City boy

When the British sailors incident happened, many British and American people who didn’t trust their governments started asking, “well, maybe Iranians are telling the truth?” This was very disturbing for me, who as an Iranian, knew the Islamic Republic regime and their never ending lies.

Lies by Islamic Republic founder, Khomeini, and those other power hungry Islamists are now well known to the people - before the IR was established Khomeini was first quoted saying that “I will never be the boss of the country!” (left, Keyhan newspaper).

That’s exactly what he became only a couple of years later when he introduced a new type of government based on “Velayat-e Faqih” - a fundamentally undemocratic ideology that assumes ordinary people are not knowledgeable on their domestic matters (from the Islamic point of view), so there should be a “Guardianship of Islamic Jurists” - group of clergy who act as the real protecters of the revolution and can veto the “people’s parliament” at anytime in order to be true the Islamic concepts - removing all the power from the people. This way he also introduced the new position of “Imam” (Supreme leader) for himself, who has complete power over all the army and all the new chambers and parliaments created in order to squeeze every little drop of the democracy out of the system!

Khomeini based this new theoractic system of government on a 10th century idea that had never, at any point, been practiced by any nation until then. The “moderate” Mullahs such as Dr. Beheshti popularised the idea in order to have a more Islamic constitution after the revolution, instead of one being written through people’s elected parliament and MPs (See Dr. Beheshti doing that on this TV interview here) - Is this the “democracy” that was promised to the people?!

Lies of the Islamic Republic leaders has never stopped since they got in to power. So why should people believe the lies of anyone who is part of this illegitimate regime? Why should they participate in fake elections and vote for the presidents that are hand picked for them by the so called expert Islamic clergy and the unelected “Supreme Leader” out of thousands of people and parties that apply?! What good can a president that supreme leader has accepted as a protecter of revolution do for the people, in a country where he doesn’t have any real power?

This new summer hijab crack down in Iran is another example complete contradiction of what people were promised - not only in the beginning of the revolution but by the hardline Ahmadinejad himself on national television in his election campaign where he said directly that:

It’s none of our business how people dress like, people come from different cultures, religions who all have their own dress sense, telling people how to dress like is an insult to the people. We have much bigger problems in our country, such as unemployment, peace and security of the nation, not how women dress like. Is that really a problem of our country? Is that really the concern of the people?

So what does it take for people to stop believing everything this regime says? populist approach of Ahmadinejad attempts to make his efforts as nationalistic should no longer work as this regime is known for it’s deception to it’s people. This was the most important reason behind why much of the people boycotted the presidential elections that got Ahmadinejad in to power!

Today Simon Tisdall of Guardian reported that reformists are now joining in forces with the “anti-government forces” for a “second revolution” - to bring power back to the reformists through ballot boxes! Voting for who exactly? Khatami? Rafsanjani?!

The article goes on to say the aim is again to win parts of the parliament - but it fails to recognise that Khatami the former reformist president who had almost all the parliament to his reformist movement achieved less to nothing during his 8 year presential rule. Although it is fair to say that it was not directly his fault, it was because Guadian council vetoed much of the changes in law that the reformist parliament wanted to introduce, but what has changed since then? How can they lie to people again that this time things will be any different?

People won’t be fooled again. The next Iranian revolution will not be through ballot boxes for Islamic republic presidential elections, everyone should know that by now.

The same article notes that reformist Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei is not happy with Ahmadinejad for “failing to tackle social ills such as youth unemployment, drug addiction, and gender inequality.” Ayatollah Sanei, a huge scholar figure in the reformist movement is also one of the biggest defenders of the Velayat-e Faqih! Is this the reform the reformists are promising the people?!

Are the reformists like Sanei really concerned about the rights of the people and democracy or are they indeed worried about the effects of Ahmadinejad’s unpopularity on people’s opinion of Islamic Republic (both in and out of) Iran? or perhaps they see it as a threat to Islam itself?

People need to wake up and stop believing in these lies and false promises of “reform”, the “Islamic” needs to be erased from the title of the country, the constitution of Islamic Republic which is largely written by these experts in Velayat-e Faqih needs to be rewritten again, this time by people and their MPs on humanistic secular values, where all people are truly treated the same, and everyone has their say in a truly democratic fashion, with true equality of gender, religion, ethnicity, and for an Iran where Iran is for Iranians, and terrorists are jailed, not praised. Can the reform movement achieve that? I think we all know the answer.