Disillusionment of Revolutionary Youth with the Hard Revenge by the Revolutionary Government
A group of young conservatives expressed dissatisfaction with the policies adopted regarding the Gaza war, despite having their desired government in power for two years after eliminating rivals and purifying the government. They feel that the decision-makers in Ebrahim Raisi’s government have also become bureaucratic. Hence, they have suggested adding new sections to the administrative structure, turning organizations into councils, linking them in coordination councils, and elevating these councils to forms of headquarters to break out of passivity.
The Rajanews website referred to them under the title of cohesion, which is an acronym for a phrase aimed at coalition. Although most of the signatories’ names are not very famous, the dissatisfaction and accusation of the current government of passivity can be attributed to Saeed Jalili’s supporters. However, it confirms the prediction of those who said in 2021, ‘Let them take over the government and diplomacy to test their slogans, and let the necessities and exigencies of politics and diplomacy impose themselves on them and make them realistic.’
Now, even though Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif have been replaced by Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the criticism of justice-seeking conservative youth smells of disillusionment.
The statement reads as follows:
1. The operation on October 7, 2023, in Gaza was a severe earthquake, but the most important consequence of the Al-Aqsa storm and subsequent events was the creation of a public and human space against the regime worldwide, especially in America and Europe. A public and expressed anger that promised the formation of a political and popular anti-regime alignment and its allies or the same Western global bloc. Who does not know how much Israel’s fate is tied to the impact of this public anger in the voting baskets of the regime’s supporters?
Surprisingly, such an angry and vengeful atmosphere did not arise with the presence and influence of the resistance front. According to the leaders of the resistance axis and the testimony of Western agencies, this atmosphere was not something that resulted from public opinion engineering or the assault of cyber armies or the mediation of figures and groups close to the resistance. This situation, more than anything, indicates a great opportunity that has emerged for the resistance front without taking direct action to create it. But are we ready to take advantage of this opportunity?
The expansion of justice-seeking demands against the regime could and can be a political and increasing pressure on Western countries to the point of ending the brutal killing of the people of Gaza. It could also prepare the social space of Europe and America to reconsider the always anti-Israeli positions of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resistance front. However, a look at the social, political, and civil movements of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s apparatus shows
we are not ready. Despite some baseless propaganda in marginal media in Iran, the region, and the West, we Iranians have not played a role in these vast global movements, but rather we are far behind, and this is astonishing for a country that has paid the highest domestic and foreign costs for the Palestinian cause. To the extent that if it were not for the explicit positions of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution and some military movements, we could ask whether we are truly truthful and sincere in our anti-Israel stance.
2. What situation has led to this passivity, and which part of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign political development apparatus should be held accountable?
In the military and security dimension, the faithful, mujahid, and sincere forces of the system have paid the highest costs for confronting Israel and America in the region over the past four decades since the imposed war and have sacrificed the purest youth and bravest men of the nation for resistance. To the extent that their military and security influence has targeted the heart of arrogance. But has this continuous, long, and sincere struggle had sufficient political and social support? Has the intellectual, political, and cultural space in the region, Europe, and America similarly witnessed the movement of the system’s cultural and political forces?
If we do not want to reduce the issue to easily accessible formulations like budget shortages, lack of elite forces, or absence of jihadist management, we must pay attention to an intellectual situation that has dominated the apparatus responsible for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign cultural policy, such as the Organization of Culture and Islamic Relations and a similar spectrum of responsible institutions, and in an unproductive manner, does not see such movements as necessary or, conversely, has a type of activities on the agenda that cannot build scientific and political connections with capable and dissenting forces with various religious, intellectual, and cultural tendencies worldwide.
An outlook that sees the struggle of the mujahids as a means to expand Shiite identity and seeks itself in religious spectruming and dedicates its effort to religious propaganda and national rituals. Meanwhile, the source of resistance and revolution in Iran has always been an ideological interpretation of Shiism that carries a global invitation to a plan of power and politics. Yes, the root of all oppressions lies in those irreparable injustices that befell the prophets and saints, peace be upon them. But if our focus and concern are not on these oppressions and today’s human pains, where will those heart-wrenching wounds and pains of the people of God be heard and seen?
The result of this situation is not only passivity and backwardness in the jihad against arrogance but also causes unnecessary costs for the mujahids of the resistance front. The roots of Shiaphobia in the region should not be sought only in the trumpets of British and Israeli propagandists. The costs resulting from national and religious identity-based choices of the apparatus responsible for intellectual and cultural communications should also be seen, and it is these that occasionally prompt resistance leaders to emphasize that the main confrontation is not Shiite and Sunni or Arab and Persian, but resistance and submission.
3. What should be done with such root-cause analysis? What policy should be adopted? A policy of adopting a critical approach and warning and alerting against the dominance of such identity-oriented insights in the cultural and public diplomacy apparatus. An insight that has penetrated and settled into the deepest layers of decision-making in the sacred system.
Such an approach, meaning criticism and warning, although it may be shocking for a few, cannot be the main task in a situation where insights have turned into policies, policies into procedures, and procedures into repetitive and entrenched actions, and passive choices squander opportunities one after another because they do not see the arisen situations as opportunities at all. Warning and criticism cannot be the main task. Another policy is to undertake administrative and structural changes, such as adding new sections to the administrative structure of current apparatuses, turning organizations into councils, linking them in coordination councils, elevating these councils to forms of headquarters, and the like. Although initially causing a kind of administrative movement, it cannot carry the force of decision-making.
The same entrenched insights and procedures that have become habits neutralize all these administrative actions and roll them back, and rather cause despair and disillusionment about the possibility of transformation. What we are facing is a spiritual situation that considers the struggle as concluded and has long prepared itself for a safe and ordinary life. The inclination to normalize relations with America, agree with the poles of the compromise bloc in the region, and perceive the Islamic Republic of Iran as a normal player are the results of such a situation.
It is not limited to left and right, as the positions of conservative, reformist, and neo-conservative politicians in these days after October 7, 2023, show. The same alignment now preparing to win in the March elections requires a more fundamental policy in response to such a situation. An approach must be taken that can attract and employ the revolutionary force, a force that claims a form of being human in this world and does not want to remain confined to historical and identity borders. Corresponding to such an approach, brave actions must be undertaken.
First, forming a coalition of forces committed to transformative ideological Shiism that are ready to revive the political matter and stop the flow of reducing politics to administration, culture, and security. All ideological forces within the government must, by accepting the authority of this political coalition, prevent the reproduction of past patriarchal and cliquish trends. Especially from the Revolutionary Guards, as the nucleus of these forces in the government and its main supporter among popular groups, it is expected to pave the way for the independence and maturity of this movement.
Second, entering the political arena will be the second step for the coalition, something that in the domestic scene can begin with competing against nationalist and identity-oriented Shiism within electoral mechanisms and public mobilization from the twelfth round of the Islamic Consultative Assembly elections and continue in the global arena by expanding political relations with capable non-religious groups.
Third, cultural, public, and economic diplomacy apparatuses such as the Organization of Culture and Islamic Relations, regardless of their diplomatic nature, do not have compatibility with the aim of connecting with capable and dissenting global currents. Only by dissolving these low-impact and costly organizations and placing these resources in the structures emerging from the ideological coalition can this great global opportunity be exploited. This will not be achieved through lobbying and bargaining; only with the coalition’s success in political competition can hope for such a transformative decision be held.