Who are against Iran
Who are against Iran? Recently, some principlists and revolutionary figures have claimed that the street protesters who have burned the Iranian flag are against Iran and Iranians, declaring that Iran and its flag are their red lines. However, their ideological background and intellectual discourse contradict their current claims.
The Rooster’s Tail
Mesbah Yazdi, the father figure of the Resistance Front and a part of the principlists, has repeatedly spoken against nationalism and Iran. He explicitly stated that Iran without Islam is not worth sacrificing one’s life for, or that even crows and wolves defend their land. Mesbah Yazdi said that if a government of disbelief ruled this country, it would no longer be worth sacrificing our lives for it.
During Ahmadinejad’s time, when Mashaei was talking about Iranian identity, he said that even in the language of some officials, Islam has been replaced by Iranian identity and nationalism, which is the same slogan the Shah promoted as positive nationalism.
Or he said, ‘I could never believe that one of the statesmen of the Islamic system would explicitly say that America’s hostility is not because of the system but because of Iran or Iranian identity, which means trampling on all divine and human values, the same behavior as Trump hugging and kissing the American flag, showing that human rights, peace, and similar values have no worth for them even according to their own interpretation.’
What matters is America. Unfortunately, today the prevailing culture in the world, and even in Islamic countries, is the preservation of geographical borders, which has caused divisions among Muslims.
Meysam Latifi, Raisi’s deputy, also recently stated that in governance, a collection of theories must be applied, explicitly rejecting the nation-state theory and advocating for its replacement with the Imamate. He said, ‘Sometimes we use good theories, but what should happen in practice does not occur.’
Contrary to the Western model that defines governance based on the Nation State, fundamentally we have an issue with this, and our matter is Imam and Ummah. Our theory is the theory of brotherhood, the theory of responsibility, our theory is the theory of enjoining good and forbidding evil. These theories are not an additional phenomenon; they are foundational theories, a duty. God willing, these foundations will certainly be presented to new students participating in this course.
The Um al-Qura Theory
Apart from these statements, in the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, there is a theory known as the Um al-Qura theory, meaning the mother of villages, which is used to outline the foreign policy and analyze the power boundaries of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This theory was proposed three decades ago by Mohammad Javad Larijani.
According to the proponents of this theory, Iran, after the revolution, has assumed the leadership position of Um al-Qura, and the Iranian government must address not only national interests but also the interests of the Islamic world. Other countries are also obliged to support and defend Iran as the Um al-Qura of the Islamic world. If there is a conflict between the interests of Um al-Qura and the Ummah, the interests of the Ummah always take precedence, except in cases concerning the preservation of the Islamic system in Um al-Qura.
Behind the Scenes
The Crisis Management and Emergency Situations Quarterly, published by Imam Hossein University, in one of its issues, examined and analyzed the functions of psychological operations in controlling protest actions and crisis-causing gatherings. It wrote that the results showed that, according to experts, commanders, and NAJA personnel, using methodical and pre-planned psychological operations can control protest actions and gatherings. In this article, various methods of psychological operations are categorized and prioritized in terms of their effectiveness in controlling gatherings, including:
Rumors of infiltrators among the protesters, spreading rumors of the arrest of protest group leaders, persuasion and negotiation with protesters, trivializing the protesters’ demands, exposing the affiliations of protest group leaders, creating scapegoats, sacrificing some of their own elements, creating new news centers, using infiltrators among protesters, sympathizing with protesters to disarm them psychologically, extracting confessions from protest group leaders, intimidating protesters, deceiving protest groups, and ridiculing the protesters’ demands.
It seems that exaggerating the issue of flag burning is part of this category. A Twitter user, by posting images of tweets by Hossein Sarami, a principlist and revolutionary media activist, raised the question: ‘Isn’t it suspicious that Hossein Sarami is constantly seen with someone who burns the Iranian flag? And isn’t it strange that Sina Hasani, who was arrested in Urmia, is introduced as the person who burned the flag in Tehran? Mr. Islamic Republic, with such individuals, do you expect anyone to believe your words?’
Vahid Ashtari, a justice-seeking media activist and the person who first publicized the Sismoni Gate scandal involving Qalibaf and was sentenced to prison for it, wrote under this tweet: ‘One day he said he accidentally saw someone burning the flag and filmed it. A few days later, he said the security guys arrested him and gave him a hard time. Again last night, he accidentally saw the person burning the flag and filmed it.’
Another user, by republishing two tweets from Hossein Sarami, who claimed to have caught the same teenager burning the Iranian flag twice and filmed him, wrote: ‘If the prosecutor’s office were doing its job, it should have arrested this unfortunate person for burning the flag. He has hired a teenager to burn flags for him in different parts of the city.’
