainly be dictated.
Because the thirteenth government, even if given over to people like Seyyed Ibrahim Raisi, no longer has the chance and opportunity to make any mistake.” (Diplomacy Irani, May 22, 2021)
So Raisi is not a lifeline after all; he is just a version between the bad and the worst. By boycotting the election show and a series of uprisings, the society has shown that it is not looking for a solution within the government while having experienced it many times and failed.
Raising “strong skyscraping fists” and showing teeth and unveiling models of missiles and UAVs is no longer authoritative and is just reflecting fundamental weaknesses. This has also been understood by the elements of this regime.
“We cannot solely rely on Putin’s military capabilities and unrealistic incentives and Xi Jinping genius and test the social scene by pseudo-security plans and narrow the country’s connection to the world every day.” (State-run daily Hamdeli, August 7, 2021)
The result of Raisi’s power taking is that the foundations of this regime are wretched in all the fields. The regime now has no authority or power, neither militarily, nor ideologically, nor economically, nor politically. This is a reality that they self are speaking about it:
“With two conventional actions of approval and inauguration, the presidency of Ibrahim Raisi was recognized. He is in a position where according to Michael Mann four sources of power, Military, ideological, economic, and political power are each in a special position.
Military power is under the magnifier of foreign opposition, and they are trying to limit it, and ideological power has lost its former influence in the public arena, and oil-dependent economic power has not good conditions and is dependent on the JCPOA and the political power has lost its hegemony.” (State-run daily Shargh, August 7, 2021)
Retreat and weakness are spreading like a virus among the regime’s officials and elements. This was obvious in the speeches of some of them in Raisi’s inauguration. Which has become a disaster for the regime.
“The speeches of the esteemed Speakers of the Parliament and the Judiciary at the inauguration ceremony and in the presence of representatives of more than seventy countries were weak. It was not in the dignity of the revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The focus of their speeches were issues such as corruption and dense livelihood problems and unemployment and the impact of sanctions and the like.” (Tazeh News, August 6, 2021)
The result for the regime is the constant warnings about being overthrown:
“Worrying economic pressures, along with high mortality due to disease outbreaks and the inefficiency of decision-making institutions, eventually bring distressed people to a point where they will have nothing to lose. And this is a dangerous process that has been warned by sympathizers repeatedly despite all the audits. (Mostaghel, August 7, 2021)
