Hossein Heshmati

In an exclusive interview, we spoke with Ezatollah Sahabi, the leader of the opposition ‎council known as the Melli-Mazhabi group (Nationalist-Religious group) regarding the ‎eighth parliamentary elections scheduled to be held on March 14th. The following is the ‎transcript of the interview.‎

Rooz (R): Reformists have announced that they will take part in elections as a show of ‎protest and will only compete in those districts where they have candidates. What is your ‎opinion on this?‎

Ezatollah Sahabi (ES): In my opinion this election is different from the elections for the ‎seventh Majlis (2000 - 2004). During the seventh Majlis elections, candidate vetting was ‎extensive but eventually a minority of fifty-five people was formed in the Majlis. But the ‎important thing is that this minority was composed of weak reformers (the Guardian ‎Council had disqualified the stronger candidates). Not a single member of this minority ‎made any speeches against the government budgets of 1997 and 1998. The members of ‎the minority were of low caliber. ‎

R: Why do think the government insists on creating such a parliament? ‎

ES: The main reason is that they want to claim there is no real important opposition. So ‎after the elections, I think their attitude towards the reformists will become harsher. They ‎want to say that the country is united and that there shall be only one voice in the nation. ‎They want a large turnout in the elections so they can claim that they have defeated the ‎US through the elections! This despite the fact that the position of the Iranian government ‎is right now very weak …‎

R: How has this weakness shown itself in the actions of the administration? ‎

ES: Many examples can be cited. For instance, Mr. Ahmadinejad recently participated in ‎a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Dubai. There is a picture of him sitting ‎underneath a map that says “the Arabian Gulf”, although this waterway’s name has been ‎the Persian Gulf for two thousand years and no one can make concessions about our ‎national interests like this. At this gathering they passed a resolution that rejected Iran’s ‎ownership of three islands in the Persian Gulf that are the subject of a dispute with the ‎United Arab Emirates. The Iraqi president Jalal Talebani does not recognize the ‎legitimacy of the Alger’s Accords (that in 1975 demarcated the river boundary between ‎Iran and Iraq) just like Saddam Hussein had ripped the agreement in pieces. This is ‎internationally interpreted as government’s lack of credibility. It is because of this that ‎the regime wants to extract a guarantee from the West, especially the US. In other words ‎in return for giving concession over some of the issues with which it has differences with ‎the US, Tehran expects the US to leave Iran alone so that it is not constrained in doing ‎whatever it desired domestically.‎

R: With regards to the current situation in the country, would you take part in the ‎elections? ‎

ES: Until now, I have always said we are better off participating in the elections rather ‎than not. Experience has shown that whenever the masses participate in elections in huge ‎numbers, moderates and reformers often win. But if the public participates on a limited ‎scale, then the radical right wing groups, which have various categories of voters, ‎including parties and groups, emerge as the winners. But these elections (of March 14th) ‎are different. They have militarized the future parliament and the disqualifications by the ‎Guardian Council alone are not the main issue. The Commander of the Passdaran ‎Revolutionary Guards has said that the Basij has a mission which is to support the ‎conservative wing. So the elections this time are entirely militarized.‎