The Stability Front: Reasons for a Complete Defeat

As evident from the results published from the elections on February 25, the vast majority of candidates affiliated with the Stability Front and symbols of this movement across the country failed to gain seats in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and even the spiritual leader of this movement, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, could not secure a position in the Assembly of Experts. Coincidentally, on the eve of the elections, a local media outlet in Kerman asked his chief of staff, Hossein Jalali, who himself was a candidate for parliamentary representation from Kerman, whether he was worried that his defeat would harm his boss's credibility. Jalali, who has been Mesbah Yazdi's chief of staff for 16 years, although he answered negatively to that question and also did not receive a significant number of votes in Kerman and failed to enter the parliament, perhaps did not expect that even Mesbah would lose the credibility of 'being elected' and that it would not be his turn. The institute under Mesbah Yazdi also has a political organ that is published weekly; the magazine 'Partow Sokhan', which reflects the harshest positions against the government, is edited by Ghasem Ravanbakhsh. This time, the editor of Mesbah's magazine also ran for election, and despite his rivals in 'Tafteh and Meybod' being disqualified and even two candidates withdrawing in his favor, he still could not gain the trust of the people in his electoral district. In Tehran, the situation requires no further explanation; from Morteza Aghatehrani, the 'Secretary-General' of the Stability Front, to the middle circle of this front and the IRGC, namely General Kowsari, to each of the members of this faction in the previous parliament; none of them had any chance in the Tehran list. Among the various and obvious reasons that can explain this complete defeat, two prominent points exist: First, the Stability Front was formed while its members and leaders did not take responsibility for their full support of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and were not accountable for it. The group that later emerged as the Stability Front called Ahmadinejad's government 'the product of the attentions of the Imam of the Time and the Ashura pilgrimages of the people,' but at a time when society recognized that government for its largest embezzlements, economic corruption, and managerial weaknesses, they were not accountable for their supported offspring; it is natural that this behavior is perceived as a form of political and ethical irresponsibility, and those carrying such an experience may share in the benefits of politics without paying its costs and compensating for their mistakes; such behavior does not remain hidden from the audience's perspective in the test of trust and selection. Secondly, the constant confrontation of this movement with the choices of the people (especially in the ups and downs of the nuclear file) was not in favor of their 'acceptability'; an acceptability that was shaky from the beginning and was achieved through the rent of disqualifications and eliminations, with some of them reaching the parliament with the least votes from their constituencies and in the absence of competitors. Such an entry into the political arena requires editing, purification, and stabilization; however, they, confident in the rents surrounding them, not only saw no need for their social stabilization but also, with this confrontation, even made other principlists lose favor in the eyes of the voters. The third point, although more specific than the previous two, does not escape attention given the significant role of the middle class in Iran. Five months after the protest movement against 'fraud in the 2009 elections,' Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi introduced the 'human sciences' as the main source of that event among the graduates of his institute, stating: 'We must start from the source; the recent political corruptions that have arisen in our country date back twenty years. Some university professors injected deviant thoughts into these individuals... The lessons of those professors brought these officials to fruition, and they initiated this movement and thought of overthrowing the regime... Many of the corruptions we are dealing with stem from our weakness in human sciences, a completely clear example of which was in the recent events after the elections... Some confessed in court to this interpretation.' (Mesbah Yazdi's website, November 6, 2009) Less than a year later, Abdolkarim Soroush opened the secret of the concern over that 'source': 'If human sciences are secular (non-religious), political science will also be secular, and from the secularization of political science to the secularization of politics itself, there is only half an arm's length. The sudden rise of these uproars and cries after the arbitrary and protracted imprisonment and trial of Saeed Hajarian is a clear testimony to this analysis.' (Jaras website, October 4, 2010) Both Mesbah Yazdi and Soroush referred to a court whose biggest accused was 'human sciences.' That court placed Saeed Hajarian on the defendant's chair ten years after his failed assassination to confess that everything was the fault of human sciences. Therefore, if the basis of human sciences, instead of the perceptions of earthly humans, is the decrees of the heavenly God, and if even participation in elections in the system's discourse is an act of religious duty rather than a matter of choice; and if they succeed in building an educational system suitable for such a dream, they will escape both the main function of elections and the harshness and questioning of the youth and students. It seems that the culturally broad society in Iran, in addition to concerns about the 'stability-destabilizing' nature of the Stability Front and the warmongering reflected in its behavior and discourse, was not unaware of the significant danger hidden in the cultural foundation and basis of this front. Although with all this awareness, if there had not been an organization and system like the 'Hope List,' they would still have reached the seats of the parliament.