Security Threats and Political Propaganda

In Iran, the period of electoral competition is also a time when political poll results are typically released on behalf of political factions and parties. This presents a unique rationale for assessing the phenomenon of political surveys in absolutist and authoritarian regimes. Like other institutions related to the management of society and public opinion—such as policymaking, the media, and elections;political polling has a completely different implication in this society than it does in open and democratic cultures.

The State of Affairs

Examining the status of polls in Iran highlights the nature of the country’s political regime and the culture that ensures its continuity. Honest polling in Iran is neither possible, nor authorized, nor desirable; in those cases when it does occur, the results that are presented are not an accurate reflection of public opinion.

Polling in Iran is impossible because the factors that should facilitate it do not exist: the regime is in complete control. It is not authorized because the government views public opinion as a threat. It is not desirable for the government, media and political parties (most of them considered as insiders) because it reveals the country’s current crises of legitimacy and authority, and illustrates the limits of the regime’s power and popularity. And when they do take place, polls cannot be an accurate reflection of public opinion because the country’s scientific, organizational and budgetary systems are in disarray and not standardized. The scientific capacity to carry out methodical political surveys does exist in Iran, but other obstacles are too numerous for this capacity to be utilized. Moreover, even if institutional, financial and legal opportunities for polling were present, Iranian specialists would still not be able to minimize the errors that would stem from the public’s apprehension about giving honest answers, due to the threat of consequences.

Polling tends to take root in regimes where, first of all, people are engaged in the election of their leaders and play an active role in the decision making processes. Second, those in charge in more open societies take poll results seriously to get elected in the next elections. Third, a variety of channels, including free and independent media outlets, communicate the public’s views to others, including the political leadership. In a country where the opinion column in Keyhan Newspaper is written by its executive editors, and the Leader, Khamenei, speaks on behalf of the Iranian people although he is not elected, no space remains for a genuine reflection of public opinion. Under conditions where citizens may spend years of their lives in prison simply for expressing their views, one cannot expect opinions to be clearly voiced.

In general, the absolutist regime of the Islamic Republic does not deem the use of opinion polls as a means of acquiring information on public opinion as a worthy undertaking. Public opinion plays no role in policy making or decision making; the leadership claims to be more aware of the public’s best interests than the public itself. In a government where people are viewed as sheep to be herded and the faqih as their shepherd, and where the only duty of the people is to be loyal to those who are ‘appointed by God’, there is no place for attention to public opinion. Therefore, when opinion surveys are carried out by the Iranian government, one must always look for motives other than those found in democratic societies as the surveys do not deserve public confidence. If the leaders see fit, they may undertake polling in an incomplete and interrupted fashion, limited to specific localities. Similarly, polls may be carried out in order to manipulate public opinion or to prevail upon an adversary in intra-party or intra-faction competition.

Some polls can easily be detected as fabrications. When a survey, like one that was recently announced on the Alef website, claims that more than 89 percent of eligible voters in Tehran are planning to participate in the tenth presidential elections, it is obvious from the assertion itself that the claim is a manufactured one: this percentage of voters’ participation has never occurred, even according to statistics published by the government itself, in any presidential election (including in 1997 when President Khatami was unexpectedly elected). In this same survey, Ahmadinejad’s projected votes in Tehran are estimated at 46 percent, even though he never reached this number of votes in the last election—and presidential votes tend to decrease for a candidate seeking re-election.

Due to several hundred years tradition of an authoritarian political culture, Iranian political parties and factions, both religious and secular, do not take public opinion into account. Most parties have abandoned public opinion as a means of determining a candidate’s potential success: political actors know that if a candidate has a million supporters but is opposed by the Islamic Republic’s leader, he will have no chance of victory. In this atmosphere, political collusion has a much greater impact than public opinion.

No independent public opinion polling organization exists in Iran. Opinion polling on the actions and policies of leaders and managers of government institutions does not take place in any standard fashion—and if it does, the public is not told about it. The government does not view running surveys as part of its function. In political interviews and sermons, leaders ignore public opinions, whereas political leaders never hesitate to refer to the support of the public for their policies without any reference to poll surveys. In the context of larger political decisions, public opinion is either ignored or viewed as equivalent to the position of the ruling party. In those situations where surveys actually have been taken, they are limited to a specific time or place and are usually done in a non-scientific and secretive manner and associated with ideological tendencies. Universities do not train students to carry out opinion surveys. No specific budget is allocated for public opinion surveys within the government. The press and electronic media do not view political, social and economic opinion polling as a part of their regular work; the assumption is that whatever is produced by the government-run media must be appreciated by the people—and if not, they should nevertheless become gradually accustomed to it.[1]

Goals

Because the phenomenon of public opinion is not officially recognized in the Islamic Republic of Iran, public opinion polling and the development and distribution of cultural and informational services are in effect segments of the political propaganda machine. Public opinion, news and political analysis, and arts and culture are only acknowledged officially when they endorse the views of the regime and its ruling elites. If not, they are labeled anti-Islamic and reduced to the status of treason. The monopoly held by the government and supporters of Velayat-e Faqih on print, electronic media, and news agencies, and their unconditional control over other media outlets that have less distribution but more influence, all point to a government that strives to gain authority over the minds and thoughts of the people.

Polls in Iran are generally carried out via government institutions with the aim of manipulating public opinion and disseminating false information to the public. Private institutes engaged in polling activities, often run by those loyal to the regime, are only contractors and executors of the surveys and play no role in publishing the results. Government organizations, which are the main contracting parties, will not hesitate to manipulate information and statistics in order to publish what they view as appropriate. Using the excuse of protecting the national interest, some information is not fully disclosed, some is presented in a flawed manner, and some will never see the light of publication. At Iran’s last private polling institute, Ayandeh Poll Institute, the managers were ultimately arrested, tried and imprisoned in 2002 for the crime of opinion polling, the results of which offended the political leadership. The institute was then shut down.

The establishment of a particular political position in government polling is not an accidental or an unconscious act, but an intended and planned process. In general, the polls must support the political regime, velayat-e faqih, the ideological legitimacy of the regime, and the clergy and the leader. If a polls results undermine any of these aspects, they will be altered or eliminated. Even polls in the social and economic arenas, which are less sensitive to the ruling system, are publicized in a way that only presents the positive aspects of government to the people. These types of surveys are carried out for the purpose of demonstrating the positive accomplishments of lower level government workers to their higher level counterparts—whether truthful or not—and not for discovering the opinions and responses of the people to the actions of government institutions.

Red lines

Relations with the U.S., uranium enrichment, the implementation of Sharia laws, corruption, drug addiction, velayat-e faqih, and hundreds of other issues in Iran have been deemed ‘sensitive’ by the government and banned from discussion by anyone outside the ruling party. The National Security Council regularly reminds the media about which topics are off limits. This is done through secret notices or merely phone calls. If an outlet ignores the notice, it will be closed the next day with charges such as endangering national security by the judiciary or the Press Monitoring Board located in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Those with differing views from the leadership on such issues who have voiced their opinions have paid a large price. Naturally, under these circumstances, polling institutions that are allowed to operate will not pursue these hot topics.

Variety

Two types of government public opinion polling institutions exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran. First, there are more scientific polling systems whose results are reported directly to the regime’s leaders and the official informational, security and military organizations. These groups’ aim is not to discover public opinion and respond to the needs of the people, but to inform the leaders about the public temperature and to caution and intimidate the political opposition.

Second, there are propaganda-driven polling groups. These polls, which lack a scientific foundation, are developed and carried out by the editorial boards of newspapers and news websites and the leaders of military and security establishments.

Some news related to the first variety of polling does sometimes make it into the media; in such cases, the polling institutions are referred to as “institutions related to social issues” or “institutions related to national security.” It is through the second type of polling that such outlandish figures as 99.2 percent projected participation among Iranians in presidential elections were published.[2] In a country where people regularly shuffle between hundreds of political parties, figures of 99 percent—even among supporters of velayat-e faqih and the Islamic Republic—are clearly fabrications.

Organization

Official political polling institutions such as Seda-va-Sima (state run Radio and TV stations) and Iranian Students’ Polling Agency (which belongs to the students in name only) are under complete control of the leader; nothing which opposes the explicit view of the government is allowed to be expressed. The Ministry of Information, information operations of the Sepah-e Pasdaran (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), and other security forces carry out work-related opinion surveys in order to measure the public’s tolerance of repression, but the results of these polls—the scientific viability of which is questionable—are usually unpublished and are only presented to the heads of security in a confidential manner.[3] This confidential stamp on the results of public opinion polling reveals the degree to which Iran’s leaders conceal and manipulate information about the public’s outlook.

Another group of opinion polling institutions are the private institutions run by the people who are loyal to the political leadership and the clergy and members of the appointed bodies of the government (mostly graduates of Emam Sadegh University under the tutelage of Mahdavi Kani, Emam Hossein University under the leadership of the IRGC, and Baqer-ul-Ulum University under the leadership of the students of Mesbah Yazdi). These institutions, which are mainly contractors and work for government institutions, are chosen on the basis of their ability to withhold information from the media and their status as trusted confidantes of the government leadership. In this respect, outsiders—independent contractors who are not totally loyal to the leader—should not meddle with surveying public opinions.