A Controversial Day of Election Campaigns; From Throwing Microphones to a Daughter Becoming Her Father's Advisor

In the continuation of the electoral activities of the candidates for the 14th presidential election, three events involving Masoud Pezeshkian, Saeed Jalili, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi drew attention on Wednesday, June 30. In Pezeshkian's campaign, his advisor, Mohammad Fazeli, threw a microphone and left the studio after a verbal altercation with a media expert. In Saeed Jalili's campaign, Amir Hossein Sabati participated in a special program for women or daughters of candidates instead of the female members of his family, while Mostafa Pourmohammadi brought his daughter as an 'economic expert' to his television appearance. The campaign activities of other candidates on Wednesday were not particularly newsworthy, and attention is now turned to their second debate scheduled for Thursday night, June 31, which is expected to be more explicit based on some of their statements in campaign programs between the two debates. The presence of Masoud Pezeshkian and his advisors in a 'cultural roundtable' on state television, which was accompanied by tension and verbal conflict, has widely made headlines in the Persian-speaking political and virtual space. Mohammad Fazeli, a sociologist and former university professor, participated in this program alongside Mohammad Beheshti, a cultural manager from the so-called reformist government era. Shahab Esfandiari, the head of the state media university who participated as an expert in this roundtable, referred to Masoud Pezeshkian, calling Fazeli a 'disgraced professor' who, by creating 'chaos in the media,' has allegedly 'damaged the reputation of higher education.' Esfandiari claimed that Fazeli, holding a contractual faculty membership, had held positions in the presidency and the Ministry of Energy, which he argued was against the law since a contracted professor is not entitled to hold a position outside the university. Fazeli responded by accusing the media expert of 'lying' and stated that his employment outside the university was approved by the board of trustees. The expert's insistence on his statements and the cutting off of his and Fazeli's microphones by the roundtable organizers, despite Pezeshkian's request for a chance to respond, led to a verbal dispute, Fazeli throwing the microphone, and leaving the studio. Since this program was broadcast live, viewers witnessed all these events, significantly impacting the virtual space. On social media, some interpreted Fazeli's anger as a sign of the 'great anger' of the Iranian people after the suppression of protests following the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini and warned of its resurgence during the electoral campaigns, while others described it as a 'personal dispute' between Fazeli and Esfandiari. Fazeli, being one of the signatories of the controversial statement known as 'opening a window,' was also criticized by those opposing participation in the elections and supporting a boycott. Some political-civil activists with prison records reminded Fazeli that when he becomes so upset by a media expert's statements, he should not invite the people to participate in elections given all the harm the government has inflicted on them. In Bahman 1402, a few months before the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, the Shargh newspaper's website published a statement by 110 civil and political reformist activists titled 'Let's Open a Window,' which called for participation in the parliamentary elections. This was while the Iranian Reform Front had officially announced a day earlier that it would not present a list for the Tehran parliamentary elections and the Assembly of Experts. The comparison of Shahab Esfandiari's treatment of Pourmohammadi, a security figure, and Fazeli, an academic figure, is another angle of attention in the virtual space. Some users, noting that some interrogators from the Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC call themselves 'case experts,' have used the terms 'interrogator-professor' and 'interrogator-expert' for Esfandiari and some other selected experts of the Islamic Republic's media. Fazeli also published a note a few hours after this incident titled 'I am leaving, Iran, you stay,' stating that Esfandiari, who 'does not understand the importance of a national issue, turned the country's television into a scene of personal animosity, raising a personal case that I have not mentioned for three years, and staged it to humiliate me.' He added that throwing the microphone was 'an act of severe anger at that moment. It had no meaning other than protesting what I described.' He further stated, 'What upset me was merely witnessing a completely prepared scene in all dimensions to turn a national issue, a vital matter for Iran, into a scene of personal animosity.' Pezeshkian's remarks that 'our dispute is a dispute of power, not service,' the injustice towards ethnic minorities in Iran in the distribution of posts, and the statements of Mohammad Beheshti, another of his advisors, in this program that 'the Ministry of Culture has become a messenger for security agencies' and 'the number of cases against artists in the judiciary is more than that of the looters of public funds' have also attracted attention in the virtual space. On the other hand, the Minister of Interior of the Islamic Republic claimed on Thursday that 'according to polls, participation rates are significantly increasing.' Ahmad Vahidi did not provide any statistics in this regard, while according to an ISPA poll, the Student Opinion Polling Center of Iran, on June 29 and 30, the number of people who said they would definitely participate in the elections was '42.5 percent,' which has not changed from previous weeks. ISPA even stated that the number of undecided individuals in the elections has increased, as it was 14.9 percent before the announcement of the final candidates, but after the first debate, the number of undecided individuals increased to 16.1 percent. This polling center reported that 73 percent of the people did not watch the first debate at all. Meanwhile, Peyman Jabali, the head of the Islamic Republic's media organization, claimed on Wednesday that 'after the first debate, according to our initial estimates, over 92 percent of the people were satisfied with the debate.' According to ISPA, nearly 36 percent emphasized that they do not follow the news of the presidential elections at all, and only seven percent follow the news 'very much.' Another notable campaign activity on Wednesday was the unusual presence of Amir Hossein Sabati, a conservative member of parliament and supporter of Saeed Jalili, in the 'Intimate Dialogue' program on television, which is dedicated to the women or daughters of candidates. This is the same program where Maryam Ghalibaf, the daughter of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, also participated to support her father and denied the 'Sismoni-gate' incident, claiming that her father's opponents raised this issue against him because they found nothing in the former mayor of Tehran's file. Sabati's presence in this program has been interpreted in the virtual space as Jalili not only being unwilling to have the women of his family present in public forums but also generally believing that a woman's place is 'in the home and kitchen.' Users wrote that with Sabati's presence in a program specifically for women, 'the message of the role of women and their presence in Jalili's government was clearly communicated.' This incident occurred while Mostafa Pourmohammadi, another election candidate, brought his daughter Monireh as one of his economic advisors to his television campaign program and asked her to speak as an academic, young woman about sanctions. When the host asked 'Dr. Pourmohammadi' to speak on this matter, she stated, 'Our understanding of sanctions is very different from what politicians say. Sometimes it is even contradictory. In this recent debate, they said that sanctions have no effect and there is no need to think about overcoming them, while the people are breaking under the burden of inflation.' Some users described Monireh Pourmohammadi's presence in this program as 'a positive move in recognizing women economists and women's economic perspectives in our time,' while others assessed her presence as 'decorative' and her unveiling as merely in line with her father's electoral campaign. The tone of Monireh Pourmohammadi's speech, like that of Maryam Ghalibaf, was also criticized by some users in the virtual space. The second debate among the six candidates for the 14th presidential election is scheduled to take place on Thursday night, June 31.