Will the Guards Take Over Iran in the Post-Corona Era?

The spread of the coronavirus, as a threat to the health of Iranian society, will no doubt have political implications. Although only two weeks have passed since the recent parliamentary elections (which resembled an electoral coup) and coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak in Iran, there are already signs of major political and social consequences.

This report examines Iran’s post-election and post-coronavirus situation.

The Revolutionary Guards and the leader are busy

Authoritarian dictatorships and political systems feed on crisis. These systems are themselves involved in creating various crises, but if there is an external crisis, they welcome it and try to exploit it for their own benefit. Iran’s coronavirus crisis has therefore attracted the attention of authoritarians.

Last week, when parliament was closed due to the outbreak, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the budget bill – previously rejected by the Majlis – to be referred to the Guardian Council for approval without further review by parliament. Tehran's reformist MP Mahmoud Sadeghi, in three tweets, described Khamenei's move as the last nail in the coffin for the parliament before the next session begins.

Photographs showing Iranian special forces vehicles, which recently were deployed in suppressing street protests, have for the past two weeks been touring cities with banners reading “Crackdown on Corona!”

In other news, this time coming from Iran's public health, medical and nursing community, the Revolutionary Guards have prevented news on the coronavirus outbreak from being published and continue to threaten the medical community.

The judiciary, whose association with the security forces has been repeatedly proven, has also detained some of those who publish the real news about the coronavirus disease. In one instance, a person who had released a video of COVID-19 victims from Behesht-e Masoumeh cemetery morgue in Qom was arrested.

But in response parliament and President Hassan Rouhani’s government offer only silence and inaction. Parliament, which was virtually invaded by coronavirus on 28 February, leaving 23 MPs infected with the virus, announced it will be closed until further notice.

Some members of cabinet have also contracted COVID-19 – yet Iran’s government insists it is in control of the situation.

Individuals and political groups have called on the government to quarantine affected cities. By failing to acknowledge the outbreak of coronavirus in a timely fashion – a move widely attributed to pressure from the Revolutionary Guards – the government has managed to allow the coronavirus to spread to almost the entire country. Imposing a national quarantine also requires a measure of politics will, authority, as well as political and economic infrastructure that this government currently lacks.

For any quarantine to take effect, Iran’s government must have the political and practical capacity to shut down political, cultural, administrative, and military institutions. The government should, for example, be able to close religious centers such as mosques, shrines, and religious schools. In Iran, however, control over these matters is not in the hands of the government, but in the hands of institutions that are usually affiliated with the Supreme Leader. The Mosque Affairs Center, established by Ali Khamenei under the directorship of Mehdi Mahdavi Kani, a cleric close to Khamenei, is the body responsible for mosques and Friday prayers in Iran. Following the death of Mahdavi Kani, the management of this entity has been handed over to his deputy, who is also close to Khamenei.

A further problem is that military institutions which should support the government in times of crisis are under the command of Ali Khamenei and do not listen to what the government says.

At the same time, the government does not have the financial resources to impose a quarantine. To quarantine millions of people needs a thriving economy that can cope with the enormous costs of shutting down the economy for an unknown period of time and that can support the spending needed to encourage people to stay home.

But Iran's ailing economy in recent years has been further weakened by the advent of President Donald Trump in the United States and the intensification of oil sales sanctions. This double weakening has no reason other than the military adventures of the Revolutionary Guards in the Middle East the region and elsewhere in the world. The Guards, wholly affiliated to the Supreme Leader, has been accused of orchestrating a missile attack the Saudi Aramco Abqaiq refinery in recent months, attacking several oil tanker vessels, including a Japanese tanker, and creating an insecure situation the Straits of Hormuz.

In the latest of these adventures, the Guards launched a missile attack on two international military bases in Iraq in retaliation for the US assassination of Quds Force general Qasem Suleimani. The attacks did not cause any damage to the United States. Regrettably it did cause the deaths of 176 passengers on a Ukrainian Airlines flight – an inadvertent disaster which the Revolutionary Guards initially disowned but for which they later took responsibility.

What Iran’s post-coronavirus era will look like

Estimating the costs of the coronavirus outbreak in a severely debilitated Iranian society is painful. What makes it even more painful is to imagine the likely political situation after this monster has passed through the country.

Given that Iran’s oil economy has become more fragile due to the unprecedented fall in oil prices, a result of the closure of a large part of the Chinese economy due to the coronavirus outbreak, Iran’s government is likely to become even more impoverished than before.

Proof for this is the extraordinary meeting of Iran’s health minister with Ali Larijani, Speaker of Parliament, and parliament’s Health Commission, during which Larijani was asked to negotiate with Ali Khamenei and to request assistance from the National Development Fund. The government itself appears to be incapable of gathering the three branches of power for a high-level meeting – requiring them to appeal to Larijani to act as intermediary.

The increasingly superficial role of government and the transfer of administrative and social affairs to the Revolutionary Guards – as the nerve center in the effort against coronavirus – is an inevitable step that the Guards themselves and the Supreme Leader will welcome.

Officials and politicians who support the Guards have also been playing their part. Ardeshir Motahhari, an elected MP for Garmsar who came from the security forces and was involved in repressive actions for the past two decades, wrote in an open letter to President Rouhani on Sunday: "Coping with this crisis requires the coordination of several ministries, governors general, as well as law enforcement, security and military forces, and it needs experienced commanders who have the courage and determination to make centralized decisions and to be able to coordinate institutions and organizations, to form a centralized, unified information dissemination system and to execute decisions continually and decisively.”

In other words – the letter indicates that an official cadre of MPs originating from the armed and security forces have been elected to the next parliament. And they have plans for Iran.

There have also been reports that the Basij Organization, which is the urban arm of the Revolutionary Guards and is deployed to suppress protests, has also been active in dealing with the coronavirus crisis.

Iran’s two quasi-elected institutions – parliament and government – have been targeted by the Revolutionary Guards and related forces through the recent parliamentary election and the administrative challenges of the coronavirus crisis. The Guards are exploiting the crisis to destroy the government’s executive role; and this sends a clear message, that political space is closing in Iran and the republican system is coming to an end.

This is a dream that Ali Khamenei has had in mind for 20 years. He has taken steps towards it every day – but this time it seems the dream will be realized thanks to the coronavirus crisis.