As Iran heads for mass presidential elections following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, the Paidari Front, a little-known but influential ultra-conservative party, is seeking to gain control of state institutions. We’re trying to expand. This could be bad news for Iranians who want more freedom and for a region in turmoil in the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war.
The sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has plunged the Islamic Republic into a political fog as thick as that blanketing the mountainous Varzekan region of northern Iran, where Raisi’s helicopter crashed on Sunday.
The sell-off comes a week after the country held run-off parliamentary elections, with the position of the influential speaker of the unicameral parliament still to be decided. The government’s executive and legislative branches are currently leaderless, but the country’s most powerful leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, turned 85 in April and is believed to be in fragile health.
In accordance with Iran’s constitution, the country’s first vice president Mohammad Mokber was appointed interim president on Monday and called for presidential elections within 50 days.
The focus now shifts to the June 28 elections, with observers inside and outside Iran seeking presidential candidates who have received permission from the Council of Guardians, the constitutional watchdog tasked with approving candidates. I’m paying attention.
The coming weeks are likely to be a period of intense political maneuvering, much of it behind closed doors.Behind-the-scenes politics that characterize Iran NezamSince the 1979 revolution, a political system that has filled the gap created by the lack of transparent political institutions with sectarianism and informal decision-making.
During his 35 years as supreme leader, Khamenei has overseen the rise of factionalism, with rival factions sometimes splitting and fighting over power.
As the Islamic Republic heads into its 14th presidential election, supporters of a hardline cleric known as “Ayatollah Wani” and students are threatening to turn Iran’s political contest into a blood sport.
The paydari front is Jebe Padari The sect, sometimes translated in Iran as the “Standing Front” or “Enduring Front,” is a sect of ideological bigots who consider the late Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi (Ayatollah of the Wani) to be their spiritual master. .
The Paidari Front, controversial and denounced by Iranian moderates and reformists, rose to prominence during Raisi’s tenure. Experts say Mr. Paidari’s ascension to the throne would not have been possible without the consent or acquiescence of Iran’s supreme leader, as the late president was a supporter of Ayatollah Khamenei.
But as the elderly Khamenei leads a country beset by high levels of domestic discontent and facing serious international challenges to snap polls, many analysts are wary of the Paydari Front’s tightening grip on power and what it means for Iran’s future.
“Injecting ideology into the veins of the regime”
The Paidari Front, in its current form, was founded as a political party in 2011 under hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It wasn’t a coincidence. The party’s ideology of strict adherence to the principles of the Islamic revolution matched Ahmadinejad’s hardline conservatism.
This ideology was shaped by the deeply conservative cleric Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who taught most of the party’s founding members in Iranian seminaries and religious institutions.
“He opposed Iran’s elections and argued that Iran should be just a religious dictatorship. He was very anti-American, very conservative, and had social values. Women should wear hijab. It’s very repressive and uses the death penalty a lot, things like that,” explained Barbara Slavin, a Washington, D.C.-based Stimson Distinguished Fellow. Center and Director of the Middle East Perspective Project. “He passed away in 2021, but his ideas live on.”
However, Mesbah Yazdi’s ideas were not necessarily supported by the Iranian president. When moderate Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013, he tried to alienate the party, said Saeed Golkar, an Iran expert at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “But around 2019 or 2020, they came out again. They won Congress in the 2020 parliamentary elections and supported Mr. Raisi in the 2021 presidential election. Mr. Raisi is the party’s official Although they were not members, they were strongly supported by the Paidari faction. They were very close allies. Under Raisi, the Paidari faction expanded its influence in the state bureaucracy,” Golkar explained.
The Paidali Front has for years infiltrated Iran’s state institutions, including the military and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), in what experts liken to state capture, when a faction takes control of state institutions. “These people usually go to the military, the Revolutionary Guards, or the state bureaucracy as ideological indoctrinators. They go in and teach. They are very much against the Revolutionary Guards in their indoctrination and political training. “It has a strong influence,” Golkar said, describing Paydari’s work as an “ideological pump that raises the ideological level of the state, military, and administration.” They are injecting ideology into the veins of the regime. ”
The photos were displayed during the crackdown on the Women, Lives, Freedom protests in September 2022, following the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman. Ta. As anti-veil protests spread across the country, the regime gained further momentum as Paidari MPs played a key role in pushing through strict “hijab and chastity” laws. The 2023 law increases prison sentences for women who dress “inappropriately” and introduces penalties for employers and movie theater and shopping mall owners who fail to enforce dress codes on their premises.
read moreIranian regime crushes protests ahead of anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death
Conservative realists give way to hardcore ideologues
For decades, Iran’s political landscape has been characterized by a binary opposition between reformists and conservatives. But the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 effectively crushed the reformist camp as conservatives opposed to any deal with the “Great Devil” rose to power. Under the hardline Mr. Raisi, Iran’s conservative factions have moved further to the right.
Within the conservative camp, after the first round of parliamentary elections in March, in which the party won an overwhelming victory, the progress of the ultra-conservative Paidari Front attracted the attention of the British weekly magazine The Economist.
The Economist distinguishes between the old-school “crusty conservative realists” and the emerging “group of ideological bigots”, noting that members of the Paidari Front are “to Iran what the religious hard right is to Israel. are equal,” he said.
Traditional conservatives are acutely aware that Iran’s military power is weak compared to its biggest enemies, Israel and the United States. The Economist notes that in the past, Revolutionary Guards commanders were “ready to cooperate with Western countries if they judged it would strengthen the regime.”
“But the Paidari Front views the battle on the ground from a divine perspective,” the weekly said. A messianic Shiite vision of fighting anti-Islamic tyrants is increasing security risks in a crater region reeling from the aftermath of the Israeli-Hamas war.
As supreme leader, Khamenei has the final say on important military decisions. His natural wariness was evident on April 13, when Iran retaliated against Israel’s April 1 bombing of its embassy compound in Damascus. The Iranian missile and drone attacks, which occurred after Tehran gave Israel and its allies three days’ notice to protect its airspace, resulted in relatively minor injuries and damage to infrastructure.
“Top Cat Fight”
But Khamenei is aging, and the aggressive takeover effort that began more than a decade ago could upset the delicate balance that has prevented Iran and Israel from waging a large-scale conventional war.
While Khamenei may be cautious on the regional front, his support for domestic hardliners has given hawkish forces such as the Paydari Front disproportionate power at home. Nezumu.
“They are, in a sense, the last man standing. The system has become so troublesome that it has ignored all the other factions, the realists, even some of the traditional conservatives.” said Slavin. “They seem to be the last survivors of a long political game in Iran, especially under the Khamenei regime.”
Golkar believes everything went according to plan. “Khamenei has implemented a plan to ensure a smooth succession. And the plan he has implemented since 2019 is to ensure that the state, government and administration are ideologically aligned with Khamenei. “He wants his ideas and his government to outlive him,” he explained.
Golkar said Iran’s late president was the ideal successor for Ayatollah Khamenei to take over the supreme leader’s position. “Khamenei wants someone with the same spirit, the same ideology, the same political views,” he said. Raisi’s sudden death in a helicopter crash on Sunday was “a failure of Khamenei’s plan. But he will find someone with the same political views and ideology as Raisi.”
As the country prepares for presidential elections and the appointment of a parliamentary speaker, experts believe the Paydari Front is particularly well-positioned to deal with behind-the-scenes intrigues among factions. “Think of the Islamic Republic as his system, a network of patrons and customers. There are a lot of patrons. Paydari is his one patron with its own customers,” Golkar explained. “They are the most cohesive and most ideological group. Because of their ideology and cohesion, they are much harder to defeat than other, more opportunistic groups.”
Political disputes matter little to most Iranians, who are dissatisfied with a regime that ignores their aspirations, stifles demands for civil liberties, and fails to bring economic prosperity and development.
“I don’t think Iranian youth in particular were indifferent to political machinations at the top. They rejected the whole system. Anyone who had ever pledged allegiance to the Islamic Republic is now in Iran’s This is an inside game that most young Iranians can play outside the country if they have the necessary qualifications. , just trying to make a living. They’ll ignore the catfights at the top,” Slavin said.
But experts warn that Paedari rule is unlikely to benefit the country or its long-suffering people, as the ideological divide between rulers and people widens. “Especially in a system like Iran, I think the most ruthless wins,” Slavin said. “They managed to climb up the greasy pole and that’s where they are. But of course this makes the whole system even more vulnerable. So they might be winning now. But if that foundation is so narrow, you have to question the legitimate longevity of the system.”
