The mullahs’ 11th parliament officially kicked off its work on May 27. This parliament has 260 men and 16 women MPs all of whom are devoted servants and loyalists to the mullahs’ misogynist regime.
Some 80% of the MPs are from the fundamentalist faction associated with the mullahs’ supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. This majority has not been the outcome of a genuine free and fair election, nor even the product of election rigging. This time the quotas for each faction were decided in advance.
During the mullahs’ 40-year rule, all candidates running for parliamentary elections must have proven and declared their heart-felt and practical devotion and adherence to the mullahs’ supreme leader, as a condition for nomination. In the next step, the Guardian Council vets and endorses the candidates eligible to run.
In the third stage which was most conspicuously implemented in 2020, every faction was assigned a quota of parliamentary seats before the election day. As a result, 207 of the total 290 seats in the mullahs’ parliament were allocated to Khamenei’s fundamentalist faction.
Getting to know the new parliament
To get acquainted with the mullahs’ 11th parliament, it is sufficient to review the background of its speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
Qalibaf was 18 when he joined the paramilitary Bassij Force in the early days after the Shah was toppled in February 1979.
In July 1979, he went to Kurdistan when Khomeini, the founder of the mullahs’ regime, issued a fatwa sanctioning the massacre of thousands of defenseless Kurds.
Qalibaf joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, when it was founded.
The speaker of the 11th parliament has served the clerical regime in various capacities over the years, including as Chief of Staff of the IRGC Ground Forces, Acting Commander in Chief of the IRGC, Acting Commander of the Paramilitary Bassij Force, Commander of the IRGC Air Force, Commander of the State Security Force (SSF), Mayor of Tehran, member of the Expediency Council, etc.
Yet Qalibaf believes that his most brilliant years were in the 1980s when he was among the club wielders cracking down on street protests, as well as in 1999 and 2003 when he crushed student protests at Tehran University.
Who are the few women MPs who found their way to the new parliament?
Very similar to the 10th parliament, only 5.7 percent of the members of the 11th parliament are women. Reviewing the factional ties and backgrounds of the women MPs helps in foreseeing the future conduct of this parliament particularly with regards to women’s rights.
Nine of the 16 women MPs who found their way to the 11th parliament, i.e. 56%, are from Khamenei’s fundamentalist faction. More interesting, however, are the women MPs who are dubbed as “independent” but are ardently devoted to the clerical regime’s fundamentalist and terrorist policies. A few of them are identified below:
- Massoumeh Pashaii, daughter of IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Pashaii who was killed along with Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.
- Somayyeh Mahmoudi, daughter of Gholamreza Mahmoudi, Acting Commander of an IRGC Brigade, killed during the Iran-Iraq War.
- Zohreh Sadat Lajevardi, daughter of Assadollah Lajevardi, the notorious butcher of Evin and Tehran’s Revolutionary Prosecutor in the 1980s. He was in charge of torture and executions of thousands of political prisoners including several thousand women and girls many of whom were raped before execution.
According to a fatwa by Khomeini, young virgin women were raped before being executed. Former political prisoners have testified that Lajevardi personally raped many prisoners and had invented a plethora of other vicious physical and psychological torture methods especially for women political prisoners.
In getting to know the women MPs who represent a misogynous dictatorship, it is also useful to learn of their viewpoints.
- In an interview on May 19, 2020 with the state-run ROKNA news agency, Zohreh Lajevardi made comments about child marriages. She said, “If a girl is mentally and physically mature, there is no problem with her getting married. Therefore, we cannot define an age for marriage. In general, all of these issues are secondary… It is wrong to spend time and energy on marginal matters such as child marriages because this is not among women’s main concerns.”
- Elham Azad has also been introduced as an independent MP. Her first activity after inauguration of the 11th parliament was to follow up on the enforcement of Khamenei’s misogynistic policies. In her speech to the parliamentary session on May 31, 2020, she said, “(Khamenei) made some significant remarks on the issue of women and family in 1990, 1997, and 2013, but they were never implemented in practice.” (The state-run Alef website, May 31, 2020)
It should be noted that in 2013, in reaction to the high rate of unemployment in Iran among women with higher education, Khamenei said that one of women’s most important roles is housekeeping, adding that a woman’s greatest “crusade” is child bearing. (Khamenei.ir, May 1, 2013 and the state-run Ressalat daily, May 2, 2013)
An all-male board of directors
Only 111 of the 3,190 members of the mullahs’ parliament have been women over 11 terms of its history. The situation gets worse when it comes to the election of the board of directors.
In 41 elections of the board of directors, only twice were women MPs given a seat on the board.
In the elections for the board of directors of the 11th parliament on May 28, two women MPs were nominated but both were voted out.
One of the candidates was Somayyeh Mahmoudi who acknowledged: “What happened on May 28 was an example of the parliament’s male-dominated approach.” (The state-run Khabaronline.ir, June 1, 2020)
Fa’ezeh Abbasi, the other losing candidate, also commented, “When people want to win votes, they speak of women’s rights and the need for women’s presence in seats of power; but when they secure a sufficient number of votes, there is no sign of the previous rhetoric nor is any step taken in this path (to protect women’s rights).” (The state-run Khabaronline.ir, June 1, 2020)
History of legislations on women’s rights
A glance over the history of the mullahs’ parliament and its previous legislations on the rights of women sheds light on male-domination as the essence of the clerical regime in Iran. It also helps conceive of what to expect from the 11th parliament in light of the many crises the regime faces today.
- On October 8, 2014, the mullahs’ parliament adopted a bill to support “Promoters of Virtue and Forbidders of Vice.” In this way, they sanctioned enforcement of the compulsory veil by forces who were not members of the so-called official law enforcement agencies such as the State Security Force (SSF). The legislation led immediately to a wave of organized acid attacks and stabbing assaults on women in mid-October 2014 by organized gangs with known ties to government agencies. The culprits were never identified and arrested.
- On July 21, 2015, the mullahs’ parliament adopted another piece of legislation called the “Plan to Protect the Sanctity of Chastity and Hijab.” In addition to underscoring the articles included in previous bills and legislations, the new plan stipulated that the traffic police can deal with improper veiling as a driving violation and write tickets for female drivers who do not properly observe the mandatory Hijab. Thus adding financial extortion to the humiliation, insults, and flogging which were already in force to punish at least 70% of Iranian women who oppose the mandatory veil.
- In addition, the mullahs’ parliament has so far turned down any minor attempt to protect the rights of Iranian women and girls.
- In December 2018, the bill to increase the legal age of marriage for girls from 13 to 16 faced opposition from male MPs and was rejected by the Judicial and Legal Committee. A similar bill had been proposed in the year 2000, but was evaluated as being contradictory to the Sharia by the Guardian Council.
- The bill to prevent violence against women was first proposed in 2011 and debated in the mullahs’ parliament on a number of occasions, every time turned down and subsequently returned to the floor under a different title. Finally, after 8 years, the bill was endorsed by the Judiciary and passed down to the government on September 17, 2019.
- The Judiciary overhauled the bill, deleting 15 of its articles and stripping it of any possible efficiency in preventing violence against women. The bill renamed as “Securing, Dignifying, and Protecting Women from Violence,” has been stuck at the hands of Rouhani’s government without being passed to the parliament for final adoption.
- Another example is the Child Protection bill. After 10 years of stalling the bill, the parliament finally adopted it in August 2018. However, the bill faced objections by the Guardian Council and was returned to the Legal and Judicial Committee of the parliament to be amended. Since then, the bill is still pending approval by the parliamentary committee.
Final word
The people of Iran and particularly women are fully aware that the clerical regime’s misogynist and criminal conduct will get worse as the regime faces numerous crises without knowing what to do with them. Their only solution was to further radicalize the parliament, filling its seats with some of their most vicious and loyalist elements.
The forces of the mullahs’ religious fascism killed some 1,500 innocent people during the uprising in November 2019 on direct orders from Khamenei.
With the regime’s economy already in shambles, the coronavirus pandemic has driven the regime to its most vulnerable position during its 40-year rule. Logically, it would resort to an ever-more oppressive crackdown on political and social dissent and particularly on women who are at the forefront of opposition to the regime.
Therefore, the mullahs’ 11th parliament has no mission but to legitimize and facilitate the regime’s crimes against Iranian citizens.
On the other hand, the brave women of Iran, standard bearers of the Generation Equality, are involved in a full-fledged struggle for regime change in Iran. With a qualified leadership, they have proven their equal worth in a life or death battle to bring about a free, democratic and prosperous Iran where all Iranian citizens and women will enjoy full equality.
In step with their brothers, Iranian women will not relent until the mullahs’ misogynist regime is uprooted and freedom becomes a household name in Iran.
