Supreme Leader Remains Determined To Quell Protests Gaining Steam

Supreme Leader and Advocacy for People’s Rights

A few members of the Iranian elite with different political leanings have highlighted how Ruhollah Khomeini, a “great” supreme leader, saved the country through his executive writs in favor of people's demands that would not withstand scrutiny from a strictly Islamic standpoint.

Amid the din of calls by hardliners for an escalation of harsh crackdowns on protesters, a few members of the elite from disparate political backgrounds have commented on the supreme leader’s role as mediator between the government and the governed. Reformist cleric Ahmad Heidari clarifies what type of velayat-e faqih would actually count as a blessing, implying the current version is definitely not it. He listed a number of occasions when public opinion happened to differ from Islamic precepts, and Khomeini took a bold stance by advocating for the people. This was how people perceive the velayat-e faqih as a blessing that sets the stage for democratic values, Heidari concluded. He noted the post-Khomeini era as an opening that allowed extremist groups to come to the fore and occupy a central position in the country’s affairs while deflecting the responsibility for their actions to the supreme leader. The only way out of the current state of affairs, he suggested, was the supreme leader’s unconditional support for democracy and people’s rights in the face of “extremist centers of power.” The IRGC-affiliated media outlet Tasnim would qualify as one of these. It released an elaborate statement from the cleric Ebrahim Kalantari, the custodian of Shahcheragh Shrine which was the scene of a mass shooting last month, on the concept of “absolute velayat-e faqih.” Examining the capacity of velayat-e faqih to open the way when it becomes expedient for the Nezam to suspend Islamic principles, he underscored the power of the leadership of an Islamic state to find an executive solution to issues. Although he seemed to be addressing hardliners with a traditional perspective on Islam, he interpreted the “absolute velayat-e faqih” as submissive to verdicts by the supreme leader even if they run counter to Islamic principles as laid down in the Quran. Referring to Ali Khamenei’s clarification of absolute velayat, he elucidated it as the absolute flexibility of leadership structure in revisiting and rebuilding the country’s order to correct and supplement the procedures in place. Straddling the center of Iran’s political spectrum, Khabar Online, the outlet close to Ali Larijani, also studied the undeniable role of people in legitimizing an Islamic state. Khabar Online deems the building and continuation of an Islamic state without the people’s consent as neither wise nor legitimate.

Supreme Leader Remains Determined To Quell Protests Gaining Steam

Protests continued to rage as Kurdish towns once again became the center of protests and a battleground between protesters and security forces. The Nezam has reportedly deployed forces and heavy military weapons to Mahabad, according to the Hengaw Human Rights Organization, with the bulk of them coming from the IRGC’s Hamzeh garrison in West Azarbaijan. Audio and video clips of heavy gunfire flooded social media over the course of several hours.

Iranian officials, especially hardliners and affiliates of the Paydari Front, ramped up threats of heavy crackdowns to quell the protests last week—an indication that the Nezam might unleash its fury on protesters. In yet another speech during the crisis, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promised on 19 November that the Nezam would end the unrest. Another development that continues to reverberate is the killing of nine-year-old Kian Pirfalak in the presence of his parents. After the release of footage of his mother attributing the murder to government agents, IRIB released one of its typical confession video clips of the mourning mother retracting the accusation. But even as IRIB was busy with efforts to contain the damage through its tried and false method of broadcasting confessions, a former MP from Izeh was undoing those efforts. On a live television broadcast, Hojjtaollah Darvishpur, who had represented Pirfalak’s hometown of Izeh in the Majles, confirmed the mother’s former allegations about plainclothes government agents opening fire on their car, as a result of which the boy was shot dead.

Meanwhile, a local official in Semirom, Isfahan province, reported a government crackdown on protesters that resulted in the shooting death of three of them. An Oslo-based human rights organization reported the death toll from the regime crackdown since the commencement of the protests in mid-September as at least 378, among which 47 were children. Sistan and Baluchistan province alone, the home to a large Sunni Baluch population, saw 123 deaths. The protests increased over the last few days as a tribute to the “bloody Aban” massacre of November 2019, which drove hardline officials to issue harsh and defamatory statements against the protesters. Interestingly, Mehdi Faza’eli, an official close to the office of Khamenei, criticized such an approach, bemoaning the verbal assault on women protesters by Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer imam of Mashhad. Despite the supreme leader’s expressed determination to end the protests, there were signs of a new round of protests by workers.

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