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Iranian pundits and media say recent rumors allegedly started by ultra-hardliners on social media about President Masoud Pezeshkian’s resignation are part of a psychological operation to weaken his government.
An administration official’s refutation of rumors, started on Friday about Pezeshkian’s resignation, confirmed the seriousness of the rumors and quickly made headlines on news websites Saturday.
In an X post, Ali Ahmadnia, head of the administration’s information and media council, accused what he called "a certain group" of taking advantage of the Pezeshkian administration’s deliberate reticence, presumably over the host of crises originating in his predecessor’s mismanagement of the economy, to attack him.
The administration’s priority lies in remedying shortages and realizing Pezeshkian’s election promises. "The government does not pay attention to outrageous lies, such as the president’s resignation rumors aimed at gaining followers, and it will not get distracted by such peripheral issues," Ahmadnia wrote.
Social media users, particularly those posting on domestically developed platforms such as Eitaa, a platform very popular with ultra-hardliners, claimed in the past two days that Pezeshkian has submitted his resignation to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
According to Persian-language social media posts, the rumor also spread widely among the general population. “Very strangely, whoever I spoke to today very seriously said Pezeshkian has resigned,” a post on X said on Saturday.
In a campaign video in July, Pezeshkian promised to quit if he could not fulfill his promises to the people. Some reformist politicians and activists have urged Pezeshkian in the past few weeks to resign if, despite his strong objection, the new controversial hijab law that ultra-hardliners insist on implementing comes into effect and internet filtering is not lifted.
Some ultra-hardliner social media users have also declared that the head of the so-called “shadow government”, the former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, would succeed Pezeshkian if his resignation was accepted.
The reformist Ensaf News attributed ultra-hardliners’ role in creating and spreading the rumors to the fear of “radicals in the so-called revolutionary current” of being eliminated from the country’s political scene “in the near future”.
“I think designing and implementing such projects or spreading such rumors is primarily to present an unstable image of the government to the society … They are trying to present Pezeshkian’s government as a fleeting one that will not last,” prominent sociologist and social media researcher Mohammad Rahbari told the Reformist Ham-Mihan newspaper.
In the past few weeks, ultra-hardliners of the Paydari (Steadfastness) Party and their allies in the parliament, notably the Jebhe-ye Sobh-e Iran (MASAF), and their supporters on social media have intensified their attacks on Pezeshkian, demanding his resignation or impeachment for refusing to sack his Strategic Affairs Deputy, Mohammad-Javad Zarif, refusing to promulgate the new hijab law and his insistence on negotiations with the West to resolve the economic crises resulting from sanctions.
“The continuation of Pezeshkian’s presidency is more dangerous for the country than an atom bomb,” ultra-hardliner cleric Mohammad-Ali Jaberi tweeted Thursday urging the parliament to impeach the President.
They also accuse Pezeshkian of being responsible for the lack of a military response to Israel’s recent strikes on Iran in October, delaying what they refer to as the “True Promise 3” retaliation. They also blame him and his government for a host of crises including the depreciation of the national currency and rolling power outages that his government claims resulted from the previous administration’s failure to store enough fuel to run power plants in fall and winter.
