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Features

Manspreading Environment Chief Calls Reporters' Criticism "BS"

June 29, 2021
Roghayeh Rezaei
9 min read
Two young female reporters were killed and dozens injured in a bus crash in West Azerbaijan on June 23
Two young female reporters were killed and dozens injured in a bus crash in West Azerbaijan on June 23
In the aftermath of the tragedy, environment boss Isa Kalantari was filmed listening to the tearful grievances of an injured female reporter, looking bored with his legs splayed open
In the aftermath of the tragedy, environment boss Isa Kalantari was filmed listening to the tearful grievances of an injured female reporter, looking bored with his legs splayed open
The footage sparked a deluge of Bernie Sanders-esque memes but also serious criticism of how Islamic Republic officials deal with vulnerable citizens and the deaths of reporters
The footage sparked a deluge of Bernie Sanders-esque memes but also serious criticism of how Islamic Republic officials deal with vulnerable citizens and the deaths of reporters

Last week a rickety bus carrying environmental journalists on a tour of West Azerbaijan province, northwestern Iran, overturned after an apparent brake fault. Two young female reporters for ISNA and IRNA were killed instantly, and dozens of others were injured.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, a video circulated on social media in which Zeinab Rahimi, a reporter for ISNA, spoke in anguished tones about her fallen colleague Mahshad Karimi. Mahshad, she said, was due to marry in just a few days’ time.

Addressing Isa Kalantari, the head of Iran’s Environmental Protection Agency, at the Urmia hotel where injured journalists were taken, Rahimi demanded to know: “Is this fair? Sir, what was wrong with getting [us] a healthy bus?”

Of all the members of his entourage present, Kalantari was the only one sitting down during Rahimi’s tirade. He was leaning back in his chair, with his legs splayed open as far as they would go and his palms resting on his crotch. Since the video was published, both Kalantari and his subsequent defense – “Bullshit. I always sit like this” – have drawn the ire and ridicule of Iranians on social media.

***

The bus crash on June 23 took place on a mountainous road heading towards Naqadeh in West Azerbaijan. The reporters had been on a tour of the Lake Urmia restoration project, and many had fallen asleep after a long day on their feet.

Aysan Zarfam, a reporter for Payam-e Ma newspaper, has since described the moment when the brake apparently failed. After a few moments of abject terror, she said, one of the passengers shouted at the driver to aim straight for the mountain wall “so that we won’t fall into the valley”. The driver accordingly turned the wheel towards the mountainside, but the bus overturned instead.

Two young female reporters, Mahshad Karimi and Reyhaneh Yasini, were killed. Several other reporters were air-lifted to hospital in Urmia in a critical condition. Their traumatized colleagues, most of whom had also been injured and treated at the scene, then had to face the Isa Kalantari’s humiliating response at the hotel.

The video from showed Kalantari entering the lobby, wearing a gray suit and surrounded by bodyguards. After approaching the stricken reporters he sat on a chair and listened to Rahimi as she spoke, crying and gesturing with a bandaged hand, about Mahshad Karimi’s terrible fate.

The video cuts off suddenly, with the camera pointed down at the ground and a man’s voice audibly saying: “You should not film.” But what was caught on film was enough to incense some observers. Isa Kalantari, head of the Iranian state’s Environmental Protection Agency, appeared to be sitting in a manner more befitting of a nightclub VIP lounge than a charged meeting with injured Iranian reporters mourning their dead colleague. His detractors have read this posture in a number of different ways.

Isa Kalantari’s Body Language: An Instant, Bitter Meme

A number of online observers drew instant parallels between Kalantari’s carefree, slightly obscene manner of reclining in the chair and the Islamic Republic’s laissez-faire attitude to environmental issues, which over time has wreaked havoc on local ecosystems.

Nobody could have expressed this better than Mostafa Shanehchi, an ISNA photographer who lives in northern Iran. In the aftermath of his colleague’s death, Shanechi posted a set of memes in which Kalantari’s lounging form was pasted onto an array of backgrounds depicting environmental disaster in Iran.

Manspreading Environment Chief Calls Reporters' Criticism "BS"

The Environment Agency boss was superimposed onto wildfires in the forests of Neka in Mazandaran province, the dry riverbed of Tajan, a 50-year-old mountain of garbage next to the river Talar, the lifeless bodies of thousands of birds poisoned at the Miankaleh wetlands, and other such real-world scenes.

Manspreading Environment Chief Calls Reporters' Criticism "BS"

The collages were reminiscient of the Bernie Sanders meme that went viral after Joe Biden’s inauguration as US President in January 2021. But these, Shanechi wrote, were just some of “the activities of the Dr. Kalantari, the venerable head of the Environmental Protection Agency, in response tto environmental issues in the province of Mazandaran.”

Kalantari and the Qajari Kings

Other Iranians compared Isa Kalantari to other, more distinguished figures from the country’s recent history. Twitter user Payam Pourfallah posted a picture of two Qajar Kings, Naser al-Din Shah and Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, and exclaimed: “By god! The Iranian kings sat more compactly than Isa Kalantari!”

The comparisons did not end there. Another Twitter user using the name Hamid Reza shared a picture of Eskandar Firouz, the last head of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Shah before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Firouz sat in a dignified manner, with his legs crossed.

“Please take a look at the record of Eskandar Firouz,” he wrote, “compare it with the record of Isa Kalantari, the current head of the agency, and see for yourself what we lost, and what we gained instead.”

Firouz was recognized as one of the founding fathers of conservation projects in Iran. He died in Washington D.C. in 2020.

Manspreading on Public Transport

Women and feminists of all stripes also had a great deal to say about Kalantari’s lewd posture at the Urmia hotel. Some examined Kalantari’s body language through the lens of sex-based perceptions of hierarchy in Iran, and as an outward expression of systemic misogyny rather than mere bad manners. Manspreading on public transport has been the subject of an Iran-wide poster campaign, and some construe it as form of harassment of women.

Elham Naeej, a feminist researcher at Deakin University in Australia, posted a set of archived pictures of Isa Kalantari sitting next to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other male politicians in a more appropriate manner. 

“You might assume he doesn’t know how to sit properly, or has difficulty sitting the right way,” she said. “I’d ask you to take a look.” Demonstrably, Kalantari has had no trouble sitting with his legs closed or his hands away from his crotch in the past. The fact that he did this when confronted with a grieving female journalist, some users posited, was damning.

Traditionalists Also Incensed by "Undignified" Posture

The Kalantari social media storm was not confined to a single political faction. Individuals and media outlets closer to Iran’s conservatives also had plenty to say on his lolling posture. Some pointed out the emphasis of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, on maintaining an “aristocratic disposition”, and even accused Kalantari of belittling “the people” by sitting thus.

Twitter user Vahid Jafari, who regularly posts about the Iran-Iraq war and whose username includes the flag of the Islamic Republic, posted a picture of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders Bagheri, Hemmat and Bakeri, all of whom were killed in the conflict between 1980 and 1988. All had their legs either crossed or tucked up beneath them. “How commanders sit!” he wrote.

Alirum Nouraei, an actor who has starred in pro-Islamic Republic films and TV serials such as The Golden Collars and Gando, took to Instagram to compare Kalantari with Don Corleone of The Godfather. He also noted that Kalantari had not dared sit like this in the presence of “higher-ups” but, rather, turned into a “polite mouse”.

The Response: “I Always Sit Like This”

While waves of criticism of Kalantari’s boorishness were still churning through cyberspace, the embattled environment boss gave an interview with Emtedad news website in which he responded to critics: “The bullshit some of your colleagues come up with! How was I sitting?

"I always sit like this," he lied. "What apology? What for? What have I done to apologize for?”

Incredibly, Kalantari then implicitly blamed journalists for contributing to the fatal accident on June 23. He claimed the bus had passed a technical inspection and had been declared fit for use, but the reporters onboard had urged the driver to go faster.

This statement poured gasoline on a fire Kalantari himself had already ignited, first through official negligence, then through his insulting comportment in the face of a traumatized female reporter.

The comments only led to further outrage. In the same week as Kianoush Jahanpour, a spokesman for Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, had called those wary of Iran’s first domestically-made vaccine “jerks”, Iranians took to social media again to demand both of them be dismissed from their posts. At the time of writing, neither President Rouhani nor Kalantari himself had responded to the calls.

In the meantime, some of those most acutely affected by the disaster have reported being let down personally by Isa Kalantari. On June 27, Behrad Mehrjoo, the bereaved husband of Reyhaneh Yasini, tweeted: “After Reyhaneh left, many people lovingly offered their condolences to me: from government officials to dear friends and colleagues.

“Only one person, and one institution, did not bother to give me a call: the Environmental Protection Agency, and Isa Kalantari.”

Latest Instance of Flippant Behavior Caught on Camera

Kalantari’s uncouth behavior toward a grieving female reporter was, in itself, nothing new. But it has again brought to the fore a pervasive sense that certain Islamic Republic officials have little to no regard for the sensibilities of ordinary citizens, and journalists.

During the recent tumult, some Iranians pointed out previous instances of similar, flippant behavior by senior government figures. In 2017, for instance,  First Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri visited victims of a devastating earthquake in Kermanshah but did not bother to remove his dirty shoes when he entered their tents. The displaced survivors then had to clean up the floors where they also slept, prayed and ate their food.

That same year, Minister of Agriculture Mahmoud Hojjati was on a visit to Gilan province when a farmer asked him why the state was not paying more for rice grown in Iran, when the price of everything else had gone up. “Give him some of this chaff to chew on,” Hojjati told his companions.

A few days ago, after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was filmed receiving a dose of vaccine in a televised publicity stunt, all those present including Health Minister Saeed Namaki were permitted to sit down while Khamenei gave an excessively long speech – except for the medical worker who had actually administered the vaccine, who had to stand in a corner throughout with his arms crossed over his chest.

Kalantari was unlucky in this instance – first for having been caught on camera, and second for having done so in the social media age, when his facetious follow-up comments were also disseminated far and wide. But he is far from the first to have disregarded the feelings of Iranians with fewer privileges than himself, and he is unlikely to be the last.

 

Related Coverage:

Two Iranian Journalists Killed, Dozens Injured in Bus Crash

Fury and Sorrow After Iranian Journalists Killed in Lake Urmia Bus Crash

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