Some Iranian politicians consulted “genies” when making recent decisions concerning state affairs, a member of Iran’s Expediency Council, which exercises supervisory powers over all branches of Iran’s government, said last weekend, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on Thursday.
Genies are supernatural creatures mentioned in the Quran, Islam’s holy book. They are referenced within Islamic mythology and Iranian folklore, which hold that “genies live in a parallel world and possess extraordinary powers, including the ability to take different shapes and forms,” according to RFE/RL.
“Genies and fortune-tellers have been involved in ‘mysterious, inefficient, and corrupt’ decisions by ‘some officials and dignitaries,’” Expediency Council member Ahmad Tavakoli claimed last weekend in a story published by the Iranian news site Alef.ir. An anti-corruption watchdog operating in Iran, Justice and Transparency Watch, is currently investigating “several cases” of politicians involved in such supernatural phenomenon, Tavakoli, who founded the group, added.
Tavakoli’s claims of an otherworldly influence on Iranian politics followed shortly after a similar allegation made by Tehran’s interim Friday Prayers leader, Ayatollah Kazem Seddiqi, in early January. Seddiqi claimed in a television interview that a recently deceased Iranian cleric named Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi had “opened his eyes and smiled kindly” while undergoing a ritual cleansing of his body before burial, implying that Mesbah’s corpse had come to life after he died on January 2 at age 86. Seddiqi later admitted that the man who performed the bathing ritual on Mesbah’s corpse “may have imagined the incident,” according to RFE/RL.
In his interview with Alef.ir, Tavakoli “named Mesbah’s body washer, Reza Matlabi Kashani, and said he is ‘a [major] investor who has many financial ambiguities’ and ties to ‘senior officials and prominent clerics.'” Tavakoli claimed that Kashani performs Islamic cleansing rituals “on the dead bodies of prominent [Iranian] clerics at his house.”
Belief in genies remains widespread in some segments of Iranian society. Seeking guidance on important life or business decisions, believers in the supernatural spirits often consult self-proclaimed mediums claiming to be in touch with the genies’ unseen world. The fortune-tellers, as Tavakoli referred to them, then dispense prognostications to the believers.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei claimed in a speech last March that genies were working in tandem with Tehran’s enemies, namely the U.S., to undermine the Islamic Republic.
“We have jinn [genies] and human enemies that help each other. The intelligence services of many countries work together against us,” Khamenei said in a speech on the occasion of the Iranian New Year.
As Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei exercises nearly absolute control over all state affairs in Iran; he is both deeply suspicious of the West and superstitious.
During his March 2020 speech, Khamenei recounted “an incident from the early Islamic history when ‘all the enemies of the [Islamic] prophet [Muhammad] gathered together and conspired together’ to defeat the Muslims,” according to RFE/RL. The 80-year-old then spoke of the “most evil enemy of the Islamic Republic,” referring to the “Great Satan” which is Tehran’s epithet for the U.S.
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