The news and analyses found in Iranian regime’s media space these days are filled with a brand new topic: the issue of Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet reshuffle.
Reshuffling cabinet is somewhat unprecedented in the history of the Iranian regime, with the rare instances found in some of the mullahs’ past 11 governments being mainly due to conflicts and clashes within the regime and not as a result of change in government’s policies, something that could more appropriately be described as a ‘re-allocation of positions’ rather than a cabinet reshuffle.
Raising the issue of cabinet reshuffle in dictatorships is generally a reaction to threatening conditions due to domestic social and political developments or international pressures, with consecutive reshuffles during the five final months of Shah’s regime in 1979 being a clear instance in this regard.
A too important question to point out here is that when a system fails to make any change or improvement within its structure by playing the ‘reform’ card at home and the ‘appeasement’ card abroad, then how is it supposed to pull out a winning card in extra time out of its thick trick book through simply moving some pieces all of whom have sworn to be loyal to the vilayat-e-faqih principle) The absolute rule of clergy) as the regime’s very foundation?
What is quite clear for both Iranian people and the mullahs’ regime, as two ends of Iran’s spectrum, is that the society’s eruptive state and the course of political, social and international developments are all threatening the very existence of the vilayat-e-faqih regime. Such intimidating conditions that are undoubtedly the most important factors forcing the regime to turn to a ridiculous cabinet reshuffle show – by changing a piece at the end of his term!—could be summed up in the following three important developments:
1- A total regime change is what’s being demanded by Iran’s general public, a demand that keeps getting stronger day by day, week by week, and year by year; a demand which Iranian people have never backed down from and have constantly cried for in their protests and uprisings.
This is a reality which Rouhani’s Head of Office ‘Vaezi’ is forced to acknowledge, albeit implicitly. “The new circumstances require that some cabinet members, who were appointed by the president under normal conditions, to be replaced,” says Vaezi while pointing to Rouhani’s cabinet meeting with Khamenei.
2- With regard to international factors, the two issues of the 2015 nuclear deal, aka the JCPOA, and human rights have irreversibly put the mullahs’ regime under utmost pressure. The two crises, both of which being the results of Iranian people’s struggles and resistance, will have direct devastative effect on the mullahs’ regime in its entirety.
3- Conflicts between regime’s rival bands have gone beyond quantitative borders and are now spreading towards regime’s foundations, a development that is undoubtedly the result of the first factor, namely the people’s nationwide protests.
The three above mentioned facts and developments have joined hands to push the entire vilayat-e-faqih regime deeper into an identity crisis. That’s why the issue of a cabinet reshuffle is raised with Khamenei’s supervision to act as a safety valve for extending regime’s lifespan.
To implement the so-called cabinet reshuffle, a package containing the mullahs’ well-known combination of vulgarity, lie, fraud and deception is pulled out of regime’s trick box, with the result being replacement of only one piece: resignation of regime’s head of the Central Bank at the end of his term!
As the presenter of such packages, Hassan Rouhani stated in the most vulgar way that the reason why exploited people hated the outgoing head of the Central Bank was his fight against corruption, saying “Mr. Seif was an extremely honest and precious director who fulfilled his obligations quite well. Fighting corruption raised by unauthorized entities will go down in history as Mr. Seif’s achievement. He fought this type of corruption at full power and succeeded to remove this cancerous tumor.” (Hassan Rouhani’s speech, Wednesday, July 25, 2018)
To see the real picture, however, it would suffice to turn the camera away from Rouhani and zoom it in through his office window on people that have kept gathering for at least the past two years in front of state-linked predatory thieving entities, shouting and pounding on their closed doors so they could retrieve part of their assets.
And to respond to Rouhani’s remarks, it would suffice to put Seif’s record on his table and show him the biting realities that keep tightening their grip on Iranian people: a quadrupled cash flow, a tripled foreign currency rate, a 75 percent decrease in the value of national currency, and the list goes on.
Rouhani’s remarks are so flagrantly vulgar and ridiculous that even regime MP ‘Ahmadi Lashki’ reacts against them while trying to put the real picture in front of regime’s president. “Mr. Rouhani, for how long are you going to tie in the country’s economy with Dr. Seif’s policies? Due to Dr. Seif’s wrong policies, many people have turned against the Islamic regime. When are you going to announce the date at which the failed credit institutions will fully repay their investors? When are you going to stabilize the currency and gold market?” says Lashki on July 24, 2018.
But aside from such duplicate games and banal packages, the fact is that Khamenei, Rouhani and all their office and cabinet members as well as the MPs are fully aware of what they’ve done to people and, as put by Rouhani’s head of office Vaezi, what the new circumstances require.
The new circumstances, in which the so-called ‘reformism’ and ‘moderation’ bridges are totally destroyed at the hands of Iranian people who launched a nationwide uprising in January and never stopped protesting ever since, the golden era of West’s appeasement policy has turned into days and weeks of global pressure, the collapse of the country’s economic structure and the conflicts within the ruling mafia has reached the very foundation of the regime, all suggest a reshuffle game in extra time, and not with spectators who are sitting at the stadium to support either of the two teams, but have took to the streets and city squares instead to cry out their 40-year-old love for freedom and to launch Iran’s big reshuffle by putting an end to the vilayat-e-faqih’s dominance and overthrowing the mullahs’ regime.
Source » NCR-Iran