With the spread of dispute between Iranian regime factions, the state-run Entekhab news website, affiliated with the so-called “reformist” faction, was closed recently.
Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), explained the reason behind the seizure of the website as publishing a video and report titled “Auctioning Iran’s brand—why has Iran’s foreign policy weakened so much?”
Fars wrote, “This report is outside the limits of the law and contrary to national interests and against the fundamental policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran in foreign policy.”
Therefore, closure of the Entekhab news website, the insider media is due to the exposure of part of the regime’s humiliating diplomacy and the bursting of the balloon of Ebrahim Raisi’s fake power displays and bluffs about his achievements in foreign policy, an issue that can ensue further defections from the regime’s ranks.
In one of his bluffs, Raisi had said, “Unprecedented growth in the country’s trade, increased oil and gas production, and a complete solution to the problem of 87 million barrels of condensate remaining on the water, has been part of government measures in the past two years. At the same time, following regional policy, participating in major global coalitions, and reclaiming the property of the Iranian nation in different countries have been among the other actions and plans of the government during this period.”
But in the fight for power, the controversial video of Entekhab website reveals, “The achievement of the presidential government is summed up in the condemnation and issuance of three resolutions of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the expulsion of Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, the resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the resolution of the European Union’s human rights sanctions.”
In another part of the same video, it is stated, “The criterion for judgment is the results of the government’s performance, not mouth-filling slogans that are advertised… [foreign minister Hossein] Amir Abdollahian considered the three-day trip to Pakistan very successful, but it was not even a week after his trip when it was announced that Pakistan has stopped importing gas from Iran.”
Of course, the scandal of the president’s diplomacy is not unprecedented. On August 23, Jalal Mahmoudzadeh, a member of the Majlis (parliament) also said, “We have seen very weak diplomacy from this government, especially from Amir Abdollahian, who is really in terms of diplomacy, the lowest-performing foreign minister in the history of the Islamic Republic.”
After the banning of Entekhab website, Mohammad Mohajeri, member of the editorial board of the state-run Khabar Online website, wrote on September 5, “Mr. Raisi’s government is still trying to revive the JCPOA but can’t. Not that he does not want to, but that he does not have the potency and capacity. The Entekhab news site has criticized the government’s foreign policy and the intolerant government has banned it. Why? Because he said that Shanghai and BRICS lollipops are so tasteless that no one likes them.”
Since the dispute is not about the national welfare and interests but over grasping power and plundering, regime officials are using words like weakness and indifference. None of the regime officials are making fundamental criticism of the regime’s policies.
On September 6, Islahat News website published a report in which it described the banning of Entekhab as a step “in the direction of purification and doomed to fail” and wrote, “The dismissal of professors and the closing of Entekhab website have a common message and cannot be a simple event… these are preludes to elections.”
Mohammadreza Tajik, a regime-affiliated political analyst, described the purification project as a sign of desperation and “a strategic project aimed at survival” and wrote, “This issue was decided with the presidential election and then it was completed in the legislative election, and it did not take long for it to spread to the lower levels and layers. Therefore, in my opinion, only a fear of survival can be involved in the formulation and implementation of such plans.” (Source: Khabaronline government website – September 3, 2023).