A group of younger ultraconservatives dubbed the “super-revolutionaries” has risen to prominence in Iran’s power structure, laying claim to the legacy of the country’s Islamic revolution despite coming of age long afterwards.
The newcomers, who have set themselves apart from revolutionary old-timers they disparagingly call “patriarchs”, have marked their territory by issuing sharp criticisms of senior regime figures whom they accuse of corruption and nepotism.
The radical-right cohort includes television host Amir-Hossein Sabeti, a political neophyte elected to parliament in this month’s low-turnout election. The 35-year-old grew up well after the 1979 revolution and the bitter war with Iraq that followed.
“Super-revolutionaries are not many in number, but their voices are being heard more and more,” Mohammad Sadegh Javadi-Hesar, a reformist politician, told the Financial Times.
Other ascending figures from the cohort include Hamid Rasaee, 55, a hardline cleric elected in Tehran. He appeared on state television this month — hours after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei advised new lawmakers to refrain from “divisive statements” — to launch a tirade against parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Tehran mayor who has faced repeated attacks over his family’s alleged lavish lifestyle.
Others singled out by the super-revolutionaries have included Ali Larijani, a former speaker of parliament; Mohammad Reza Bahonar, a former senior lawmaker whose brother was assassinated while serving as prime minister in 1981; and Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a senior adviser to the supreme leader.
When Haddad-Adel, a relative of Khamenei, sought to chide the newcomers this month by calling them “offshoots that grow at the base of a tall tree” — a reference to his own generation — it drew an angry response from the younger cohort.
“Who gave you the legitimacy to act as the godfather of the conservative camp . . . to humiliate independent candidates who do not belong to your gang?” Sabeti wrote in one address.
The language echoes the approach taken by the older hardliners themselves to remove senior revolutionary figures who had evolved into pragmatists, such as the late former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The March 1 elections for parliament and the Assembly of Experts responsible for appointing a successor to the supreme leader were held at a moment of heightened public disillusionment with Iran’s deepening economic problems. Turnout reached a historic low of 41 per cent.
It is not yet clear to what extent the newcomers will seek to take on Iran’s prevailing political forces, but some leading regime figures do appear ready to give the radical right a chance to air their views while also looking to keep them in check.
“They need to be controlled, guided and advised at times, but their flaws cannot be fixed unless they’re actively engaged,” said Hamid-Reza Taraghi, a hardline politician.
While the radical right has now strengthened its influence in parliament, key figures had been staking out positions for more than a decade, scoring election wins and occupying roles in politics and the media.
Another member of the group is Ali-Akbar Raefipour, 39, a social media personality with a hardline following who established a new political front and electoral list to fight the election.
Several candidates allied to Raefipour, who is known for highlighting corruption and challenging regime leaders whose children live luxurious lives abroad, won their seats in parliament.
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Taraghi, the hardline politician, said the new cohort had learned from the previous generation that flirting with the west ended in failure. Their case in point is the US rejection of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, an event that hardliners view as a national embarrassment and evidence that the US and its allies cannot be trusted.
The approach of the super-revolutionaries is “driven by a desire to eliminate western and liberal influences in culture, economy and even foreign policy”, he said.
Some have suggested that, far from posing a threat to the regime, the new cohort enjoys support from within a complex political system characterised by opacity and where influential players operate from the shadows.
Javadi-Hesar said: “These hardline personalities are authorised to direct harsh criticism at both the ruling authority and its critics. But they enjoy immunity provided by the system.”
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