A Look at the Verdict of the Accused 'Thousand Cases'

The Iran newspaper, close to the government, described Hassan Rouhani's remarks on Wednesday to the governors as "Rouhani's electoral warning" and quoted the Iranian president as saying: "The Guardian Council is an eye, and an eye cannot do the work of a hand." Ali Akbar Gorji, a law professor at Beheshti University, in the editorial of Iran newspaper, interpreted Rouhani's remarks on Wednesday as directed at the Guardian Council and referred to its "supervisory oversight," stating that the goal of the Council's oversight should be to "preserve electoral integrity and dignity." For this reason, the Guardian Council must align itself with the rulers and standards of oversight, not with the rulers and standards of execution. The Javan newspaper, close to the Revolutionary Guards, severely attacked the president based on another part of Rouhani's remarks on Wednesday, where he stated, "We should not think that after reaching an agreement, we can speak as we wish." The newspaper noted: "Although it is unclear what Rouhani's concern is and from whom, and what consequences arise from speaking, it is truly unbelievable to hear this belief and this instability in Islamic Iran." The Javan newspaper described Rouhani's remarks at the governors' gathering as setting the "grammar of the president for the post-agreement discourse" and stated: "If the government has made any statements, promises, or commitments to the other side, it must also communicate them internally so that if officials are unaware, they can be informed and the positions of officials do not appear contradictory." The Javan newspaper implicitly warned Rouhani, stating: "The Islamic Revolution, God willing, will correct the shortcomings of the Islamic Republic and will place the Islamic Republic and the Iranian government in line with the Islamic Revolution." The Etemad newspaper, while publishing a report about the appointment of members of the "Special Commission on the JCPOA," referred to it as the "6+9 Commission," which consists of 9 critical representatives and 6 supporters of the Vienna agreement. This newspaper emphasized that "critics of Mohammad Javad Zarif have gained the upper hand in the special commission of parliament, and six prominent representatives supporting the agreement will have a difficult task ahead." The Shargh newspaper reported on Ali Motahari's reaction to Gholamali Haddad Adel's comments regarding a letter attributed to Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the imprisoned candidates from the disputed 2009 elections. The Qanoon newspaper, while publishing a caricature of Saeed Mortazavi on its front page, reported on the "issuance of a verdict for the man of a thousand cases" and stated: "The details of the primary court ruling regarding the charges against Saeed Mortazavi in the Social Security Organization case have finally been announced. The former prosecutor was acquitted of complicity in murder in the Kahrizak case and sentenced to one year in prison in the Social Security Organization case." The Ebtikar newspaper reported on the issuance of a new adoption law, stating that the implementation of the "Support for Orphaned and Abandoned Children and Adolescents" law indicates fundamental changes and facilitation of adoption conditions, but some of these changes, such as the possibility of revoking guardianship after the age of 18, "require further discussion and examination." "Rouhani's electoral warning"; the Guardian Council is an eye, and an eye cannot do the work of a hand. The Iran newspaper described Hassan Rouhani's remarks on Wednesday to the governors as "Rouhani's electoral warning" and quoted the president as saying: "The Guardian Council is an eye, and an eye cannot do the work of a hand." According to this newspaper, Hassan Rouhani, in a joint meeting of the government and governors, while explaining "the government's approach to the most important issues facing the country," emphasized that "the next parliament will not belong to a single faction," stating: "This is the opinion of the Supreme Leader and what our constitution says, and can a faction say that I have found a dyeing vat that I can color it any way I want? It is not like that." Rouhani stated that "this is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the constitution is in effect here," and said: "We do not have a place in the country that wants to disqualify competent and caring individuals who want to serve the country using their experiences, regardless of which faction they belong to. All political groups and parties are legally respected. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the government, and where it should say whether a person is qualified to participate in the elections or not, it is the executive boards, and we do not have an executive board that approves one faction and disqualifies another." The eleventh government president emphasized that "the esteemed Guardian Council is a supervisor, not an executor. The executor of the elections is the government," stressing that "the government is responsible for conducting elections, and there is a body that has been foreseen to supervise to ensure that no laws are violated. The Guardian Council is an eye, and an eye cannot do the work of a hand; supervision and execution should not be mixed, and we must fully pay attention to and act according to the constitution." According to the Iran newspaper, Rouhani, referring to the simultaneous elections of the Islamic Consultative Assembly with the Assembly of Experts, stated: "If everyone reaches this important belief that the decision-maker for this country is the Iranian nation, the problem will be solved, and if someone has a different thought, they are undermining the roots of the Islamic Republic." The newspaper also quoted Rouhani as saying that Ayatollah Khomeini "believed that the measure is the vote of the people," stating: "We must only prepare the ground for holding a healthy and magnificent election. Wasn't the first parliament after the Islamic Revolution, at a time when even the Guardian Council did not exist and all even destructive groups were present, the best parliament in the history of this country?" Ali Akbar Gorji, a law professor at Beheshti University, interpreted Rouhani's remarks on Wednesday as directed at the Guardian Council and evaluated it as the Council's "supervisory oversight," which has led to interference in the execution of elections. The editorial writer of the Iran newspaper wrote that the goal of the Guardian Council's oversight should be to "preserve electoral integrity and dignity" and "for this reason, the Guardian Council must align itself with the rulers and standards of oversight, not with the rulers and standards of execution." Gorji emphasized that "the Guardian Council should only examine whether in these three stages of elections, the flow of affairs has been conducted correctly or not," stating that nothing else can be inferred from Article 99 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, "even if we interpret Article 99 as having supervisory oversight, which of course such an interpretation is not a consensus, in that case, supervisory oversight also has a defined and limited definition and must remain within the limits of supervision. That is, we cannot interpret oversight, even in its supervisory form, in such a way that it leads to execution and interference in the operational aspects of elections." The editorial writer of the Iran newspaper emphasized that the Guardian Council "instead of trying to interfere and manage executive affairs and shape the executive management of elections, should strive to make its supervisory standards more precise, up-to-date, effective, and visible," and "for example, this body, in defense of the sanctity of the citizens' right to vote, which according to the leader of the system is a public right, should strive for the methods of voting and executive management to be as transparent and precise as possible." The upper hand of critics of the Vienna agreement in the special commission of parliament. The Etemad newspaper, while publishing a report about the appointment of members of the "Special Commission on the JCPOA," referred to it as the "6+9 Commission," which consists of 9 critical representatives and 6 supporters of the Vienna agreement. This newspaper emphasized that "critics of Mohammad Javad Zarif have gained the upper hand in the special commission of parliament, and six prominent representatives supporting the agreement will have a difficult task ahead." Ehsan Badaghi, in the report of Etemad newspaper, referring to the fact that "the majority has been outplayed. The minority has achieved its goal," wrote: "The composition of the special commission on the JCPOA has been formed 9 to 6 in favor of the critics. Now the highest nuclear platform of parliament is in their hands. Even if there is no news of the JCPOA bill, the maneuvering position for the opponents in parliament has improved compared to before; a position they have not overlooked in the past 24 months." This newspaper wrote that with the established composition for the special commission examining the "JCPOA," government officials should expect "more vigorous criticisms in parliament," stating: "The JCPOA commission, with a composition that is clearly close to the Stability Front, will not easily overlook issues such as the status of the JCPOA bill and the uncertainties raised in political and technical dimensions, and the weight of the supporters of the agreement is not heavy enough in this assembly to hope for controlling some criticisms." According to Etemad newspaper, "the disagreement between the two political factions in parliament over the composition of this commission could be understood from a month-long struggle that was only resolved hours before the public session on Wednesday, and with some retreat by Ali Larijani," and while according to the pre-agreed model between the factions of parliament, "it was supposed that from the joint list of these two groups, five candidates would be introduced as the share of the Followers faction, five candidates as the share of the Principlists, and five candidates would also be introduced by agreement of the two factions to the public session, ultimately, however, eight representatives from the two groups disregarded this agreement and announced their candidacy in the public session, leading to an election with 23 candidates." This newspaper pointed out that "according to the law, members of the parliament's presiding board cannot become members of the boards of commissions, thus the candidacy of Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi-Fard for such a position will be ruled out, and thus the two options for the presidency of this commission will be Aladdin Boroujerdi and Mohammad Esmail Kowsari," and according to "the 9 to 6 balance of the commission in favor of the critics, the likelihood of Kowsari's presidency over this assembly is largely confirmed." Etemad wrote that Mohammad Esmail Kowsari, "who has been a serious critic of the government's diplomacy throughout the 23 months of nuclear negotiations, can now experience the presidency over his two superiors in the public session and the national security commission, namely Abutorabi-Fard and Aladdin Boroujerdi, and also gain a stronger position to express his criticisms. In this way, it seems that other components of the presidency of this commission will also largely be allocated to the critics of the JCPOA." This newspaper emphasized that "the JCPOA commission, although formed with the aim of reaching a unified position on the nuclear agreement, is unlikely to ultimately produce such an outcome, as even now, on the most fundamental issues related to the nuclear agreement, the opinions of the elected members of this assembly sometimes differ by 180 degrees." Ali Motahari's reaction to Haddad Adel's speech; accusing those who are under house arrest is unfair. The Shargh newspaper reported on Ali Motahari's reaction to Gholamali Haddad Adel's remarks regarding a letter attributed to Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the imprisoned candidates from the disputed 2009 elections. Masoud Kazemi, in the report of Shargh newspaper, wrote: "More than six years have passed since the events following the 2009 presidential election, but the discussions have not ended. Recently, with the publication of an eight-page letter that had no name or signature, a media wave has been created for a specific political faction to re-publish their analyses and opinions in this regard. Conservative media have extensively covered this issue and written detailed reports about it," but in the meantime, "Haddad Adel's speech on Wednesday in parliament and his reference to that letter and Ali Motahari's response to Haddad's remarks brought this issue into a new phase." According to this newspaper, while "the subject began with the publication of a letter that was apparently written in 2009 and was published by Michael Ledeen in Forbes, on Wednesday, "Gholamali Haddad Adel, the head of the conservative faction in parliament, in his speech in the public session of parliament, referring to this "nameless letter," said: "Everyone must disavow what the authors of this letter requested from America under the title of the Green Movement and express their disavowal. No one should endorse these acts of treachery against the homeland with their silence. In this situation, what is noteworthy and instructive is the eight-page letter that was sent by some individuals active in the Green Movement from Iran to America on December 1, 2009, and the text of which has been published in America these days." Shargh also reported that Heydar Moslehi, the Minister of Intelligence in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second government, also said on Wednesday at a meeting of the Union of Independent Islamic Student Associations: "The British intelligence service has two major strategies for its actions, one of which is to approach the elites, an issue that was well observed in the 2009 sedition, and we saw that the British embassy had assigned 200 individuals to only approach the elites and identify ways to infiltrate them." Ali Motahari, who, according to Shargh newspaper, "has always tried to respond to the discussions raised about the 2009 elections from a different angle over the years," in response to Gholamali Haddad Adel's speech emphasized that "these actions are not chivalrous," stating: "This approach is not fair; it is better to allow those whom you accuse of writing this letter to respond to such claims so that the people can judge, otherwise anyone who goes to the judge alone returns satisfied." Ali Motahari also stated: "This claim is made by Mr. Haddad Adel while, as he says, there is no signature on this letter. Even the U.S. Department of State has not confirmed it," and while "when talking about the leaders of the sedition, the names of those few individuals targeted by extremists come to mind. Therefore, to say without evidence that this letter was written by the leaders of the sedition means that those few individuals wrote it, and this statement is legally actionable. If this continues, and anyone can attribute anything to anyone without solid evidence, someone might also say that this letter was written by Mr. Haddad and his friends.