Iran's President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian speaks during a gathering with his supporters at the shrine of Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, south of Tehran, on July 6.Majid Asgaripour/Reuters
Samira Mohyeddin is a Toronto-based journalist and the host and producer of the podcast Gay Girl Gone.
Skull fracture. Three broken fingers. Missing fingernails. Burst ear membrane. Signs of a brutal rape.
That is what Dr. Shahram Azam found in 2003 when he examined the body of slain Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in Iran. The details of Ms. Kazemi’s death weren’t revealed by Dr. Azam until 2005, when he was able to obtain asylum in Canada. At the time of her death, the Iranian authorities had refused to provide autopsy results or repatriate Ms. Kazemi’s body back to Canada. She was buried in Iran, against her family’s wishes.
As the scandal around Ms. Kazemi’s death erupted in 2003, some members of the conservative Iranian establishment floated the idea that she had hit her own head against a hard object in an act of defiance.
In response, Iran’s then-minister of health, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, debunked that theory. He told the Islamic Republic News Agency that Ms. Kazemi’s skull fracture was not the result of a “normal impact of the head against an object.” However, in his official capacity, he also worked to cover up the details of what truly happened to Ms. Kazemi, denying her family the opportunity to conduct an independent autopsy and refusing to release the official report.
Somehow, Mr. Pezeshkian has earned a reputation as something of a reformer. But don’t be fooled. He only seems to be a reformer by not being a hardliner. He was impotent as the minister of health, and he will continue to be so in his new role as the incoming president of Iran.
Iran refers to itself as an Islamic Republic, but by all accounts, it is neither. Iran’s system of governance for the past 45 years has been one ruled by a Supreme Jurisconsult or Velayat-e Faqih. He is an unelected moral, spiritual and political guide who controls everything from the judiciary and the media to the army and Iran’s foreign and domestic policies. Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, controls vast quantities of Iran’s resource-rich lands. Despite Iran’s fledgling economy, a 2013 Reuters investigation revealed the Ayatollah’s assets exceeded US$95-billion. Iran’s system of governance is less of a republic and more akin to that of a totalitarian theocracy.
The impotence of Iran’s presidency and parliament not only stems from the Supreme Leader’s sweeping mandate, but from another body of clerics called the Guardian Council. This 12-man unelected body wields considerable power in Iran’s system, with the constitution allowing it to veto all laws that do not “conform to Islamic criteria.” The Guardian Council also supervises elections and approves or disqualifies all candidates. Does that sound like a system that allows for change through the ballot box?
Still, Iranians did go to the polls this month, but in record-low numbers. Calls for a boycott of the election gained considerable momentum. The most significant call came from within Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, from imprisoned Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi. She urged Iranians not to participate in what she called “sham” elections, and with less than 40 per cent of the population voting in the first round and less than 50 per cent in the second round, a considerable section of Iranians showed their disdain and disillusionment with the system.
But the headlines around the world have told a different story – that reform is coming to Iran. Mr. Pezeshkian made some big promises on the campaign trail, including that women would no longer be dragged into “morality police” vans and disappeared for showing their hair. But does he have any actual power to make sure that doesn’t happen? No. Does he have any control over Iran’s security apparatus? No. At best, Mr. Pezeshkian will be but an implementer of the Supreme Leader’s will. Many of those who did vote for the reformist candidate did so not out of their naiveté about his role in the country, but more to stop his hardline competitor, Saeed Jalili. But I sit with Hannah Arendt on that argument: “If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one … Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.”
Mr. Pezeshkian will likely take his presidential oath on Aug. 4. His loyalty is not to uphold the constitution; that’s the job of Iran’s geriatric Guardian Council, whose secretary, Ahmad Jannati, just turned 97. Mr. Pezeshkian will pledge his loyalty to the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Khamenei. A president in this theocracy is no more than the impotent implementer of Ayatollah Khamenei’s will. Iran’s reformist camp has failed in the past 30 years to challenge the status quo in any meaningful way. While the people of Iran have consistently questioned the arranged marriage of state and religion as the basis for their society, the reformist camp keeps stringing them along, promising them the moon and not providing even a speck of dust.