Ahmadinejad to Khamenei: We Need Change Now

February 22, 2018

4 min read

Ahmadinejad to Khamenei: We Need Change Now

In an unprecedented move, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has appealed to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to call early elections and introduce widespread reforms, changes he insisted are what the Iranian people want. Using language that evoked the will of the people, regard for human rights and a rejection of elitism, he said he expected the Supreme Leader to seriously consider his recommendations and enact change soon.

In an open letter to the Supreme Leader, which was published in full by the website Dolat-e Bahar on Wednesday, February 21, the former conservative president outlined steps the Supreme Leader needed to take to satisfy public demands. They included ordering early presidential and parliamentary elections, freeing prisoners who had criticized the Supreme Leader, and dismissing Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani, who Ahmadinejad has accused of corruption and illegal dealings.

In the letter, Ahmadinejad said the Supreme Leader should order “immediate and free presidential and parliamentary elections without manipulation by the Guardian Council, without the interference of military and security institutions and with a free vote for the people” as a matter of “urgent necessity.”

He said the “performance of senior judiciary officials” was “one of the main factors for public discontent” and demanded that “the head of the judiciary be immediately replaced” with someone who had the appropriate qualifications as set out in the constitution. He also asked the Supreme Leader to appoint “an independent authority who is acceptable to the people” to investigate complaints against the judiciary.

He called for Khamenei to bring an end to “the prosecution of all individuals who have been arrested or sentenced in past years for various charges, including criticizing Your Excellency.” He also asked for the release of people who had been charged with “propaganda against the regime” and who have spent years in prison for protesting “the manner in which the country is run.”

Ahmadinejad described his demands as “a human right that can help implement reforms with the help of the people and political activists.” He expressed hope that “the correct and speedy implementation of these proposals” would “be effective in regaining people’s trust.”

According to the Dolat-e Bahar website, Ahmadinejad wrote a separate letter to Khamenei advising him how to take action and usher in the urgent reforms. The pro-Ahmadinejad media have yet to publish the full text of the second, detailed letter and it is not clear whether it will be released to the public.

An Unprecedented Event

The letter from a former conservative president to the Supreme Leader is unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic. But the website Dolat-e Bahar declared that the move “opens the way for bringing about fundamental reforms in the country.”

Since Ahmadinejad was re-elected as the president of the Islamic Republic in 2009 following a disputed election — for which he received Khamenei’s support — he has become more outspoken about his disagreements with the Supreme Leader and has shown no qualms about making these differences public.

After the end of Ahmadinejad’s two-term presidency in 2013, Khamenei appointed him to the influential Expediency Council. But then, in 2017, Ahmadinejad declared his candidacy for the presidency, despite the express wishes of the Supreme Leader. In due course, the Guardian Council disqualified him from running.

The disqualification, followed by the arrest and the trial of Ahmadinejad’s former vice president Hamid Reza Baghaei, opened a new chapter for him. Over the last year, Ahmadinejad has turned into a relentless and harsh critic of Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary, and Ali Larijani, speaker of the parliament, and has demanded that they be removed from their positions. But he has not stopped there. Little by little, he has turned his vitriol toward the regime itself, and harshly criticized the Supreme Leader personally, as well as the institutions under his control.

On February 8, Khamenei delivered a speech during which he apologized to the people for the “injustice” they had endured and conceded that there were “shortcomings” in how the country had been run. In his letter, Ahmadinejad exploited this gesture, grabbing the opportunity to tell the Supreme Leader that his words “necessitate urgent and tangible action” to rectify the situation “according to people’s demands.” In his second, more detailed letter, he asked the Supreme Leader for nothing less than “fundamental reform in the three branches [of the government], in various institutions and agencies, and especially” in his own office.

Ahmadinejad declared that the reforms he was calling for will “require changes in the constitution.” His predecessor, the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, had also pursued changes to the constitution, to no avail. It will be interesting to see how Ahmadinejad’s efforts fare, but history indicates that such a dramatic and immediate shift is unlikely to be realized.