Concerns of the New Head of the Revolutionary Court

"Should I be concerned or not?"; this sentence was enough to make the last speech of the worried representative of the ninth parliament, Mousa Ghazanfari Abadi, stand out compared to other defeated representatives on May 17. However, at the time of this speech, few knew that this harsh speech would outline the views of the next head of the Tehran Revolutionary Courts. In this speech, he identified the reformist leaders as the main cause of the events of 1999 and 2009 and harshly criticized Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran in 2009, which was sent without a greeting or farewell. In that worried speech, Mr. Ghazanfari Abadi did not spare President Hassan Rouhani's government either. He stated: "When the dangerous thought that 'we must either come to terms with America or be permanently under pressure from America' is propagated by some officials, it leads to step-by-step retreats against America, which is evident in the images of JCPOA 2 and 3." His interjection that day was interpreted as the speech of a defeated principlist representative from the city of Bam, who has a stance against influential political figures in Iran such as Mohammad Khatami, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Hassan Rouhani. However, from Saturday, May 28, when he moved from Baharestan Street to Moallem Street to take the chair of the Tehran Revolutionary Courts, all his words in his last speech in May 2016 can no longer be considered ordinary. In that speech, he said: "When I clearly see the enemy's deception and some officials are asleep, and when the Supreme Leader's concerns regarding cultural issues have not been resolved, do I not have the right to be worried? When the Leader's recommendations are ignored and the seditionists are given importance, and his concerns in the area of resistance economy are not addressed, should I not be worried?" Ten days after that political speech, Mousa Ghazanfari Abadi became the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Courts, and presumably, he was aware of his new position, having turned a blind eye to the red line of "judicial impartiality" from that day. Since the beginning of the 1979 revolution in Iran until today, many political observers and human rights organizations have criticized the partisan and political performance of the judiciary. According to these organizations, the Revolutionary Courts have violated the principles of judicial independence, impartiality, and fair trials more than any other judicial institution in Iran, issuing the harshest sentences against political and ideological activists in Iran, including executions. In courts that deal with charges of "crimes against internal and external security," "insulting Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei," "conspiracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran," "espionage for foreign powers," etc., the recent statements of the new head of the Revolutionary Courts, with a strong political bias, present even tougher days ahead for political and social activists in Iran.