We try not to be judged as siding with the Islamic Republic. But there are articles and comments sent by the readers that seem to violate the boundaries of impartiality. We respect opinions but not necessarily approve them. The following text sent by a visitor is an example.
Following Maryam Rajavi’s call boycotting Iran’s upcoming two elections, Assembly of Experts and Municipal Councils, Jaberzadeh, a MKO’s member, made a direct correlation between the elections and the Islamic Republic collapse. In fact, he was expounding on her reasoning that because of Iran’s encountering internal and international standstills, the elections backfire and steer Iran onto the sloping path of downfall. Generally, the postponement of legal elections in a ruling system might signify a political cul-de-sac, but in Mojahedin’s political lexicon it is reasoned to be the outcome of two simultaneous elections.
For nearly two decades, Mojahedin have continued to predict the Islamic Republic’s collapse. In all these years, unpredicted and unapproachable regional, domestic and international crises were said to have weakened the pillars of the Islamic rule to bring about its collapse. They had the least attention to people’s role and social factors in all these years. In 1995 presidential election for example, Mojahedin were shocked to see that Khatami’s victory swept all other major rivals, but trumpeted that he was an internally elected alternative to abort the regime’s collapse. None of them ever touched upon people’s decisive role since it had damaged their previously made analyses. Rajavi was quoted to have said, in a private meeting after the election, that if he accepted and told his forces that 30 million Iranian had voted in presidential election, then, how he could have possibly asked them to pick up arms.
According to parameters of democracy, the presence of people determines a system’s legitimacy. It is even more valued and practiced in Western democracies which Mojahedin claim to approve above all. That is strange that while they try to be recognized as the alternative, nobody asks whom and where they are to get their legitimacy from? If people and domestic social conditions rather than external and international leverages institute the needed legitimacy for an alternative, then, Mojahedin are entangled in a chronic paradox.
Again, after two decades of advertising illegitimacy of the clerical regime in Iran because of its unpopularity, Mojahedin call people to boycott the elections. The demand in itself fully indicates the great distance between the stated claims and the existing reality. For Mojahedin beating the drum of the Islamic Republic instability, any election means a challenge because on time elections with the presence of people in their multitudes denote nothing less than stability. That is the time when Mojahedin remember their earlier analyses as well as short and long term planning to overthrow the Islamic regime. So, to escape further criticism and failing to give proper answers to many arisen questions, Mojahedin distort the truth to their own favor; the Islamic Republic is on the sloping edge of collapse and two simultaneous elections make a cover up for its instability and the domestic crisis.
Injudiciously made analysis results in impetuous actions, for Mojahedin skip over the fact that elections like Assembly of Experts and Municipal Councils are regular ones having nothing to do with the domestic crises and even if they do, they have to be postponed for certain causes, possibility of instability not excluded, as it might be the case in some countries. Commenting on Iran’s upcoming elections in “direct contact” TV program, Jaberzadeh referred to elections as playacting that tacitly approved internal instability:
By its making broad propaganda and maneuver, the regime intends to distort the truth of being entered the phase of dissolution after the stage of Yek-payegi* to pretend it has developed a much more stabilized state than before.
The paradox made by Jaberzadeh was in fact expounding on Maryam Rajavi’s analysis of the phase after Yek-payegi that she referred to in her message to boycott the elections:
After regime’s Yek-payegi, the system has entered its phase of dissolution.
She intends to say the regime adopted Yek-payegi to thwart its collapse but it has backfired. It is really a hard puzzle to solve! Can Mojahedin arrive at an ultimate reasoning whether the elections are a manifestation of the regime’s collapse or not?
*. Yek-payegi is a term used by Mojahedin when they mean to say the regime is relying only on one of its strong pillars (sympathetic political factions and wings) out of many to survive.
Mojahedin.ws – Arash Fattahzadeh – October 30, 2006