Former Intelligence Ministry Official Warns of New Crises

“No society can return to its former self after a crisis; it must change to address the new circumstances. Systems that insist on turning back the clock merely waste the nation’s time and precipitate their own decline.” Those are the words not of an anti-regime revolutionary but of Ali Rabii, a former Iranian deputy minister of intelligence who also served as labor minister under President Hassan Rouhani.

• April 5: In an opinion piece in Etemad newspaper analyzing the challenges the regime is likely to face in the Iranian new year, which began March 21, Rabii argued: “All the elements that created the events of autumn of last year,” a reference to the countrywide unrest after the death of Mahsa Amini, “are still in place. Absent an appropriate answer and reform … those events may be repeated at an unpredictable level … Further filtering of the internet will not only impact the economy but will also impact society psychologically and provoke further dissatisfaction … the middle class is in free fall, and many are getting closer to the line of absolute poverty, which is socially unacceptable … The domestic media has lost its credibility … and public opinion will be shaped by foreigners unless we rethink our media policy and reduce control and censorship … In sum, a calm and orderly transition out of the crisis is only possible by reforming our domestic policy (social and cultural), economy, and foreign policy.”

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