a brilliant line runs by Iran’s home motion for democratic change: on one aspect, frank opponents of the regime, and on the opposite, proponents of incremental reform. One determine stands out for bridging that divide, making him one in all Iran’s most promising political prospects.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy inside minister, is one in all Iran’s best-known and most broadly fashionable political prisoners. Tajzadeh had already spent greater than a decade behind bars, a lot of it in solitary confinement, when the Iranian judiciary handed him a brand new five-year sentence, on July 12, for costs primarily based on statements he’d made in captivity. His launch date is now set for 2032.
Tajzadeh helps free elections, opposes obligatory veiling for girls and different repressive insurance policies, and backs diplomatic rapprochement with the USA. Abdollah Momeni, an activist and former political prisoner, described Tajzadeh to me as having “a uncommon mixture of ethical braveness, political honesty, and loyalty to the individuals. He’s revered each by official reformists and a big part of civil society, radical democracy activists, and antiauthoritarians.”
Reform in Iran has meant working contained in the system to enhance it, and plenty of of its practitioners subsequently refuse to endorse avenue protests that voice criticisms of the regime as a complete. Tajzadeh is completely different. He lent his express help to the 2022–23 motion identified by the slogan “Ladies, Life, Freedom.” He has additionally known as for abolishing the place of supreme chief, which might successfully finish the Islamic Republic. However he’s nonetheless a reformist in different methods: He opposes violently overthrowing the regime, and even ran for president in 2021 as the principle candidate of the reformist camp till he was denied a spot on the poll. (Wholesale opponents of the regime typically reject collaborating in such elections in any respect, on the grounds that they supply democratic window dressing for an autocratic system.)
In June, Israeli air strikes pummeled Iranian targets, and Tajzadeh issued a assertion from jail each condemning the bombardment and acknowledging that some Iranians have been completely happy about it. He known as for a “peaceable transition to democracy” via a constituent meeting and a change within the structure. On July 23, he known as on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to both conform to free elections and “basic modifications” or resign.
That Tajzadeh’s enchantment bridges Iran’s fractious opposition was evident within the response to his most up-to-date sentencing. Many within the opposition, together with within the diaspora, spoke out towards it. So did Azar Mansouri, the pinnacle of the Iranian Reformist Entrance, a coalition of reformist teams and political events, who instructed me that she opposes Tajzadeh’s imprisonment as a result of he “has an extended historical past of attempting to result in change from inside the system; he has by no means backed violence; and his actions have been principally civic, political, and peaceable.” Alan Ekbatani, a California-based antiregime activist and former political prisoner, instructed me that he had “excessive hopes” for Tajzadeh, “particularly if he dares to declare solidarity with those that are after basic transformation and separation of faith from politics,” as a result of “he has resisted Khamenei and has proven he is able to pay a value within the pursuit of his objectives.”
Tajzadeh served his first jail sentence from 2010 by 2016. Upon launch, he organized a collection of on-line debates on platforms akin to YouTube and Clubhouse. Earlier than tens of hundreds of Iranians, Tajzadeh engaged figures as various as Tehran’s hard-line mayor, Alireza Zakani, and Morad Veisi, a widely known supporter of Iran’s former crown prince, Reza Pahlavi. He even declared his readiness to debate Pahlavi himself—a significant taboo for a former regime official—shortly earlier than he was despatched again to jail, in 2022.
This insistence on participating a variety of Iranians in dialog was what drew Saeed Barzin, a United Kingdom–primarily based dissident, to put in writing a two-volume guide in Persian about Tajzadeh. Barzin instructed me that Tajzadeh is “distinctive in fashionable Iranian historical past as somebody who encourages adversarial political tribes to take care of a dialogue with one another. That is essential for Iran’s plural society.”
Tajzadeh entered politics as a revolutionary activist in 1979 and served the regime within the Eighties in quite a lot of positions, principally inside the Ministry of Tradition. On the time, Mohammad Khatami headed that ministry. And very similar to Khatami, within the Nineteen Nineties, Tajzadeh started to mood his revolutionary Islamism with an openness to liberal and democratic reform. Khatami received the presidency on a reformist platform in 1997 and initially thought of Tajzadeh for his chief of workers earlier than making him deputy inside minister. This place positioned Tajzadeh on the entrance traces of the battle over democratization that unfolded between Khatami’s authorities and the hard-line institution that ultimately defeated it.
The Khatami authorities sought to curb the abuses of the Iranian safety institution, safe larger freedoms of speech and affiliation, create house for a extra strong civil society, and make immediately elected native councils laboratories for democratic change. Most of those initiatives met stubborn resistance from extra highly effective sectors of the state, and by the tip of Khatami’s second time period, in 2005, the reform motion had misplaced a lot of its momentum. A tough-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, succeeded Khatami. However when his first time period got here to an finish, Ahmadinejad confronted a brand new reformist challenger, who revived Khatami’s power after which some: Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister, whose supporters known as themselves the “Inexperienced Wave” in 2009.
Ahmadinejad shortly declared himself the winner of that election, and Mousavi claimed that the outcomes have been rigged. A avenue motion broke out in Mousavi’s help. The regime crushed the protests and positioned Mousavi beneath home arrest. It additionally banned the principle reformist events and meted out lengthy jail sentences to the politicians related to them, together with Tajzadeh. When these males got here out of jail, they principally selected between two paths: Some left Iran to turn out to be critics in exile; others remained inside and saved their heads down, not daring to disparage Khamenei, within the hopes that they may discover their means again into politics.
Tajzadeh is notable for having chosen a 3rd path. He has remained within the nation however articulated a radical critique of the Islamic Republic, brazenly assailing Khamenei for “violating the rights, dignity, and freedom of Iranians” and calling for the chief’s place to be abolished. Whether or not by design or merely by following his conscience, Tajzadeh has put himself able to unite the agendas of Iranian dissidents inside and outdoors the nation.
“He doesn’t prefer to be talked about as a frontrunner, hero, or savior,” Tajzadeh’s spouse, Fakhrolsadat Mohtashamipour, instructed me, using a Persian mode of modesty. “All he does is for the nation and for his compatriots and towards authoritarianism.”
Mohtashamipour married Tajzadeh in 1980, shortly after the revolution, and he or she instructed me that theirs has at all times been a political partnership. “We’re nonetheless combating for the beliefs of 1979, which have now been tarnished beneath a dictatorship that tolerates no criticism,” she mentioned. “The regime is afraid of him as a result of they know he can appeal to individuals by his phrases. Though preserving him in jail additionally reveals their absolute stupidity, as a result of he has turn out to be much more a degree of reference from inside jail.”
The notion that Iranian reformists see their venture as steady with the beliefs of 1979 has helped make them a reputable power contained in the regime, nevertheless it has additionally made some youthful activists uneasy. Faraj Sarkohi, a dissident author in exile, instructed me that the revolutionary and Islamist pasts of individuals akin to Tajzadeh and Mousavi might current obstacles to successful the belief of secular Iranians as we speak. “Tajzadeh can’t be a frontrunner for the transition,” Sarkohi mentioned, suggesting that “employees, girls, college students, and pro-democracy intellectuals” can be likelier candidates for that position. “However he may be a part of a motion for democracy and assist persuade among the regime base and convey them on this path.”
From one other standpoint, that very trajectory—from Islamist revolutionary to champion of the individuals’s democratic aspirations—carries a specific ethical weight. Mousavi, who’s 83 years previous and has been beneath home arrest since 2011, just lately known as for a constituent meeting—a name he additionally made in help of the road protests in 2022. Mousavi was Iran’s prime minister within the Eighties, when he was a favourite of the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Now he’s too frail to serve in a significant political position himself, however greater than 800 outstanding Iranians inside and outdoors the nation have signed a petition in help of his name for a constituent meeting. Tajzadeh and Momeni are amongst these signatories (Momeni has already been summoned for questioning by the judiciary consequently). One other demand for a constituent meeting “to be organized beneath the supervision of unbiased worldwide establishments” has been issued by a extra radical group of dissidents that features the Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi, the human-rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh, and greater than 1,500 different Iranians.
Exterior Iran, the opposition can appear bitterly divided, with some elements of the diaspora embracing Pahlavi’s management and others in disarray. However a political house seems to exist contained in the nation for critics who want for a special form of authorities from the Islamic Republic, and who could look to figures akin to Tajzadeh for the knowledge and ethical braveness to make it actual.