The campaign for the presidential election in Iran, to be held on June 18, has already started. Not by posting in Iranian streets or in traditional media, but on Clubhouse, a new audio chat application, available only, for the moment, for iPhones and by invitation. Too new to be banned (unlike Twitter, Facebook and Telegram) but already too popular to ignore, this app attracts thousands of Iranians every day who debate in “Rooms” (” bedrooms “) political issues and the presidential election.
On March 29, the former petroleum minister (2011-2013) and commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Rostam Ghassemi, announced, through Clubhouse, of his ambition to stand for election in June. For more than two hours, he debated with Iranian dissidents living abroad, and with fervent supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran, critics of moderate President Hassan Rouhani. A former journalist living in the United States has thus challenged the conservative candidate on the issue of freedoms while the Revolutionary Guards, who have had their own intelligence service for several years, have arrested and questioned activists, journalists and dissidents.
These critics are absent from the official media in Iran, which did not mention the discussion that took place between the journalist and Mr. Ghassemi, each of them from one end of the Iranian political spectrum. Although the journalist was criticized for his harsh words by the moderators of the discussion, Rostam Ghassemi still chose to respond by defending the Revolutionary Guards. “Despite some of their shortcomings on certain issues”.
Freedom of your amazing
The debate with Rostam Ghassemi is far from an isolated case on Clubhouse. Almost every day, in its discussion forums, exiled royalists who want the return of the Pahlavi dynasty (overthrown in 1979 by the Islamic revolution), supporters of the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ex-prisoners confront each other. politicians living in exile, reformers aspiring to change within the system, and conservatives with a suspicious eye on the West. A space of freedom and the confrontation of new ideas.
This astonishing mixture and the lively discussions could, in the coming weeks, mobilize some of the voters and thus make Clubhouse the phenomenon of the next presidential election. This while the last ballot in Iran, the legislative elections held in February 2020, was marked by a record abstention (57.5%). “What is happening on Clubhouse today, despite the obstacles to free discussion when Iranian officials are involved, is unprecedented and freer than anything that has existed in the past.”, explains Dina Esfandiary, advisor for the Middle East department of the International Crisis Group think tank.
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