Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in his speech to mark the Islamic Eid Mab’as said something astonishing: “We will not clamp down on dissidents, but they should not be hostile either.”

Speaking about ‘dissidents’ in Iran especially by someone who now for more than 30 years is the top official of the country and responsible for all the people’s miserable situation and the brutality of this regime is something strange, and the question that arises here is why is the ‘supreme leader’ speaking about them now?

What has caused Khamenei to play this political game with the main Achilles’ heel of its regime?

Now, after forty years of this rule, everyone knows that such speeches are just a trick to pave the ground for the upcoming 2021 presidential election. He for the same show in 2018, with the same tactic, said: “If you do not accept the Islamic Republic, but you are Iranians, so participate in the election,” and he had planned to pull out one of the worst elements in the regime Ebrahim Raisi, who is now the head of the Judiciary, out of the ballot box.

Therefore, Khamenei, in absolute desperation and while knowing that the people are rejecting his entire sovereignty, for the forthcoming show is forced to address the main victims of more than four decades of crimes of the Velayat-e-Faqih system (supreme religious rule).

Basically, the ideological-political monopoly foundation of Khomeini and his heirs began by raising this issue. The start of the conflict and opposition to Khomeini and his regime which is now continuing was because of this reason. The basis of censorship of books, newspapers, magazines, and media in the Islamic Republic has been and continues to be based on the refusal to tolerate dissidents from the political, social, literary, cultural and artistic fields.

What could be clearer than this, that Khomeini did not even tolerate hearing the word ‘democracy’ and the phrase ‘democratic republic’ and said angrily: “Islamic Republic, Nothing less and nothing more.”

Khamenei understands the clerical regime, by order of its Supreme Leader, has basically made dissidents a security issue related to the existence of the regime for 42 years.

This decision and its strategy are tied with crimes which are the base of this regime, with some famous examples:

  • It began with the imposition of a compulsory hijab against Iranian women, following Khomeini’s fatwa in early March 1979.
  • Then they started the hooligan gangs, which killed members of dissident political groups, such as the People’s Mojahedin (MEK/PMOI), the Fadayi guerrillas, and so on.
  • It continued with the state terrorism against these dissidents, critics, and opponents of the system in late 1980 and early 1981. Thousands of dissidents were imprisoned and then massacred in the summer of 1988, according to Khomeini’s religious decree and fatwa, contrary to legal practice.
  • Following the approval of Khamenei and the Ministry of Intelligence, the killing of political dissidents, intellectuals, writers, poets, and artists in a series of crimes known as serial killings took place.
  • The scope of these ideological, religious, and political assassinations was extended to outside Iran.
  • Then they went after the Christian priests, and after mutilating them, put the dismembered parts of their bodies in the refrigerators.
  • They then turned to restricting university education for Baha’is.

No Iranian who has not sworn allegiance to the principle of Velayat-e-Faqih and is outside its reactionary Islam can run for office in the Islamic Republic.

Which Iranian does not know that the intention and purpose of the poverty and restrictions on living standards in the provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan and Kurdistan, according to the confessions of the regime itself, have no other reason than that these two provinces are Sunnis and not being in the circle of government’s religion?

In all these examples, it can be seen that the concept of ‘dissent’ from the perspective of the Islamic Republic – now called ‘outsider’ in government propaganda and media – is nothing more than a belief in a thought or way or goal outside the clerical government.

Therefore, both Khomeini and Khamenei have never tolerated their alternative beliefs, whether by individuals or groups, and with the first expression of opinion against the Islamic Republic, they sent the Revolutionary Guards and instinctual criminals to destroy the lives and property of these dissidents.

Now Khamenei, with his foot in a blood plateau and with a baldric of the mutilated bodies of dissident victims, has come to beg for votes to heat up his 2021 election show.