Tajzadeh's Renewed Advice to Khamenei: Make Elections Competitive

Mostafa Tajzadeh, a imprisoned member of the Participation Front, in a letter to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, protested the disqualification of Hassan Khomeini and advised Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to "make elections competitive and do not let Khomeini-ism be erased in your name." Tajzadeh wrote this letter on February 4 from Evin Prison, which was published on Saturday on the Kalemeh website, close to Mir Hossein Mousavi. He also implicitly accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of being involved in the preparation of "five million CDs" intended to "defame" Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the Assembly of Experts elections. In this letter, the imprisoned member of the Participation Front referred to the simultaneous attack of members of the military party coalition and the Talibani Front on Rafsanjani in recent days, stating that "five million CDs have also been prepared in number equal to eligible voters in Tehran to defame him, which must have been with public donations, not from the country's defense budget." The issue of preparing "five million CDs containing electoral slanders" was first raised by the Minister of Intelligence of the eleventh government in a speech, warning that violators in this regard would be dealt with. Mahmoud Alavi, in this speech delivered on February 1, stated without details that "we know how many unethical electoral CDs are being presented by whom; we know that for slandering and defaming by some individuals, in one case, more than five million unrealistic CDs full of slander and defamation have been prepared to be distributed during the election period." Tajzadeh reminded in this letter that Ahmad Jannati, the secretary, and Mohammad Yazdi, a member of the Guardian Council, consider "the thousand-year-old tradition of Shia seminaries in confirming the ijtihad of individuals by scholars completely invalid" and insist solely on examinations in the manner of Western universities. He addressed Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that "you and the gentlemen have achieved your current positions based on this tradition and not written exams." This imprisoned member of the Participation Front called the disqualification of Hassan Khomeini a "grave error" and accused the Supreme Leader of appointing members of the Guardian Council solely from the conservative political faction and giving them a "blank check for any illegal action." According to Tajzadeh, after disrupting Hassan Khomeini's speech at the memorial ceremony for Ayatollah Khomeini in 2010, Ahmad Jannati told Ayatollah Khamenei in a meeting that "how good it was that they did not let him speak," to which Khamenei responded, "It was not good; it was very bad." Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, stated on Friday, February 28, that "the great scholars and authorities of the Qom seminary" testified to his "scientific competence" and that "dozens of hours of lesson tapes and several volumes of books" were attached to his file; however, the Guardian Council did not "confirm" his qualifications "contrary to expectations." Previously, media supporting Hassan Khomeini had reported on the confirmation of his ijtihad by several prominent clerics and religious authorities of the Qom seminary, including Vahid Khorasani, Abdollah Javadi Amoli, Abdul Karim Mousavi Ardebili, Mohammad Alavi Gorgani, Ali Akbar Masoudi Khomeini, and Ali Karimi Jahromi. However, members of the Guardian Council announced that having confirmation from religious authorities alone is not sufficient for the qualification of candidates in the Assembly of Experts elections. In this context, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's protest against Hassan Khomeini's disqualification was met with a reaction from Gholamali Haddad Adel, the head of the conservative faction in the parliament, who called these remarks disrespectful to the "household of Ayatollah Khomeini." Tajzadeh, referring to these remarks, wrote, "Has society become so linguistically confused that disqualification is called respect and criticism of it is deemed disrespectful to the Imam's household?" He added, "Which free Iranian gives the right to a person who himself reached the presidency of the parliament not based on revolutionary or organizational or managerial backgrounds but on familial relations... to accuse Hashemi of nepotism and face such contempt with Seyyed Hassan Khomeini?" Gholamali Haddad Adel is the father-in-law of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Khamenei, and was the head of the seventh parliament. Tajzadeh had previously requested in a letter to the Supreme Leader to reconsider the disqualification of 60% of the candidates for the parliament elections to "clear the way for healthy competition" in the parliamentary elections and warned that if the situation of "mass disqualification" of candidates does not change, people will consider it Khamenei's policy. On Sunday, February 11, Tajzadeh emphasized that the Supreme Leader cannot form a "one-faction parliament" like the ninth parliament and urged reformists to "expand their coalition" and support candidates who support the government and the nuclear deal to prevent "Takfiri alarmists" from "usurping" the parliament.